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International News
Complicating matters, the winery’s website launch they’ve had to re-think the business plan.
had been delayed when the webmaster fell ill with
COVID-19. Sawin decided to improvise: she creat- “We kind of jumped in with two feet,” Bressan
ed a special social media promo, of-fering a 15% said. “Our website isn’t ready for it. We don’t have
discount and free local delivery, and began taking an online store.”
orders via Facebook and In-stagram.
Like Sawin, one of Bressan’s biggest challenges is
Orders have been steady, Sawin said, and social just finding ways to get new customers to try her
media and word-of-mouth marketing has been wines. In Bressan’s case, it’s not just that the wine
working. brand is new to consumers—it’s that many locals
didn’t much like the wine produced by the former
By early April, the winery was processing between owners of the vineyard.
10-to-15 orders per day, she said. Some local cus-
tomers were ordering as few as two bottles at a “We have a big stigma to remove,” Bressan said.
time, but many others, especially those farther “Their wines are not on our shelves. We couldn’t
afield, bought Priest Creek wine by the case. Priest even come up with a good recipe to make sangria
Creek produces six varieties of red and white wine, with it.”
with list prices ranging between $19 and $46 CDN
per bottle. The win-ery’s website is finally up and Bressan, a former realtor, found an upside to the
running too, now that the webmaster has recov- additional legwork required to process orders with-
ered. out a proper online system in place: it created an
opportunity to build a more personal connection
For now, Sawin is just hoping to keep the momen- with customers. For example, when she learned
tum going while the winery tries to get its name one customer was ordering a case of 12 wines to
out there. Unlike competitors in the wine trail give away for Easter gifts, she included tissue paper
area who have built up a base of loyal cus-tomers and gift bags at no extra cost to spare the person
through tourism and event marketing, Priest Creek having to make another trip to the store.
has no reputation to trade on.
“If you show your customers that you appreciate
“The hardest part is that no one got to taste our them, they will come back for sure. We really put a
wine before this happened,” Sawin said. lot of emphasis on personalized attention,” Bressan
said.
On the opposite side of the country, the new own-
ers of Ontario’s Vankleek Hill Vineyard found them- While Vankleek Hill Winery launched its wine
selves in a similar predicament. delivery by offering a 15% discount on purchases,
Bressan said when the promo ended, the orders
Like Sawin at Priest Creek, Vankleek Hill owners, kept on coming in.
Teresa Bressan and Scott Lambert, had to scramble
to find a makeshift solution to sell wine without an “We’re still so new, and we’re learning a lot.
online store when health authori-ties closed down Vankleek Hill is just amazing. It truly is,” she said.
all the province’s tasting rooms in March. “This unfortunate event has really brought the
community together, truly. I’m finding a lot of
The vineyard’s tasting room opened in October, goodness in a lot of people these days.”
but Bressan and Lambert had prioritized cleaning
up the property’s bedraggled vines before building Alcohol Sales Increase,
an online store. They had been counting on events Even with Delivery Hiccups
and tourist traffic to drive sales this year, but with
group gatherings of all sizes banned and even Canadians across the country have taken shel-
driving between regions discouraged or restricted, ter-in-place orders very seriously. An online sur-
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