After a long chat today with Vitor Mendez of Vinixa, a Portuguese wine export company, I left the office today wondering how the PR Grisley Co. can cope with

 the financial crisis rocking the entire globe. I really started to dwell on this after reading an article from The Wine Spectator about how wine trends will start to change during these hard times, and how here in the US consumers will start to look towards domestic wines. This is obviously concerning for us as we only work with European wines, but with the continued popularity of wines from countries like Spain and Portugal, I assumed we would be able to weather the storm a little easier than some. However, as my friend Vitor mentioned earlier in the day, many producers are still not realizing the urgency that is sometimes needed in this business. He expressed his frustrations but kept a positive attitude because he loves his job and is willing and eager to show these producers what can be accomplished with a minimal amount of change.

Similarly, the fine folks at Catavino attended and conducted seminars at the 1st Wine Pleasures International Wine Tourism Conference & Workshop in Sitges, Spain to discuss and show the many producers several ways to help their wineries. With seminars on everything from blogging, social media outlets, wine tastings and tourism, as well as collaborations between wineries and their clients, restaurants, etc., the event was definitely an experience for all attendees. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the event, but several people who I have talked to that did attend left the conference with eyes wide open and with a very different mindset than when they entered. I hope that there will be many more of these conferences to come as the conference had a large impact on the way many European producers view how blogging among other things can be utilized to better their businesses.

After several years in the wine importing business, witnessing and experiencing its ups and downs, we have had the opportunity to learn and grow from the wine scandals, horrible exchange rates, and the explosion of fantastic wines from relatively unknown regions all over the world. To say the least, 2008 has been an interesting year being importers in the US.One of the most interesting and exciting things for us in 2008 was the growth and impact that wine bloggers had throughout the wine world this year. As a company that solely relied on advertising through trade shows, international expos, wine reviews and word of mouth, the potential doors that blogging has the ability unlock is staggering for us.Whether you are a producer such as Quevedo, an export consortium like Vinixa and Exba 7, or an internet personality like Gary Vaynerchuck, the potential to reach people is almost endless. Blogging allows anyone to post information about anything and we feel that is why it has really exploded within the wine world, where opinions and discussion make up a good part of the wine culture.

With all those aspects in the back of our minds, we decided we were losing out on too many opportunities to meet new contacts through social media such as Twitter, getting the wines we work with exposure through sites like Adegga, and building a much better internet presence by sharing our stories with you through a blog. We decided we would be foolish to wait any longer to start a blog for our company and lose out on the massive potential it carries with it.

That being said, we hope you check back regularly, sign up for our newsletter, and hopefully learn, laugh, and discover with us the many things that keep us doing what we are doing! As always we’re open to questions, advice and new ideas, so please share them with us!

Peter and Michael Grisley