Friday, March 4th

The Rise of Social Media & Use by Wineries & Vineyards: Legal update on the regulatory requirements for marketing alcohol on the Internet: The intersection of social media and advertising laws for alcoholic beverages; Common issues with blogs, Facebook fan clubs, Twitter and similar forums.

Advertising Law Application: Texas' laws of advertising: three-tier marketing structure; liquor board advertising regulations and problematic approaches from the regulator's point of view; promotion and advertising for wineries vs. retailers.

Grape Growing
What Can we Learn from the Genome of a Texas Strain of Xylella Fastidiosa? - Learn the newest information on the genome of a Texas grape strain of Xylella fastidiosa. Dr. Lisa Morano will talk about the novel findings from this project, the benefits and how this will ultimately translate into benefits for the grower.

Management of Fungal Trunk Pathogens in Grapevines - Grapevines are susceptible to numerous diseases, including many fungal trunk pathogens which can cause crop loss, vine mortality and an increase of annual vineyard production costs. Growers will learn to identify primary disease symptoms, avoid risk factors and develop and implement timely management strategies for controlling these pathogens before a complete loss of productivity in the vineyard.

Speakers:

Winemaking:
Quality Management in the Winery & Laboratory - Dr. Trela will address and discuss proactive methods to manage wine processing quality for food safety, traceability and simply to know one’s facility and operations better. Also addressed will be structures for managing processing decisions and laboratory analytical quality. Evaluating and prioritizing the many decisions required in winemaking and ensuring the quality of a winery’s  analytical data can significantly increase the quality and consistency of the wines made.

Marketing:
Creating effective winery websites: Is yours worthy? - Students in Wine Marketing at Texas Tech University evaluated a sample of 56 Texas wineries websites.  The websites were evaluated by six major areas: user friendliness; winery information; product information; marketing aspects; customer relations; site attractiveness.  Learn how you can make your website more effective from this important consumer feedback to Texas Wineries.

Reaching the Hispanic Wine Market: Highlighting the Opportunities - The Hispanic wine sales in the U.S. have dramatically increased in the past few years.  Learn wine consumption patterns and purchasing behavior of the Hispanic consumer market, particularly assessing needs and interests.

Dinner at Driftwood Estate Winery - Come join us as we board our “Texas Star Shuttle”, a luxurious passenger bus where you will be served Texas wine on your way to beautiful Driftwood Estate Winery.  Upon your arrival, you’ll be greeted by owners Gary and Kathy Elliott, with an award-winning glass of Driftwood Estate wine and then treated to a wonderful Texas dinner in their newly built Pavilion overlooking the bluff and vineyard.

Buses will depart promptly at 6:00 p.m. from the hotel lobby.