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October 2016 WINES&VINES 29 WINEMAKING October 2016 WINES&VINES 29 Providing leading wine makers with stainless steel barrels of high quality, durability, and design. phone: 773.735.0700 • toll free: 800.441.8780 www.skolnikwine.com • email: sales@skolnik.com Your success is our prioritY the United States' leading producer of premium sweet and aperitif wines, producing 100,000 cases under the Essencia, Elysium, Electra, Starboard and Vya labels. Like Orin Swift, Quady has made a deliberate effort to give each wine a proprietary, trademarked name. Blaylock notes that the winery evolved over time into its position as the leader of sweet wines. It started when Sacramento, Calif.-based retailer Darrel Corti asked An- drew Quady to make a Port-style wine for the store. He produced more than the store needed and started selling it on his own. It sold well. A few years later, Quady visited France and observed people dipping biscotti into Muscat. From that observation, they added Orange Muscat, finding 2 tons locally. Blaylock feels that "most good wines pop up by accident. The question is: Can you take an accident and turn it into something?" At that point, Quady decided to focus solely on sweet wines. "Being different is great as long as you have the guts to do it. You need a really good product and a lot of luck," Blaylock added. The company continues to seek new products to keep itself unique. Quady added vermouth well ahead of the cocktail craze. Vya Vermouth now comes in three permutations and is fre- quently referred to by name in published cock- tail recipes. Quady has updated its brand differentiation to "bookending your meal," pro- viding both aperitif and dessert wines. The winery is always creating new promo- tions that emphasize its unique brand posi- tioning. For example, restaurant placement is a significant goal, so Quady held pastry chef competitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver, B.C. The chefs had to create a dish that had the best synergy with a Quady sweet wine. (Incidentally, the winner was a puff pastry with layered sliced pears, black- berry sauce and cracked black pepper, which sounds really delicious.) Like Bokisch, Blaylock feels that unusual wines need to be tasted by the public to sell effectively. Tasting begets converts, whether that's in the tasting room or at a restaurant. Since sweet wines are usually consumed at the end of a meal, when diners are in a good mood, Quady personnel will go into restaurants and pour every diner a glass of wine, then walk around the restaurant talking, pouring and creating a memorable brand experience. Blaylock's advice to small wineries: "Either be the best wine or the only one of its kind out there. But that is so hard to do. Embrace new ideas and recognize and capitalize on mistakes. Be willing to continue with some- thing that flies in the face of everything else." Blaylock is a proponent of the personal con- nection, stating, "Nothing is better than hav- ing a winery principal go out to see the retailer or restaurateur personally." So the choice is yours: Do you want to be a conformist who follows the traditions and rules and fights a brutal red ocean battle to be the 324th Cabernet listing at BevMo (they currently carry 323 of them), or do you want to create your own blue ocean with an au- thentic, differentiated story like Bokisch, Orin Swift or Quady? Andy Starr, founder of StarrGreen (starr green.com), is an entrepreneur, marketing manager and winemaker who provides strategy, management and business develop- ment consulting services. A resident of Napa Valley, Calif., he holds a bachelor's degree in fermentation science from the University of California, Davis, and an MBA from UCLA. "Be willing to continue with something that flies in the face of everything else." —Michael Blaylock, Quady Winery