Less Than Two Weeks Until the 2026 Wine Club Symposium: Here's What's Happening on Day 1 The countdown is on. In less than two weeks, winery professionals from across the industry will come together for the 2026 Wine Club Symposium, two mornings dedicated entirely to growing, retaining, and strengthening wine clubs. Whether you're a winery owner, DTC manager, wine club manager, or tasting room leader, Day 1 is designed to help you understand where the industry is headed and what you can do today to improve your club's performance. Session 1: State of the Industry: What the Data Says About the Future of Wine Clubs The symposium opens with an industry outlook from Rob McMillan, EVP & Wine Division Founder at First Citizens Bank, joined by Jimmy Wu, President of vinSUITE. Together, they'll examine current market trends, changing consumer behavior, and the data shaping winery DTC strategies. Expect practical insights into what's driving successful wine clubs today and where wineries sh

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 n

Hosted by vinSUITE, the free two-day event brings specialists from across the wine industry together to answer one question: what’s working for wine clubs right now. vinSUITE, the software platform built for winery direct-to-consumer and wine club operations, today announced its annual Wine Club Symposium, a free two-day virtual event taking place September 15 and 16. The event, which drew 550 registrants in 2025, brings the direct-to-consumer community together to learn from one another and strengthen the wine club. The Symposium exists because the wine club matters. It is the most dependable recurring revenue a winery has, and it is under real pressure. Tasting rooms, still the main way wineries sign up new members, are seeing softer traffic, which makes acquisition harder. Retention is getting tougher too, as long-time members age and shifts in drinking habits, including the effect of newer medications, change how much they buy. vinSUITE hosts the Symposium each year to help wineri

By Jim Trezise, President of WineAmerica The National Association of American Wineries™ Romance vs. Reality It’s not surprising that people dream of getting into the wine business. Just think of it: Sunrise caressing the vines. Perfect weather again. A leisurely coffee while surveying the pristine landscape. A morning stroll through exquisitely manicured vineyards. A smoothly functioning wine cellar. A traffic jam of consumers eager to visit the tasting room. Multiple FedEx trucks waiting for wine club shipments. Ending each day counting the hefty stash. Celebrating with a dinner pairing your world-class wines with world-class food on your terrace overlooking paradise. Sleeping like a baby. Yeah, right! After spending their life savings and taking out a massive loan, new winery owners often discover a very different reality. Clouds mean rain when the grapes need to stay dry. Coffee comes from a drive-thru. License applications and tax forms cover the desk. Labor shortages mean critica

Please join us on Tuesday, June 9 for a live, virtual event to review findings and predictions from our 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Report. This year's survey, based on responses from 450 wineries, confirms that the DtC wine channel is navigating a period of pronounced bifurcation. While select brands report meaningful year-over-year improvement, others report declining visitation, lower average transaction values, accelerating wine club attrition and a growing inventory surplus. Our panel will examine those dynamics directly, benchmark the data and discuss the strategies that are making a measurable difference. A few of the topics we plan to address are: Tasting fee trends and flexibility Wine club performance Structural oversupply Where opportunity persists Our exclusive panel of wine industry innovators will include: Ed Feuchuk – General Manager, Farm Collective Napa Valley Barbara Gorder – President, Undisclosed Location & Managing Partner, DTC Wine Symposium Rob McMillan –

Coffee with Rob: Macro Trends & How  Top-Performing Wineries Are Responding This session is all about stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Rob will dig into the macro trends impacting the wine industry, drawing from the 2026 SVB State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report along with additional slides from his presentation deck that help put the data into context. Rather than focusing on day-to-day tactics, the conversation will center on what’s happening at a market level and what the data shows about how top-performing wineries are navigating today’s environment. We’ll start with Rob’s take on the data, followed by a moderated Q&A with questions submitted in advance by the eCELLAR community. DATE: Tuesday, February 24th, 2026 , 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM WHO: Rob McMillan, EVP & Principal Brand Strategist, Wine Silicon Valley Bank, a Division of First Citizens Bank LOCATION: Virtual Event RSVP ABOUT THE SPEAKER Rob McMillan, EVP & Pr

“Peer to peer.” What are my neighbors doing? How are my neighbors doing, in relation to my winery? I’m all for running your own race, and doing what’s right for your own brand and your own business. I also understand that we live in a tight, relational ecosystem of wine. What’s happening with your peers matters and it can provide important perspective and context for what’s happening with you. This week I’d like to hover over two peer-to-peer perspectives. First up, our latest “snapshot” from January, highlighting key metrics across our entire dataset. For the first time we’re also including the WISE Triple Score, thanks to our newest partnership with the WISE team. Important takeaways from this community snapshot: Wineries gathered more customer data this January than last January, successfully building their databases for future marketing efforts. Winning wineries convert improved data capture and club conversion

“Top performers prioritize the customer and use digital tools to extend that edge.” — Rob McMillan State of the US Wine Industry 2026 Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division “Use digital tools to extend your edge,” as Rob McMillan says. You know you need to. But how? Let us show you. Today we’re announcing full marketing integrations with Klaviyo, RedChirp and Mailchimp that go both ways. Here’s how it works: Build targeted consumer lists within Enolytics. (We help you with this, especially with our Sell More Now! module, where we show you lists of your specific consumers, which wines we suggest you pitch to them, and how much revenue you’ll generate.) Push the lists directly into your marketing platforms - Klaviyo, RedChirp and / or Mailchimp - for campaigns and automated flows. Campaign results are pulled back into Enolytics. Nightly syncing ensures continuous updates. You make money while you sleep. So that you and your team spend your time

The 2026 State of the U.S. Wine Industry Report, published by Silicon Valley Bank and authored by Rob McMillan, provides a comprehensive, data-driven assessment of current conditions in the U.S. wine market. Built on more than 25 years of industry research, the report combines results from SVB’s annual winery survey, its Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) survey, demographic and cohort consumption modeling, and a wide range of third-party wholesale, retail, and population datasets. The conclusion is clear: while the industry continues to face structural headwinds, wineries are not experiencing these conditions equally. A widening performance gap has emerged between those adapting to changing demand and those struggling to do so. 2025 Performance: A Difficult Year for Many By nearly every measure, 2025 was a challenging year for the U.S. wine industry. Roughly half of the surveyed wineries rated the year negatively, citing slowing demand, rising costs, margin pressure, and inventory ch

Demand decline improving with stabilization on the horizon Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank, today released its 2026 State of the US Wine Industry Report. Widely regarded as the leading source of market trends in the premium wine sector, SVB’s 25th annual report provides an analysis of current market conditions, success strategies, and forecasts for the year ahead. The 2026 report estimates the following industry sales totals for 2025: Total volume of ~329 million cases (down from 335.9 million in 2024) Total value of ~$74.3 billion (down from $75.5 billion in 2024). The wine industry is moving through a multi-year demand correction, largely driven by value wines at the under $12 price point. Industry sales in 2025 declined 2.0% (by cases) and 1.6% (by dollars), yet both represent improvements compared to 2024. The industry ended the year with both profit margin compression and higher levels of inventory. The premium industry will likely experience its