If you are a winemaker or just a wine lover, the name and surname of Kato Shalvashvili is familiar to you. Kato is the sommelier and head of the promotion department at “8000 vintage” and has been taking care of increasing the quality and promotion of Georgian wineries for years.
It is one thing to make wine and another to bring it to the consumer. Tboba talked to Kato about what wine promotion actually means, why it is important and what is happening in the market today:
T: what does the wine promotion means and why it is important?
Wine promotion is a process when a family winery or a big company uses various tools to position its wine in the market. Promotion starts from the bottles visuals, form and label. First, the consumer who is not familiar with the product perceives the product with his eyes.
We have too many good winemakers on the market today who are simply not seen and there are wines that are “oppressed” because the label and bottle are not good. Therefore, the idea came up to promote more those winemakers who are lost.
In General, I think no one can introduce you to a book better than the author, so it is important for wineries to consider that they need to use different tools to communicate their wine philosophy.
T: what strategies does 8000Vintage use to promote wine?
One of the first things we did during the pandemic is a wine box – a very good project and I am proud of it. The whole story is that the subscriber does not know what wine he/she will get. On the shelf, when you are faced with a choice and you choose it yourself, you can still look towards the gap. And here you can get a wine that does not have a good label, but is a very good wine.
In addition to the fact that we are represented on the spot and conduct wine tasting with the winemaker, social media is also very important. We have a small project for this – winemakers introduce us to their wineries through a video, which we post on social networks.
The most important and main thing we do in the direction of promotion is active work with consultants. In fact, wine promotion is not written like wine marketing. The main thing is that the consultants know and understand the wine.
T: what is the unique feature of Georgia wine in terms of promotion?
It always amazes me how unique this small country is with its variety of grapes. Adding the story that we are the birthplace of wine sells wine well. With this, we have a great potential and we do not need to pull history out of our fingers.
In fact, the 20th century put such a huge burden on Georgian winemaking that we are slowly getting out of it. Foreigners often wonder why old or new wine countries are ahead of us.
T: where are we today and where should take the course?
It is clear that we must take the course to the west. The difference between the beginning and today is very big – wineries have grown both quantitatively and qualitatively. Many small wineries have appeared on the market, creating and offering interesting products to wine lovers. A new generation has also come to us more information, we have more traffic, more foreigners arrive and there is an exchange of ideas.
Although we have 8000 years of history, I think we are now standing and winemaking is developing. There is quite an increased interest in Georgian wine and we should try to invest our resources as much as possible.
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