Morgan Hill Cellars winemaker to lead the county’s wine association
Published in the Jan. 7 – 23, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Mike Sampognaro at Morgan Hill Cellars. Sampognaro, the new president of the Santa Clara Valley Wine Association, hopes to get the word out that South Bay wineries provide a good value in wine tasting.
Photo by Marty Cheek
With the new year comes a new president of the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley, the wine-producing trade association for Santa Clara County. Morgan Hill Cellars winemaker Michael Sampognaro has taken up the reigns of the organization, replacing Greg Richtarek, the former marketing director at Guglielmo Winery.
Sampognaro’s goal as president of the association is to continue to grow the number of wineries that are members as well as get more associate members, he said. He also would like to develop the brand of the Santa Clara Valley which has wines that competes in quality with such wine-making regions as Napa, Sonoma and San Luis Obispo counties. Achieving that goal will require marketing and publicity to make people in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area aware that the wineries in the South Bay region can provide good value in wine-tasting outings.
“We’d like to get enough cash to bring awareness to this American Viticultural Area outside of this area,” he said. “We as individual wineries are trying to tap into the Silicon Valley customer base. And a lot of those people have no concept of this area. Those are the people with a lot of money who could conceivably come down here and enjoy a lot of wine.”
The association needs to determine if it has enough funds to really penetrate that market and educate the people in Silicon Valley that there are good wines and enjoyable places to visit in Santa Clara Valley, he said.
Another effort the association will take to promote regional wines to the public is to get more wine trade publications and newspapers and magazines to publish stories and reviews of the region’s wines, he said. Although it’s still in early planning stages, the association is considering a press event that will educate wine writers about the South Valley region and wines it offers.
“We’re trying to work on a venue for a trade kind of event. What I mean by trade is wine writers for magazines or wine-tasting guides, those kinds of media people who are into writing about wine,” he said. “We haven’t finalized what we’re doing, but we’re looking at something like that. We had tried something like that in Campbell (in 2013), but I think it was bad timing.”
Also helping the promotion of the region’s wine is the Wine Trail which was inaugurated in August. Signs pointing the way to various wineries dot the rural roads of the county, helping visitors more easily locate the wineries for wine-tasting exploration. The South Valley region, with its more than 20 wineries open to the public and many excellent restaurants to visit after a wine-tasting day, offers tourists who are bored of Napa and other tourism-dense regions an opportunity to discover the family-run wineries in one of the oldest-established wine-making regions of California.
The association encourages the public to share ideas on how to market the Santa Clara Valley wines to an expanded market, Sampognaro said.
“We’re looking for ideas all the time to see if there’s something we can do that is attractive to promote the wineries, get people out to the area and increase the tourism,” he said.
This year’s events at wineries will include a Saturday Feb. 7 barrel tasting at participating wineries. Later events in the year include the popular Passport Weekends where people buy a pass to sample various wineries’ products.
According to the association’s website, wineries that are members include: Aver Family Vineyards, Casa de Fruta Winery, Cooper-Garrod Estate Vineyards, Creekview Vineyards, Fortino Winery, Guglielmo Winery, Hecker Pass Winery, J. Lohr Vineyards & Wines, Jason-Stephens Winery, Kirigin Cellars, Lightheart Cellars, Martin Ranch Winery, Miramar Vineyards, Morgan Hill Cellars, Rapazzini Winery, Ross Vineyards and Winery, Sarah’s Vineyard, Satori Cellars, Solis Winery, Sunlit Oaks Winery, and Sycamore Creek Vineyards and Winery.
