Wine Law

294 WINE LAW To face such fragmentation, online sales are showing important issues, for instance, Wine.com , the USA’s leading online wine retailer, topped 150 million dollars in revenue in 2019. Its CEO, Rich Bergsund, said, on the topic: “Our industry is seeking to attract the next generation of consumers”, adding that: “We’re seeing signs that a modern retail approach – with online and mobile channels, deep content, live chat somms and convenient delivery – is appealing to all ages and levels of wine sophistication.” Surrounded by this, the wineries usually adopt the same practices to bring their brands closer to specific consumers in order to supply them according their needs, one of the most important ones being the wine clubs. These are becoming one of the most powerful mechanisms to reach – almost at a personal level – those enormous varieties of consumers: “Wine clubs are designed to provide customers with a series of wine bottles on a monthly or quarterly basis that they would otherwise have to find and purchase on their own.”. 45 . Therefore, wineries, wine regions or specialised wine shops usually encourage those clubs. By visiting wine clubs’ websites, one can realise that the advertisements conducted by those wineries follow the rules cited before, presenting the labels, describing wine, pricing the bottle and helping customers buying wines with confidence. Live chat sommeliers provide friendly advice, guidance and convenience, which are not found at the supermarkets. Notably, regulations on the responsibilities of advertising imposed on advertisers are being transferred to the public in online commerce, for example, the buyer’s age is based on a self-declaration and a mere in-box-click is accepted, while in a store, the salesman has the responsibility to assure not sale a wine magazine, for instance, to minors. Wine tourism has been growing, and several marketing options can be done inside the walls of the winery, for example, hosting events. The most common is possibly tastings, bringing in customers and giving them the opportunity to know the winery’s history. In such cases, it is the winery’s responsibility to control sales and avoid excessive consumption. These events can also happen at lodgings, and the marketing of which is not submitted to the same rules of alcohol beverages, attracting, nevertheless, the limitations imposed to wine promotion once the connection to a winery is clearly shown. 45 See J. Arnold & I. Larnis, Wine Clubs of Sonoma County , Pelican Publishing Company, 2007, pp. 1-33, ISBN: 1-58980-432-5.