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36 WINES&VINES July 2018 TASTING ROOM FOCUS T asting rooms drive 85% of wine club growth and are the cornerstone of a winery's direct-to-consumer (DtC) business. Regardless of which type you choose, the look and feel of your wine glass helps frame the wine tasting as an experi- ence, not just a beverage. Far too many tasting rooms forget that how the wine glass looks plays a significant role in how your wine is regarded. First impressions matter. Humans are visually dominant. About 60% of your brain processes some form of vi- sual stimuli. Humans believe what they see. For a wine-tasting room, crystal-clear, spar- kling-clean wine glasses with zero odor are a must-have, front-line risk-reduction touch point. Effective, energy-efficient glass-cleaning equipment for tasting room glassware is man- datory, and there are a number of glasswashers that do the job. But if you aren't careful, you can have water spots or fog from minerals in the water, as well as a chemical or soapy smell. Because aromas are processed in your amyg- dala, smelling a wine glass triggers either positive or negative memories and emotions. This can result in a wine-tasting experience that creates lasting negative associative memo- ries with your brand. Water temperature, a high flow rate and water pressure are key to cleaning wine glasses. Glasswashers today provide Energy Star savings with low water usage per cycle, while meeting the required flow rate and water pressure to clean wine glasses. A high-temperature rinse (180° F) has the blessing of the National Sanita- tion Foundation (NSF) for cleanliness and eliminates the need for sanitizers with their distinctive smell. Ever wonder what it costs to provide spar- kling-clean, buffed glasses for wine tasting? Add the labor cost, utilities, soap, buffing cloths, worker compensation and broken glasses while buffing, and it's a significant amount of money. Hundreds of dollars for small wineries and thousands for large, high- volume tasting rooms. A "first growth" Napa Valley winery where I worked installed two state-of-the-art glass- washing machines in its new tasting room. It was manned by two staff to buff and restock glasses on weekdays, with four staff on week- ends. Because this winery honored its wine by not pouring into a used glass, each guest tasted from a minimum of four wine glasses. With 1,100 visitors on Saturdays, that's 4,400 wine glasses washed and buffed in one day. Buffing glasses is a time-consuming, expen- sive and, at times, dangerous part of wine service. How many of us have had a wine glass break in our hands while buffing, cutting a finger, hand or wrist, sometimes severely enough to require a visit to the emergency room for stitches and a workers' comp claim? To complicate matters and make it far more difficult to have wine glasses that are clear and odor-free, many areas of wine country are cursed with hard water. A reported 65% of wine tasting rooms are on well water, which varies in terms of mineral content, hardness and odors. Hard water is the amount of dis- solved calcium and magnesium in the water. Hard-water scale clogs pipes, shortens the lifespan of your glasswasher and leaves hard- to-remove spots and film on your wine glasses. A winery can opt for a water softener to avoid clogged pipes and keep the glass-wash- ing equipment working. But going from hard calcium-filled water to soft sodium- or potas- sium-filled water can be just a first step. A softener removes calcium and magnesium ions but the total dissolved solids (TDS) will not be affected significantly because the softener adds a more or less equal amount of sodium or potassium in exchange. The minerals in soft water can and do cause mineral spotting or fogging problems for your wine glasses, especially if you use a 180°F rinse. The wine glasses still end up with spots or fog that need to be buffed. In some cases, you even need to use steam to effectively buff the wine glasses. What if there was a way to eliminate the need to buff wine glasses? Imagine pouring The Most Important Tool in Your Tasting Room DtC sales and wine club sign ups start with pristine glassware By John Stallcup Panther Creek Cellars' new tasting room in Woodinville, Wash.