Get Your Money For Nothin’, Drinks for a Fee
It seems like every winery’s tasting room has their own idea of what’s an appropriate tasting fee. Some are free, some are nominal ($2-5), and some are a good bit pricier ($10 and more). Since we’ve made the choice to be undercover wine bloggers, we pay what everyone else pays. Granted, it boggles the mind that anyone would give free tastings or discounts to random wine bloggers- I mean, the barrier to entry is having access to a computer- but apparently some folks get it. Um, yay them? But anyhow, the simple fact is that a wine tasting is your way to learn about a given winery and their wines. How much should that experience cost?
So let’s look at the price of free. It’s a simple sales tactic: a free anything puts you in the saleperson’s debt. If someone comes into your winery and you let them taste the whole thing for free, they’re going to feel much more obligated to buy a bottle, or at least a glass or two. That’s why we ended up leaving Hartwood Winery with a bottle of wine, even though nothing really rocked our worlds- a free tasting from such an incredibly nice old guy made it hard to walk out empty-handed. To be fair, the wine we bought DID mull beautifully, and has been my favorite mulled wine this winter. Regardless, it makes me not love free wine tastings. Even if it’s just a nominal fee, the simple act of paying money for a tasting makes me feel like I have completed the obligatory part of the transaction; it’s totally my choice whether to buy or walk.
I’m probably the happiest with a nominal fee for wine tastings. Some people make the argument that tasting fees are a part of recovering the costs incurred by tastings. I also tend to think they pre-qualify the people in the tasting room. If someone is going to balk at $5 to taste 12 wines, are they really going to pony up $30 for a bottle? From reading other wine blogs, it sounds like most California wineries have a tasting fee to discourage the rowdy, obnoxious looking-for-a-cheap-buzz crowd – and I’m ok with that. I get really happy when my tasting fee is credited back with purchase, but it’s certainly not expected. The only condition we put on tasting fees is that they should be reasonable for the number of wines tasted. $7 for five wines seems excessive. $5 for five wines seems spot on. It’s not that the two bucks means the difference between eating chicken and eating ramen for us; but it just doesn’t feel right.
Then there are the places with higher tasting fees. $10-12 for a tasting seems to be the way some wineries in northern Virginia are going, and there are others who break it down into tiered tastings. There, you end up north of $10 as well, if you really want a sense of what the winery is all about. We have never walked out of a winery because we felt the tasting fee was too high, but we have friends who would. I struggle with these higher tasting fees, because there are wine drinkers who will plunk down $30-40 for a bottle to support a local producer, but not if, as a couple, they’ve paid $25 to taste the wine. What makes more financial sense to a winery- a single case sale, discounted 5-15%, or 6 two-bottle sales at full retail? It’s a problem that I have with both wineries and wine shops: some owners seems to only want to deal with the folks buying a case at a time, forgetting that there’s repeat business to be had by the onesie-twosie buyers. It’s rare for us to buy a case, because we’ll often visit 5-10 wineries a month. But, if we like the couple of bottles we did buy, we’ll more than likely be back soon.
What do other wine lovers – especially Virginia wine lovers – think about tasting fees?
The Get Your Money For Nothin’, Drinks for a Fee by Swirl, Sip, Snark, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
If you’re intrigued by the idea that free tastings make people feel more obligated to buy, I recommended you check out the following book: Influence by Robert Cialdini. While not all wineries that offer free tastings are doing so to make you feel obligated to buy, this triggering of the reciprocity norm can happen all the same. Cialdini is a psychologist how studies social influence tactics, and this is a popular press book he wrote to help people avoid being trapped by such tactics. I first read this book in intro psych, and it’s changed the way I view the world. It’s a quick, easy read (and I make no $ from it’s sale
), so check it out.
Even if businesses that provide such free samples were okay with getting less than positive feedback via social media outlets, people likely won’t give it. These free samples play off one of the most powerful social norms out there: reciprocity. Check out Bob (Robert to be formal) Cialdini’s easy to read book “Influence” to understand the issues here. This is part of why we blog anonymously and prefer it when wineries have tasting fees – we’re less likely to leave with a bottle we don’t really like this way.
I totally agree with your thinking on the tasting fees on all accounts.
We’ve often found ourselves buying a bottle after a tasting just because we felt a bit guilty walking out with nothing – however, more so at the smaller wineries than the larger ones.
Exception to that rule is when the fee is non-existent or small yet the interest of the pourer is the same. . .
We don’t mind paying at all but like both the experience and the “value” to be in proportion with the fee.
I agree. I think a nominal tasting fee is a good thing for all the reasons you cite. I typically buy a bottle anyway so I usually don’t have to pay the fee.
I think that your point about free making you obligated is interesting in another way too. Do bloggers who get things for free become more likely to say nice things about a winery or wines? I think the answer is yes for the simple reason you cite; it is human nature to feel obligated in some way. That’s why I think that disclosure is so important for bloggers. You need to be upfront about your biases, if you have any. For example, back in the summer I wrote about a family friend’s winery, but disclosed that fact upfront so people would know my opinion may be colored by this personal relationship (I didn’t get anything for free, but relationships can also distort your opinion). I hope that all wine bloggers disclose what they got for free or any outside relationship, especially now in light of the recent FTC guidelines on the subject.
I totally agree about the need for bloggers to disclose freebies and personal relationships. A lot of blogger say that samples don’t color their reviews, but they also tend to say they won’t take the time to write a negative review – this means reviews are useless since they’re almost all positive. We hope we never get to that point on this blog – good, bad, or indifferent we want to call it like we see it (or taste it as the case may be). We sometimes feel bad, but it is just our opinion – other can (and do) disagree.