Offering great wine at music festivals sweetens the appeal for concert-goers.
Every spring and summer, North Bay wineries entice visitors with the added treat of live music via casual afternoon performances, months-long concert series and even full-blown festival weekends. Even in winter months, you can find musical acts entertaining visitors in tasting rooms across Wine Country. The link between the two artistic mediums is long-established and, well, downright fun.
One prime example of wine-and-music synergy is the weekend-long BR Cohn Fall Music Festival, which, since 1986, has rocked Sonoma Valley for the benefit of a variety of worthy organizations. Winery owner Bruce Cohn’s connection with the music industry—and his history of benefit concerts—predates his vineyard ties. “I’ve been managing the Doobie Brothers for 40 years, and I’ve had the winery for 27 years,” he explains. “I got started fund-raising with the Doobies in the ’70s; they’ve done this all along.”
The BR Cohn event raises funds for a rotation of local and national nonprofits (more than 50 since its inception), including Redwood Empire Food Bank, Mentoring Alliance, Boys & Girls Club of Sonoma Valley, various veteran’s groups, Make-A-Wish Foundation and Hurricane Katrina relief funds. In addition to two days’ of groovin’ in the sunshine, festival attendees can also opt to enjoy a dinner, auction and golf tournament. Plus, Cohn adds, “We serve great wine and food.”
In celebration of the festival’s 25th anniversary this year, Cohn has “invited everyone who’s performed over the years,” to return to the stage. With a history that includes rock icons (including Gregg Allman and Cheap Trick) Bay Area legends (such as the Doobie Brothers and Journey), and luminaries of blues and country (like Bonnie Raitt and Willie Nelson), there’s no shortage of awesome possibilities.
With an average annual attendance total of 6,000 for the four-day festival, it’s become an important image-builder for the winery. What’s more, says Cohn, “I’m on the road a lot, and I have a very erratic schedule. This is my way to stay connected to my community and give back locally.
“People like it when you do good,” he says. “It endears you to your customers. I’d estimate about 25 percent of people return year-after-year. A lot of bidders and golfers make this an annual event.” But, he continues, “We attract people from all walks of life. Some save all year to afford their ticket, and some come as a charitable write-off.”
Once the bands start, all those lines are erased. Listen to the music.
The view from Outside
In recent years, the wine-and-music dynamic has changed. Now, it’s no longer always about using music to directly promote wine and encourage winery traffic. Instead, wine is now often used to attract crowds to larger musical events. It’s a subtle difference, but it marks a giant leap in marketing possibilities. Could this shift be just what the wine industry needs to appeal to hard-to-suss millennials?
“People pay $250 to come to the festival for both days,” says Peter Eastlake, wine curator of Outside Lands, a two-day music festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that includes extensive gourmet food and wine tasting. “These are hip, successful people, and they have a strong interest in gourmet food and wine—the synergies aren’t a stretch.
“I think it coincides with wine’s emergence in pop culture,” he continues. “There are a whole lot of young people who, if [wine’s] available and it’s good, would rather have a glass of wine than drink beer.”
Even in its earliest planning stages, wine was a part of the Outside Lands vision. “We wanted the festival to have its own identity and really showcase what San Francisco is all about,” says Kerry Black, a partner at Superfly Productions, which produces the event in partnership with Another Planet Entertainment. “There are so many great restaurants here and it’s so close to Wine Country, it was really obvious to make that link. In addition to our wine tent, we have 30 to 40 really great restaurants offering high-end food.”
“The goal was to weave wine into the mix in an appropriate manner,” adds Eastlake, who owns and operates East Bay wine shops Vintage Berkeley (two locations) and Solano Cellars in Albany. “The model was a usual wine trade tasting, where the winemaker is on-hand to answer questions and offer tastes. But we have a cooler, more festive forum for the wine tasting experience.”
Wine Lands, as the wine tasting tent has been dubbed, isn’t just an empty shell with bare tables, plastic cups and plates of crackers. It’s a sensory experience where attendees can taste local, boutique wines in a fun, festival atmosphere. Over the course of the weekend, more than 5,000 people make their way to and through the tent—learning and sampling as they go. “There’s no time during the festival that it’s not busy,” says Eastlake.
As Outside Lands has matured, it’s been rebranded as “Music. Food. Wine. Art.” Explains Black, “We’ve really begun pushing the food and wine in our marketing. We want people to see it as a major part of the festival.”
One person who got the message is Michelle Whetstone, co-owner (with husband/winemaker Jamey Whetstone) of Napa’s Whetstone Wine Cellars; the couple is also part owner (and Jamey is winemaker) of Manifesto! Wines of Napa. “We went to the festival in 2008 as fans, and we had a blast!” she remembers. “The music was great and I remember being surprised by how good the food was. I jokingly suggested we check out the wine tent, not really expecting much. But we were blown away—not just by who was there, but by how popular it was and how it was all put together.”
In 2010, Manifesto! was invited to be a participating winery. “We’re huge music fans, so to me, to combine the food, wine and music is the perfect package,” says Whetstone. “It’s great for us because it’s in the Bay Area—basically in our backyard—and it reaches the perfect demographic, especially for Manifesto! It’s a home run for us.”
Whetstone describes Manifesto! as “everyday wine. It’s less than $20 per bottle but still made with the same quality and passion as our Whetstone wines [which retail for significantly more]. It was a great fit for the festival; it exposed the wine to a large, accepting group with a youthful demographic.
“Attendees were in their 20s to 40s, and most were fairly wine-educated; it was a knowledgeable audience,” she says. “There were very few people in the tent who didn’t drink wine regularly. Most people we talked to had sought out the wine tent specifically because of who was there.”
Thank Eastlake for that. It’s his responsibility to fill Wine Lands with exceptional producers—a job that’s become significantly easier with time. “The first year, I had to work to convince [wineries] it was a good idea,” he remembers. “Now, I’m fielding inquiries year round.
“The driving force is great wine,” he explains of his selection process. “Of course, it’s all the better if the winery understands the potential of this space—it’s unparalleled one-on-one communication. I constantly get people in my shops saying, ‘I met you at Outside Lands.’ I know winemakers are hearing it as well. It forges a year-round connection.”
Music + wine
Another festival that’s quickly endeared itself to fans of music and wine is Sonoma Jazz +, which first welcomed crowds in 2005. Like Outside Lands, it delivered the appeal of Wine Country from the beginning. The “Plus” in the name refers to musical choices, which lets promoters cast a wide net for headliners. This year’s festival, May 20 through 22, welcomes John Fogerty, Sheryl Crow and the Gipsy Kings to the top slots. A second “plus” is the emphasis on food and wine as part of the concert attendees’ experience.
Concerts take place in a large tent erected on a baseball field not far from the Sonoma town square. Just outside the tent, a “village” of local wine and food vendors ply their tasty wares while local bands and individual performers entertain on a small stage.
Like its parent festival, Jazz Aspen Snowmass in Colorado, Sonoma Jazz + is a nonprofit that raises money for local arts and music education (it’s donated approximately $500,000 since its inception). To thank sponsors and patrons, a hospitality tent is adjacent to the stage end of the main tent. “Part of the patron experience is high-end food and wine onsite,” says President/CEO Jim Horowitz. “We offer a full meal each night during a 75-minute intermission, as well as reserve tastings and food pairings throughout the festival.”
In addition to three nights of high-profile musical entertainment, the weekend-long festival includes a daytime component, called Wine & Song Around the Plaza, which brings the two elements together in a direct and free-flowing way. Horowitz explains: “We set up in seven or eight venues around the Sonoma town square—many of them are gardens that are hidden, but only a few steps off the plaza—with a band and winery at each one. We call them things like ‘Piano and Pinot’ or ‘Sax and Syrah.’ A single-day pass includes 12 tastes, so you can wander at your own pace and take it all in. The town of Sonoma is so well-suited to foot traffic, I think it’s worked well as an added experience for festival attendees.”
This year, Sunday’s event is themed “New Orleans Jazz Brunch” and will start and end earlier so patrons can attend the 4 p.m. Gipsy Kings concert as well. Tickets to the daytime events are sold separately from the evening concerts, and, says Horowitz, “We do have some day-only attendees. But we’ve found that, if the evening concert is sold-out, then the daytime event is more crowded, so a lot of people do ‘move in step’ with the whole event. We’ve also found that some weekend destination travelers will attend the daytime element one day and an evening concert the next. Then enjoy the rest of Wine Country around that.”
Horowitz and his planning team work closely with Sonoma Valley Vintners and Grapegrowers (SVGG) to ensure a wide representation of local producers. “But we also include some Napa and other regional wines as well,” says Horowitz. “It’s a mix of the area.”
In addition to hosting his own event, Bruce Cohn participates in Sonoma Jazz +. “It’s a cause I support [music education], so I’m happy to help,” he says. “We pour during the day events and outside the evening concert tent. It’s just another way to connect with local wine drinkers and music fans.”
The Wine Country relationship has made an impact at the Aspen festival as well. Last year, that organization’s main summer fund-raiser was themed “A Candlelight Evening in Wine Country”—what Horowitz calls, “an obvious tie-in to our connections here.”
Harmonic convergence
The Harmony Festival has been delivering good vibes and better grooves to North Bay music fans since 1978. And though it’s always had food and beverage vendors, in 2011, producers have upped the ante by adding the Liquid Lounge to its onsite attractions. Featuring local wine and beer (as well as nonalcoholic choices from juice and tea purveyors), the Lounge will be a featured attraction at this year’s event (June 10-12 at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds). Sponsorship manager Eric Weisz describes it as a “plushed-out lounge featuring a Bamboo Pagoda shade structure with an open ‘chill space’ area for full concert viewing.”
Founded as the Heath & Harmony Festival in the 1970s, Weisz says the event has evolved over the years to become a “nationally recognized festival brand without losing its founding vision of community connection, health and spirituality.” These moves forward (including the 2005 name change to simply Harmony Festival) have given promoters the ability to bring in more nationally recognized performers and speakers. As headliners have improved, says Weisz, so have attendance numbers. For the last few years, the festival has welcomed close to 35,000 attendees over its three days.
“As a winery, we really understand and embrace the culture and mindset of the Harmony Festival,” says Edward Stephanick, marketing manager for Napa’s Ca’Momi Winery & Enoteca, one of the Festival’s 2011 winery sponsors. “We’re an Earth-friendly company that supports critical thinking. Our wines appeal to multiple generations—baby boomers, generation X, millennials—and all of those people are there together. It’s really a great fit for us.”
Without strictly limiting itself to exclusively sustainable and organic producers, Weisz is working with Liquid Lounge sponsors and vendors who “are working toward those goals.” Sponsors include Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Healdsburg’s Kokomo Winery and Napa’s Ca’Momi Winery & Enoteca.
Ca’Momi Enoteca (located in Napa’s Oxbow Public Market) uses only the freshest organic or sustainable ingredients, grown locally or in Italy, and Ca’Momi Winery is the first U.S. winery to use NovaTwist closures, a screwcap that makes the bottle 100 percent recyclable (unlike metal screwcaps). “We make really good, affordable wine with green packaging. We get fantastic feedback [at Harmony Festival]. Last year, our sparkling wine [Ca’Secco, a “California-made, Prosecco-style wine”] was a huge hit. It’s light and fresh—perfect for a hot summer weekend.”
Ca’Momi has been a Harmony Festival sponsor since 2009, and, says California sales manager Zack Zimmerman, “we’ve always had a great reception. We’ve had a lot of people tell us they first tasted our wine at the Harmony Festival, and that’s gratifying. I think it’s becoming more accepted to have wine at these events.”
“We’re always striving to provide our attendees with a great event,” says Weisz. “We want everyone to feel like a VIP—a ‘very inspired participant.’” High-quality food and beverages have become part of that experience. “It’s a matter of quality that reflects the overall experience,” he continues. “Some events focus solely on the bottom line, but we want to reflect greater values of consciousness and community. We want to be viewed as ‘doing things the right way’ and serving the triple bottom line of people, planet and profits.”
Reinvention by necessity
One festival still finding its way through these new opportunities is the Petaluma Music Festival, which has a long and winding history. Originally founded by the Petaluma Chamber of Commerce as the Waterfront Jazz Festival, the event never really took off and faced the prospect of being canceled when, in 2008, the Petaluma High School Music Boosters (led by PHS band director Cliff Eveland) contacted the chamber about linking the festival to its own fund-raiser. Instead, chamber executives let the boosters take it over, rename it The Petaluma Wine, Jazz and Blues Festival, and move the festival from Water Street to 2nd and B Streets. The new incarnation fared much better, but lost money due to poor budgeting. Both the chamber and the boosters exited from management after that year, leaving a small group of individuals and newly named festival director Eveland (he still runs the band program as well) to reinvent it once again, this time as a nonprofit benefiting all Petaluma elementary and secondary school music programs.
In 2009, the festival moved from downtown to the city’s fairgrounds, turned a small profit and was able to pay down some of its debt. The board of directors then renamed the festival once again, in part because schools were wary of advertising an event with “wine” in its title and, in part, because booking only jazz and blues artists limited the demographic of attendees. The newly christened Petaluma Music Festival let Eveland book a wider variety of bands, which increased community interest and upped attendance numbers to 2,000. In 2010, it donated $13,000 to Petaluma area school music programs.
In 2008 and 2009, the festival was staged in conjunction with the North of the Gate Wine Competition; winning wineries poured for festival goers who bought tasting tickets. But in 2010, the wine competition decided not to host a public pouring for winners. Again, Eveland was faced with a decision.
Not wanting to abandon the festival’s wine element (despite the name change), Eveland and a few board members got on the phone, cold calling local wineries with their music-for-schools pitch. Fifteen agreed to participate last year, including Rodney Strong Vineyards (which also hosts its own popular summer music series), Cline Cellars, Cleavage Creek Winery, Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, Suncé Vineyards and Alexander Valley Vineyards. It’s a number Eveland hopes to increase in 2011.
“We’re trying to become more sophisticated about how we cross-promote the wine with the music,” he says. “For now, we always list participating wineries on the website and in flyers and ads. It’s an important added attraction.” He also has plans to expand the Petaluma Tasting Pavilion beyond wine to include local agriculture and food purveyors (like cheese, bread, honey and olive oil).
The 4th annual Petaluma Music Festival will take place Saturday, August 6, and feature 11 acts, including The Devil Makes Three, the Mother Hips, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, SambaDá, Nicki Bluhm & the Gramblers and more.
A winning combination
Are these types of music-and-wine pairings changing what we expect from all of our entertainment experiences? Peter Eastlake thinks so: “Over the years, we’ve all been conditioned not to expect much from concessions at large-scale events. Low quality and high price; the bar was set pretty low. So to offer premium wine at such a large, popular event—having great food and wine? Who wouldn’t get excited?”
Jim Horowitz agrees. “We’re very aware that the appeal of [Sonoma Jazz +] is the combination of experiences—it’s definitely a ‘sum of its parts’-type thing,” he says.
Or, as Kerry Black summarizes, “When I go out, the two things I like to do most are go to a show and go to a restaurant. Why not do both at once? We’re providing a full entertainment experience.”
