When the most influential voice in the wine industry says, “Portuguese wines are the next big thing”, maybe we should at least take notice. Maybe, just maybe, he hasn’t had to many glasses and he knows what he’s talking about.

Arguably, no one knows the “wine 2.0″ industry better than Gary Vaynerchuk – of “Wine Library”, with his gritty charm, and the power of social media, like twitter and video blogging, to successfully turn the families 4 million wine shop, into a 50 million a year business, in less than 3 years. Appearances on popular talk shows, plus invitations to speak at Google, Facebook and Internet Stardom, Gary Vaynerchuk seems to just be getting started.

Impressed by Portuguese wine quality and value, Gary has not been shy about touting our wines and loudly pronouncing “Portuguese wines are going to be big!” His reasoning – great quality and great value, or as he likes to call it “the thunder” – a bottle that costs $10, but really tastes like $50.

If he’s right, and he knows wines, the BIG question is “when”. So, when will Portuguese wines break into new markets? Well, at the moment one key challenge is lack of visibility and branding. Unfortunately, only a handful of Portuguese wine makers are currently using new marketing strategies, or the power of the web to build a competitive and effective web strategies and brands.

But things are changing – thanks to the likes of Ryan and Gaberiella Opaz from Catavino. This dynamic duo are certainly creating buzz in the Spanish and Portuguese wine scene, with their know-how of social media tools like blogging, twitter and social wine discovery sites, and slowly re-humanizing the world of “wine snob” into something more digestible.

Eddie and I finally got to meet the Opaz’s and excited to hear their efforts are starting to pay off with wine makers.

So this looks like a good opportunity to share a few ideas on how Portuguese Wine Producers can work towards bringing more attention to the country:

1 Producer Collaboration
The good news isn’t about ONE Portuguese wine but about the collective. And since all Portuguese wines are lacking visibility , collaboration and pulling of resources could help wine makers learn from each other, provide support and help bring exposure to Portuguese wine as a whole.

2 Moving beyond Flash
Flash websites certainly are interactive and nice to look at, but they do little for online visibility. They lack good usability and are hardly search engine friendly. Wine makers looking for an online presence would get more mileage from their investments with a site that is user & search engine friendly and supports the businesses objectives rather than focus just on esthetics.

3 Getting Social
Blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Adegga – Social tools like these are great communication channels that help connect wine makers, drinkers, bloggers, distributors, media, and the wine curious from around the globe.

This stuff really works – just head over to Craig Camp’s blog and listen to what he has to say about the success blogging is having on Capozzi Winery.

4 Go to non-wine conferences
Wine conferences are good but in a social world, you need to be where your customers are most likely going to be – such as tech, food, art, music and social media conferences. The curious and socially connected, attend conferences, network, create, share and consume info like never before. And in most cases, these are the folks that are most curious about wine and can help you build valuable connections.

5 Invest in your Brand
A good brand is remarkable, memorable, transparent and effortless for your customers, to talk about. Investing in developing a professional brand, logo, labeling and telling the story, are prime ingredients for establishing a name in the industry. More about branding and tips for selling wine.

What do you think could help the Portuguese wine industry get the exposure they deserve?

This was the “million” dollar question looming over the minds of the producers we met at the Lisbon Wine show in November. We’ve had these folks on our mind and thought we’d focus on a few key marketing points that could help this important industry.

The 6 Key Points:
First and foremost, two necessary ingredients must exist: You have to love what you do: making great wine. And second: You need to communicate and share the quality of your craft.

Since Portuguese wines have quality, uniqueness and diversity, they’re able to compete against many international brands, so quality is not the issue. Recognition however is another story, and this unfortunately comes down to lack of good marketing. So the real issue isn’t the product, but the right marketing and communication strategy for our new, highly informed and connected generation.

Once the first two ingredients are in place, here’s what’s next:

1) Your Ideal Customer
First and foremost, consumers are looking for good wines to pair with food. Today, consumers are more sophisticated and informed than ever before, hence their food choices are more dynamic and experimental. So, small and lower priced wine producers need to throw out the old playbook – and assess the right market for their wine. A good example are the folks behind Wine That Loves:

Producers need to decide what type of customer they want to appeal too, and who they don’t. What got my attention at the Lisbon Wine Fair was that 95% of the wines had the allure of a high-end snooty type (the likes of 100+ Euro bottles), yet a large percentage were very reasonable and wonderful. This clearly demonstrates few wines are marketed at younger drinkers who buy reasonably priced bottles, but buy often. So a strong market who is ready and looking to buy regularly, is over looked – for one that’s highly competitive, limited and already saturated.

As a wine enthusiast, with some wine-jargon, and a customer of “reasonably” priced bottles, I would use these words to describe wine in more modern terms: fun, sexy, spicy, fresh, adventurous … however at the fair, 99% of the wines communicated:

Serious, traditional, stuffy, snooty – from branding message to wine name and labeling. Few deviated from the “traditional” theme, but the few who did, definitely got noticed! So let’s be honest, not every wine is “serious, traditional and stuffy” and that’s ok — some wines should be wonderfully bold, fresh and new to appeal to a new customer. Communicating individual character in creative new ways is the path to the new wine drinkers lips, and the parting of the red wine seas of “serious” wines.

Here’s a solution: When marketing wine, producers should look at their ideal drinkers through personas, then make sure they communicate to the needs and wants of this group.

2) A Creative Name
Choosing the right name is a delicate science similar to producing the wine. The wrong name on a bottle could completely turn off the targeted customer.

Today’s customers tend to be more traveled and informed, yet less formal. We want to be surprised, delighted and have our pallet tickled with a creative edge and freshness, so naming and labeling a wine is vital to its marketability.

Here’s three examples:

1. Fat Bastard Wines
2. Dirty Laundry
3. Dancing Bull

Two key points when it comes to naming:

3) Bottle design and story
Imagine standing in front of a shop, with endless rows of wine bottles and having to pick a wine for dinner. This is a nerve wracking experience for most people, so one of two things happens:

Part of the goal in marketing a wine is seducing the customer. Since potential buyers can’t taste the wine, the bottle design and labeling needs to communicate cues of visual sensory to help attract a potential customer. If a customer isn’t seduced by the bottle, branding and label, then the sale is lost, and only hope is personal recommendations.

As cost is always a factor, we recommend a simple bottle with a creative, clean and beautifully designed label. This doesn’t have to be expensive. For example, see how a successful Portuguese producer turned his children’s art work into a wonderful wine label:

Key points to remember for bottle labeling & design:

4) Web Strategy
To date, Portuguese wines haven’t taken advantage of promoting themselves through the web. This is a mistake! The web is the key source of information for today’s culinary aware and those looking to learn more. This is an invaluable sales and marketing tool.

The good news – the web is here to stay, so wine producers can turn the web into their best friend and take advantage by quickly reaching millions of people…real people, who love to drink wine! It all starts with a dynamic website and visibility strategy that is loved by humans and respected by search engines.

5) Blogging
Blogging doubled Stormhoek sales in less than twelve months.

Blogging scares and intimidates many, but it shouldn’t. A smart producer has two options: become friendly with the wine blogging community, or start one himself, we actually recommend both. This is a fantastic way to get closer to customers first hand.

A well-designed blog can be an invaluable marketing tool:

If you’re unsure about blogging and would like to know how to star a blog, or would like us to set one up for you, contact us. We also recommend, you read this article.

Here are examples of good Wine blogs:

6) Adegga.com
Adegga is a play on the word “adega” (only one “g”) which means cellar in Portuguese.

It is a place where friends come together to talk, share and learn about wine.

For Portuguese wine producers, here you have a captive audience of Portuguese wine drinkers and this would be an opportunity to get feedback about your wine, build a relationship with a group of influencers and naturally from this will come word of mouth. If your wine has all the ingredients in place, then naturally it will be talked about and people will carry that conversation offline at cafes, dinners, lunches and etc.

If you don’t know where to start, go to Adegga.com and get your wine’s listed for free.

If you’re serious about selling more wine nationally, across Europe or around the globe, then by all means get started on the above. And if you need our help, we will be more than happy to advise and help you with each step.

Through Algarvebuzz, we met André Ribeirinho – a Portuguese born Entrepreneur and founder of the social wine discovery website Adegga.com.

If you’re like me, you’ll probably find yourself doing some head scratching every time you’re faced with the seemingly endless rows of bottles at your local wine shop.

Living in Portugal, doesn’t make picking wines any easier, with so much choice it’s sometimes frustrating to pick just one…and lets not get into the considerations….what’s right for dinner, lunch, food, guests… on and on….ah, the stress.

Fortunately, Adegga takes out the guessing; and I now go to Adegga to check wines before heading out to the shop…its become my secret weapon in choosing my wines; so my “wine ego” remains in tack rather than in tatters. Next time you find yourself having to go “pick a wine” and sweating under the pressure to deliver something impressive…click on over to Adegga.com first and enjoy the results.

Adegga.com is currently on an invite bases; if you want an invite, please leave me a comment or email “moses[at]chamainc.com”, I’ll be happy to share some of my invitations.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Adegga’s founder Andre Ribeirinho and asked him the next 10 questions.

Founders: from left to right: Andre C., Andre R., Emidio

1.What does “Adegga” mean and how did you come up with the name?

Adegga is a play on the word adega (only one g) which means cellar in Portuguese. We wrote several potential names on a white board while trying to come up with a name for our service. Eventually the name Adegga won because it was both inspired by the (strong) Portuguese wine culture but also readable in several different languages. I think that good names need to tell a story and Adegga tells the story of a team of Portuguese internet entrepreneurs that want their social wine discovery service to be useful around world but never forgetting their Portuguese origin.

2.Why a “social wine discovery” and who do you think will benefit from using it?

Friends opinions are the ones we trust most. When a friend makes a recommendation there’s a bond of trust that makes us feel confident.

It’s our real social network that helps us make decisions. On the other hand wine is inherently social and totally prone to discovery (who doesn’t like to try new wine?). The combination of friends, wine and discovery is the basis for our service.

Interestingly, Adegga is useful from the moment you and another friend are using it. You can both share wines you buy, drink or wish. This helps you and your friends make smarter choices when choosing wine.

3.Who is Adegga.com for?

Adegga is for wine lovers who find it difficult to choose wine. By sharing their opinions with their friends Adegga makes it extremely useful for anyone (from wine newbie to wine expert) to share their passion with other people they trust. Any person can use Adegga to search for a wine, see what other people think about it and know where to buy it.

4.What are you hoping to achieve with Adegga?
Wine is sometimes seen as snobby. This makes a lot of people nervous or uncomfortable with choosing and enjoying wine. Adegga wants to make people feel more comfortable by taking the complexity out of selecting wine. With time this will make people enjoy more and better wine.

5.What kind of reception have you gotten so far?
People that love wine, love the way Adegga works. Many of our users send us emails with requests for things that will make them use Adegga better. They show they like Adegga because they want to use it more and more. Moreover, we take these requests seriously when working and developing Adegga’s features, so we actively make the service more useful everyday, based on our users needs.

I’ll give you an example. Some people asked us to add a way to know where to buy a wine directly from their wish list. We have implemented this feature and if you have a wine in your wish list you’ll get a list of shops on where to find that wine and at what price. This feature also works for people who don’t have an account but do want to check other people’s wish lists.

6.Personally, I believe, Adegga could change the way people learn about and buy wine. It just did that to me this past weekend – my wine shopping experience was much easier and I really enjoyed some new wines I might have never considered before. What are some of the interesting ways, users are using Adegga.com?

We knew from other online services that the 80/20 participation rule (80% read / 20% write) is the normal usage scenario. Based on this we decided to make it very easy for people to give their input. By being able to mark a wine as tasted and rate it or simply adding it to a watch list we have made it very simple for anyone to show their opinion on a wine. We are happy that people are effectively using these features and the level of participation and sharing has been very high since the launch of the project.

We are also increasingly looking forward to the way producers and wine shops use Adegga. We have come up with a way to let them manage their own presence in out service. This allows producers and wine shops to take more effective control of their online presence and create an online relationship between them and their (potential) clients.

7.How does someone become a member of Adegga.com?

Getting into Adegga is very easy. By getting someone to invite (email moses[at]chamainc.com) you’ll then receive an email with a link to create an account from there. After this, you can start tracking wines you’ve tasted, adding friends to your personalized watch list and choosing better wines.

8.How have you adjusted from your established job at Sapo to becoming an online entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur is very different from having a corporate job. Managing my own time was a very rewarding challenge as I found my self being able to organize my work day in a better way. As an online entrepreneur I also have a physical freedom I didn’t have before. Now I can work from Lisbon, London or Copenhagen since all I need is an Internet connection. But the biggest benifit is the experince of taking something from nothing and seeing it evolve. The knowledge, work ethic and creativity sensitivty needed to get here is something I couldn’t have gained in a corporate position.

9.A 100% online business is still a very new concept in Portugal, how has your leap of faith been received?

Leaving a corporate job is always a challenge. When I left Sapo, I posted about it on my blog. Since then people have been very supportive and I feel that by running my own online business hopefully others will be encouraged start their one ventures and stop thinking that having a corporate job is the only way to go. Seth Godin says “Safe is risky” and I couldn’t agree more.

10.What’s next for Adegga.com?
We have a very ambitious road map for Adegga, full of features that will make Adegga an even more useful and comfortable service to use.

Among this things we have planned a multi-lingual version and bunch of special features for wine bloggers. We believe that wine blogging has made choosing wine easier and there are hundreds of great bloggers producing amazing content. We want people to be able to find the content when they need it.