The Wine Knows

Woodinville Wine Country is poised to take its marketing and promotions efforts to the next level, as it has hired Cynthia Daste as its executive director.

I've known Cynthia for a number of years, going back to her days at the Washington Wine Commission, where she was director of marketing and in charge of the Auction of Washington Wines. Since leaving the wine commission in 2001, she has worked as a consultant for a number of successful wine-related ventures.

I don't normally write about these kinds of industry hirings, but this is a significant move for the Woodinville wine group because it will surely vault it to new heights. Woodinville is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the 3.3 million people who live in the Seattle metro area, and having a professional executive director of Daste's caliber instead of a volunteer will surely bring long-term success.

We've seen the same thing elsewhere in Northwest wine country. When the Walla Walla Valley folks hired Krista McCorkle as their exectuive director a few years back, the region went from one of cult status to an international wine destination. (McCorkle has since left the Walla Walla Wine Alliance, but Elizabeth Martin-Calder has picked up where McCorkle left off and hasn't missed a step.) And the Yakima Valley wine folks floundered around for years before hiring a professional executive director, and now the Northwest's oldest wine region is garnering more press and respect.

We see the same kind of success in Oregon's Willamette Valley and British Columbia's Okanagan Valley. And now Idaho has hired a new director who should be able to get the story out on the Northwest's smallest wine-producing region.

Bottom line: Grape growers and winemakers are great at doing their jobs. They don't always have the skills or time to also be successful promoters. The smart ones hire folks like Cynthia Daste.