High Tasting Rooms Fees and the Visitor Slowdown

It may not be news to you that wine bottle prices and wine tasting fees have gone up substantially since the end of the Pandemic lockdown. Why? Supply and demand. People wanted to get out and do things, whether it was wine tasting in Napa or buying a new car. Consumers were throwing their credit cards around and saying, "Here, take my money!"

It wasn't just the wine, as lodging and restaurant prices jumped. All of a sudden, a trip to wine country was going to cost real money. 

Tasting room fees by region
from a Silicon Valley Bank survey in 2023
Click on image to enlarge

Then people started talking about the slowdown in winery visitation and in wine sales. Now there's a glut of wine that was helped out by a large crop harvest in 2023.  At first, the slowdown in wine buying was masked by higher prices, so if you looked at dollars spent then things looked okay.

Per the North Coast Business Journal in a 2023 article, the average standard tasting fee in Napa was $81, in Sonoma $38. Reserve tastings average higher. The Visit Napa Valley website says the average fee in Napa is $40. I think, in actuality, the average fee is somewhere between $40 and $81. Let's just say $50 to $75 fees are common.

Prices jumped as demand skyrocketed, and now prices will now need to come down. Many areas have experienced unusually quiet winter and spring months. This happened last year and seems to be happening again this year. It seems to be the new normal.

Wineries that were reservation only three years ago are okay with walk-ins now. On week days in the slower months, any winery would be crazy to turn away anyone walking up. 

Sonoma Valley currently has a Sonoma Sips $15 tasting deal going at over three dozen participating wineries through March 15th. I just visited to one small winery I'd never even heard of before using this special pricing. I have three other ones on my list, ones I've been to, but haven't been back because of the tasting room prices. This will allow me to try a few things and pick up some bottles.

What should change? The obvious answer is tasting room fees. Maybe something as simple as lower fees in the off-season vs. the busy months. Even better would be a surge pricing model where summer and fall weekends would be the highest, weekdays lower. For instance, Monday through Thursday from December through March might be only $15. June through October weekends might be $45.

One issue with surge pricing is customer acceptance. Another is a way to dynamically change your prices on websites and reservation systems. I was just out looking at airline flights. There's a calendar with pricing for each day of the month. It would be pretty cool if tasting rooms could do this.

Wineries have to lower the tasting fees and get the word out. All the bad press with the increases are partly responsible for the slowdown in visitation. 

Are lower tasting fees the cure-all for the lack of visitors? No, but if the goal is to get people in to buy wines, then this would seem to be the way to go. High tasting fees should never a block to keep potential buyers away.