Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Vintage to bottle is a year. The wine-club to-do list is a year overdue.
Most boutique Australian wineries run five lines of revenue: the cellar door (Saturday and Sunday tastings $15 to $45 per head, the experience trade that lifts a $40 bottle from supermarket comparison to cellar-door purchase at full margin), the wine-club (the 200 to 800 members who buy a quarterly mixed case $180 to $400, the line that funds the next vintage and predicts cash-flow), wholesale to bottle-shops (Vintage Cellars, Dan Murphy's, Nick's, independent fine-wine merchants, thinner margin but volume), the on-trade restaurant pour (the trophy by-the-glass placement at Rockpool or Quay that builds the brand for the next ten years), and export (China, Hong Kong, US, UK, Europe via a distributor partnership, where one container moves a vintage). Each is a different customer, a different sales cycle and a different keyword set. The winemaker is in the vineyard at 6am, in the cellar with the barrel sampling at 11am, on the cellar-door floor by 2pm, and emailing the Hong Kong distributor at 11pm. The marketing that wins each line (a 'cellar door [sub-region]' SEO play, a wine-club retention sequence, a restaurant-pour trade deck, the Halliday Wine Companion submission, the China-export portfolio) is exactly the work that never happens between vintage and pruning.
Good winery marketing has five jobs running at once: a sub-region cellar-door tasting-flight booking page that ranks 'cellar door [sub-region]' and 'wine tasting [region]' with date-and-flight selection, dietary fields, designated-driver options, and a one-tap booking; a wine-club landing page with the quarterly mixed-case structure (12 bottles, 4 to 6 styles, $180 to $400, free shipping, members-only library-release and back-vintage access); a wholesale trade deck with the current vintage releases, library-release back-vintages, James Halliday and Robert Parker scores, awards (Decanter, Wine Spectator), Sustainable Winegrowing Australia membership and the bottle-shops you currently stock; an on-trade restaurant trade deck with by-the-glass pricing, food-pairing suggestions and the restaurants you currently pour at; and an awards-and-submission calendar (Halliday Wine Companion deadline in August, James Halliday 5-star release in October, Decanter World Wine Awards in March).
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the five revenue lines that grow a boutique winery: filling the Saturday cellar door, growing the wine-club past 500 members, winning the next bottle-shop wholesale account, opening the next restaurant by-the-glass placement, and lining up the Halliday Wine Companion submission. Briefs the other agents so the cellar-door booking page, the wine-club retention sequence, the restaurant-pour trade deck and the vintage-release reels all push toward the same outcome.
Ships a clean five-page core (cellar-door booking, wine-club, wholesale trade deck, restaurant on-trade deck, library-release) so 'cellar door [sub-region]', 'wine club Australia' and 'wholesale wine [region]' all find you instead of Penfolds, Wolf Blass or the Treasury Wines portfolio. Imports your existing site, makes the wine-club join button bigger than the logo, and keeps the current-release wines updated as the cellar rotates.
Owns the work that decides whether you rank for 'cellar door [sub-region]', 'wine tasting [region]' and 'wine club Australia': complete Google Business Profile with the Halliday and Sustainable Winegrowing Australia badges, schema for the cellar door and the wine club, review prompts after each cellar-door booking, and the technical fixes that keep you indexed. Auto-applies the low-risk stuff.
Runs a tight Meta campaign on cellar-door bookings (10km radius around the cellar door, weekend-focused), steady Google Ads on 'wine club Australia' and 'cellar door [sub-region]' year-round at low daily spend, and lifts the budget for vintage-release week, Halliday Companion release week and Decanter World Wine Awards week. ABAC-compliant by default. Pauses when the Saturday cellar door is at capacity or the wine-club has hit its quarterly intake cap.
Turns vintage and the cellar door into content in your voice: a barrel-sampling reel from Saturday's pull, a winemaker-walks-the-vineyard reel at veraison, a tasting-note carousel at the new-vintage release, a behind-the-cellar-door shot of the Saturday tasting flight, a library-release tease. Builds the vintage-release rhythm that earns the wine-club renewal and the next restaurant pour. You shoot one frame per session, the agent drafts, you approve.
Drafts the longer pieces wine drinkers and on-trade buyers read: 'what does a James Halliday 95-pt rating actually mean (and why supermarket wine doesn't have one)', 'sustainable winegrowing in McLaren Vale: what changes in the bottle', 'sub-region differences: McLaren Vale Shiraz vs Barossa Shiraz, an honest difference'. Two a month, in your voice, that bring search traffic in at the consideration stage and double as wine-club retention content.
Your first 30 days.
- Sub-region cellar-door booking page indexed and ranking for 'cellar door [sub-region]'
- Wine-club landing page live with quarterly mixed-case structure and library-release access
- Wholesale trade deck live with current vintages, Halliday scores and Sustainable Winegrowing Australia badge
- Restaurant on-trade deck live with by-the-glass pricing and current restaurant accounts
- Halliday Wine Companion submission calendar loaded with the August deadline reminder
- Vintage-release reels queued in your voice for the next four barrel pulls and the autumn release
- Restaurant on-trade outreach drafted to ten new restaurants in three sub-regions you don't currently sell into
- Five-line cellar-door, wine-club, wholesale, on-trade and library-release plan delivered by Sam
Boutique wineries that grow past 500 wine-club members aren't the ones with the most prestigious label. They are the ones whose cellar-door booking page is full for the next four weekends, whose wine-club renewal sequence runs automatically the month before each member's quarterly renewal, whose vintage-release reels run the week of every bottling, and whose Halliday Wine Companion submission landed on the first of August. Every one of those is a job that has to happen every quarter, forever, and it's the work that gets eaten by vintage, pruning and the Saturday cellar door.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the five-line content engine and the awards-and-vintage campaigns for a winery at $4.5k a month. Tools are cheap but you never write the wine-club renewal email. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the booking and club pages, post the vintage release, run the cellar-door ads, grow the wine-club past 500 and draft the restaurant on-trade outreach. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop losing the by-the-glass pour to Treasury Wines Estates.