Retention Is the New Growth: Inside the 2026 Wine Club Symposium
You can feel it on a quiet Saturday. The floor is not as busy as it used to be. The people who come in are lovely, but there are fewer of them, and the tasting room is no longer carrying the year the way it once did. Meanwhile the club keeps sending wine, keeps posting revenue, and keeps quietly holding the whole business together.
That shift is why we built this year's Wine Club Symposium around a single idea, and why we moved it up to September. For most wineries, the club has become the most dependable recurring revenue they have, right as it comes under real pressure. Long-time members are aging. Younger members want something different. And growing the club by simply adding names is not the lever it used to be.
For years, the job was growth. Sign more members, and the numbers took care of themselves. That math has quietly flipped. Net club growth has cooled from its peak, while the value of each member you keep has never been higher. The winery that holds onto its members and deepens those relationships is now in a stronger position than the one chasing sign-ups.
Retention is doing the work that growth used to do. The winners are not the ones cutting the most. They are the ones paying the closest attention to the members they already have.
It starts with an honest look at the numbers
To open Day 1, Rob McMillan and Paul Dugoni of Silicon Valley Bank sit down with vinSUITE president Jimmy Wu for a data look at where DTC and the wine club stand today. Rob is the author of SVB's annual State of the Wine Industry Report and one of the most-quoted analysts in the business. The picture is clarifying: the industry has split in two. A few wineries are pulling ahead, most are holding flat, and the gap between them is widening. The difference is not the model. It is the execution. Everything else across the two mornings is a piece of that playbook.
Keeping the members you have
The fastest revenue in your business is the member who does not cancel. Two sessions go straight at that.
In Delivering Loyalty, Karin Strykowski of Wineshipping digs into what actually happens between a release announcement and a package on a doorstep. Loyalty is not built by great wine alone. It is earned at every touchpoint, from the first release email to the last delivery, and Karin brings the data behind club runs that land well from start to finish.
In The Generational Shift in Your Wine Club, Megan Currie of the Wine Club Professional Network gets past the easy generalizations about younger drinkers and into what actually moves people to join a club, stay in it, and tell a friend. Clubs built for one generation are starting to feel their age. Megan turns that into practical club design you can act on.
Finding your next member without spending more
Keeping members matters. So does finding the right new ones without spending more to do it.
In Your Next Club Member Is Already on Your List, Erica Walter of Email Mavens makes a simple case: your next member is already opening your emails and buying your wine. You just have not invited them yet. She shows how to turn the emails you already send into low-cost ways to grow the club, no extra ad spend required.
In Getting Found, Pamela Snyder of DigiVino and Van Potts of Preston-Layne and Partners look at how discovery itself is changing. AI and new search habits are rewriting how people find wineries, and what worked a year ago is already slipping. They cover why share of shelf is becoming share of mind, and how a small team can own its visibility.
Getting the plan approved
You can see what your club needs. The hard part is often the conversation with the people above you. In Managing Up for Wine Club Managers, Liz Mercer of WISE shares how to bring a new idea to your owner or GM and actually move them: how to frame it, how to back it, and how to earn buy-in instead of stalling out. As she puts it, bad news does not age like fine wine. This is the session that turns everything else on the agenda into something you can get done.
Why we host it
We host the Symposium every year for the same reason we built vinSUITE: to help wineries run stronger clubs. It has always been less about vendors talking at wineries and more about wineries learning from one another and from the specialists who work alongside them. The tagline this year is the playbook for a stronger club, and that is the honest goal, two mornings of practical, usable ideas you can take back to your team.
Two mornings. Six sessions. Nine speakers on the work that matters most to your club right now. Tuesday, September 15 and Wednesday, September 16, 2026, 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM PT both days. Free and virtual, and every session is recorded if you cannot make it live.