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SALES & MARKETING as pressing. According to Kevin O'Brien, general manager at Tetra, a 5,600-case winery located in Napa, wine competitions fill a need in regions that aren't known for grapegrowing and winemaking. "I tend to think that the further away you get from wine country, the more competitions serve those consumers," O'Brien said. "They're bombarded less, so the information seems more meaningful." Tetra pointed to the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition as one that is meaningful to consumers in the area that publication serves. Fees for the competition range from $75 to $95 per wine entered, depending on whether entrants apply online or by mail and whether their application is received by the deadline (30 days prior to judging). Wineries must provide four bottles of each wine entered into the contest. With a population of 26 million and a per-capita wine-consumption rate of 2.4 gallons, Texas remains a sweet spot or many wineries. Rebecca Murphy, founder and chairman of the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition, agreed that one of the major benefits to wineries that win is "more attention in the state of Texas for their wines." The sponsoring newspaper's readership has a weekday circulation See us at Unified booth #J2 Competition vs. reviews J ackson Starr, winemaker for family-owned Sierra Starr Vineyard and Winery in Grass Valley, Calif., says that some winery owners view wine competitions as being an "either-or" endeavor—as in, they'll either participate in competitions or send their wines out for review. Ray Signorello of Napa, Calif.-based Signorello Estate is one such proprietor. The owner of the 7,500-case wine label told Wines & Vines, "We don't make a lot of wine, so we try to limit the amount of samples that we ship because of the cost. And we feel that the best bang for our buck is probably targeting writers." By targeting specific publications, Signorello says he's trying to attract attention from the off-premise wine sales trade as well as consumers. Signorello said he bases where to send samples by deciding "which ones have the most pull and the biggest impact. We start at the top of the list and kind of move down from there with how many samples we want to send out." His 2007 Padrone, for example, was reviewed by the Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast and Decanter. K.L. of 400,000, with nearly 700,000 readers for its Sunday edition. In 2013 the competition attracted entries for 2,780 wines, raising a total of $206,000 in fees. Still, Murphy told Wines & Vines, "I always have to smile when I see bloggers talking about competitions as money machines." Expenditures for the competition include printing and postage, glassware, a warehouse to store the wines, movers for delivering wines from warehouse to judging venue, venue rental fee Win es & Vin es ja n ua ry 20 14 99