While many wineries are still dusting themselves off from a busy harvest – or perhaps even still just about out amongst the rows, in some cases – others have been managing the day-to-day work of autumn whilst simultaneously planning their method of attack for capturing the Christmas spend.
There are a lot of options for businesses looking to get their wines centre stage on the Christmas table this year. As ever, online and cellar door sales offer different benefits and drawbacks, so choosing the right approach for you is important to find the best return on investment.
Cellar door sales
Boosting direct seasonal sales is a question of focusing your efforts into the right channels. The post-harvest period is perhaps the best time to update your marketing strategy ready for the year ahead and to consider how best to get your wine in front of customers who are ready to buy for Christmas and beyond.
- If you sell onsite:
– How will you make your displays feel more festive and showcase your key products?
– Can any work be done on making potential customers more aware of your shop, its location and opening hours? A small investment into banners, way finding materials and even local print advertising can make all the difference when carefully targeting. - Are you looking to sell at local fairs?
– If so, make sure to talk to the organisers about the demographics of their attendees and expected visitor numbers before booking a stall.
– It is also not unreasonable to ask about which other vendors have been booked or are expected to book. There are plenty of Christmas fairs taking place around the country – can you find one where there isn’t too much competition from other alcohol producers, considering the number of attendees? - Will the event be attended by people who are likely to make a purchase from you in sufficient numbers for you to turn a profit?
- How will you manage tastings and conversations with potential buyers to ensure that they are encouraged to buy your wine?
- The time has perhaps already passed to start talking to static outlets like independent bottle shops and farm shops about Christmas 2025. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t have space for one exciting new line, or that they are not open to looking at seasonal opportunities across 2026. The sooner you open those lines of communication, the sooner you will find the opportunities that are a good fit for your business.
Selling direct to consumer, face to face, has the undeniable benefit of allowing you to build great relationships. That gives the opportunity to build brand loyalty and repeat custom which can truly be the bedrock of a successful business. However, it is undeniably time consuming. Guiding one single customer through the funnel to a successful sale can be a relatively long process, considering the amount that most individuals are likely to spend – so balancing in-person sales with online marketing can be an important way of working smarter, not harder.
Getting your product featured in a seasonal gift guide for the national press is a surefire way to generate sales. When it comes to wine recommendations, many of those will be handled by a specific individual, someone who has been tasked to act as the wine expert for that specific publication. They will compile the guides, so it’s important that you identify the correct person to direct your press releases and samples to, ensuring they are well informed about new products, new vintages and interesting seasonal offers.
Of course, it is not just wine that some vineyards are offering. Hampers, tour tickets and experience vouchers could all be candidates for gift guides that are not necessarily solely wine focused. Simon Lewis, the Recommended Reviews Editor for The Telegraph gave Vineyard Magazine a little more insight into how he works when commissioning gift guides.
“I ask the writer to keep it as varied as possible. I always stipulate price bands – we want plenty of products at low price points and only a few at the top end, and I only allow one gift per brand in any guide. Finally, we have an SEO team who let me know the trending search terms. If there is a peak in searches for one particular item, I would aim to include that. I always want to include gifts that people are already looking for.”
Claiming one of the limited spots in the national press can often come down to the luck of the draw. If the relevant journalists know about your brand, then you’re in with a chance and all you can do is wait. In the meantime, it may be easier to see if you can claim a couple of column inches with local news outlets in your area.
Some local newspapers now invite articles to be sent to them directly for online publication. This usually means a slight rewording of a press release to make it immediately accessible to the general reader. But with a simple online form, your Christmas offering could be in front of a local readership within 24 hours. The YourWorld newspaper group is one example of a business which takes submissions in this way.
Don’t forget to look beyond the newspaper for other outlets in your area that may be happy to feature your Christmas lines and events. BBC local radio stations have a good track record for giving interviews and visits to vineyards for events and activities that they think their listeners will be keen to attend. There could also be small-circulation magazines in your area, or digital magazines and blogs that will be happy to run, or even attend, festive events and bring them to a new and geographically relevant audience.
Optimising your online presence
Adapting your existing online shop to create a specific landing page for Christmas customers is usually relatively easy, if you are using a standard shop template. In fact, it may even be as simple as adding a ‘Christmas’ tag to the relevant products that you have listed and then adding that tag to the searchable menu.
It is worth looking into whether this is an achievable action for your own business website because not only is it important to make the customer journey (from browsing to buying) as short and simple as possible, but by adding the word Christmas to your website, you are more likely to start getting hits from people searching for their seasonal wines for both gifting and consumption.
Tourism Northern Ireland have written an excellent introduction to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that is easy to follow and tailored for tourism-focused businesses, so much of the advice can be applied to vineyards looking to up their marketing game in time for Christmas.
Seasonal SEO
Chapel Down have made excellent use of their blog to play the SEO game, making sure that their website stands out to the search engine robots for key words like “English sparkling wine”, “Christmas” and “Christmas toast”. They put out a blog post in early October 2024 that encouraged readers to choose English sparkling wine as their fizz of choice for Christmas, looking at the traditions of the Christmas toast, the reasons to support English winemakers and of course, the awards that show why Chapel Down has such an excellent reputation.
Keeping your business blog (relatively) regularly updated and including themed, seasonal posts like this is a great way to ensure that your wines find their way higher up the rankings when consumers are searching for their next great sparkling wine adventure. Of course, once you’ve got content of this nature live on your website, the next important job is making sure that your web shop is fully stocked and operational too! Double check all products are live and links are all active. Not mentioning any names, but Vineyard Magazine discovered a few English wine gift pages that had broken links during the research for this article! If the customer hits a dead end, all but the most hardy will immediately begin looking elsewhere for what they need.
Social media
Social media has made it possible to engage directly with potential customers and build brand awareness like never before. Instagram is a logical platform to use to market your seasonal offering, because it is great for showing off your aesthetic and your story, from a perspective of both product and place.
However, social media has its drawbacks. Once you create a profile, you are committing yourself to maintaining it. Leaving your Instagram page fallow for months at a time can lead viewers to believe that your business is no longer in operation and regular interaction strokes the algorithms’ ego, which will ultimately get your content shown to more people.
It is no good popping up a photo of a Christmas hamper in November and then forgetting about it until next year. As the name suggests, social media rewards a social approach – which goes beyond posting material regularly and includes putting up content that looks at your story beyond one dimensional sales pitches, and direct interaction with people who are interested in your products – having conversations and responding to comments.
It is also important to be aware of the responsibilities that come with posting alcohol related content on social media. All images, reels and captions must adhere to the UK Code of Non-Broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing – known as the CAP Code. This means that your content creator must be responsible in promoting your content, restricting access to under 18s and does not appeal to underage demographics.
However, social media provides a unique opportunity to reach the right people directly, so, on balance, many will find that it is worth the effort to maintain. Think about how you can tell the stories behind the people and the products that compose your business to reach people with an interest in wine, wine tourism and local attractions.
Maximise opportunities
Case study: The Vineyards of the Surrey Hills Group.
The Vineyards of the Surrey Hills group has an excellent evergreen post on their website (meaning a post with content that stays relevant year-on-year) which points to the great selection of festive experiences on offer at the vineyards of their Surrey producers. Giving concise, but interesting details of those experiences as well as clear contact details helps to funnel the right demographic of consumer to the relevant website with one click.
Take the Albury Organic Vineyard website, for example. With one click, the Vineyards of the Surrey Hills blog post takes the reader straight to the Albury events page, where Christmas events were already listed by mid-September. These include some high quality crafting opportunities like weaving with willow and making Christmas wreaths, as well as the opportunity to buy tickets to a tasting with Albury and alongside fellow producers, Silent Pool Gin. Albury’s considered offering demonstrates that it is relatively easy to put on an attractive events programme over the Christmas period that isn’t just centred around tours and tastings but does bring guests on site to maximise the opportunities for additional spend on wine on the day.
The online presence doesn’t necessarily have to be re-engineered with Christmas in mind though. The “gifts and accessories” section of the Bolney Wine Estate is an excellent example of an online shop that offers an interesting collection of products which would work as festive gifts, or at any time of the year. Their selection includes tickets for tours and tastings, and the offer of gift vouchers which can be redeemed against experiences and products.
Forward planning for Christmas marketing
Case Study: Tinwood Estate.
The Tinwood Estate, on the edge of the South Downs near Chichester, is a great example of forward planning for Christmas marketing and as a result Tinwood Estate has a sleek and comprehensive offer that has got the jump on much of the competition.
I came across Tinwood’s Christmas offering whilst using a search engine that had taken out sponsored advertising this led me directly to a bespoke Christmas campaign page. Neatly set out and easy to navigate, the page offered me a full range of interesting seasonal options. Tinwood told me they had worked with an external agency to perfect their Pay-Per-Click campaigning strategy.
The introductory section of the campaign page was particularly impressive. It gave the spontaneous visitor an instant hook – outlining the types of gifts readers would see as they scrolled down, including an offer of free delivery for six or more bottle purchases and a clear indication of price range – “Festive Gift Sets from £60.”
There was plenty of incentive to keep looking as the clear, mobile optimised website took me through a range of gift sets, gift vouchers and wines. Each product had a high quality image, a short description and clear pricing, as well as an option to ‘add to basket’. The website’s format offers the consumer a simple journey through an enticing array of products and experiences.
It was interesting to note that, of the available gift options, the wines were offered furthest down the website. Presumably this was done to encourage visitors to scroll through all the other products that they might not have realised were available whilst looking for English sparkling wines for purchase.
Best of all, the way the campaign webpage ends aims to tie up any queries that a potential customer might have. There were clear signposts to other options that Tinwood offer, not necessarily seasonal in nature, such as afternoon tea, followed by a frequently asked questions section which, in particular, cleared up questions about the practicalities of gifting items purchased on the website.
Overall, this came across as a real masterclass in using targeted advertising online effectively and then following that up with a clear path for clients to purchase physical gifts and experiences. And, significantly, it was online and ready to go from mid-September – just the time when the hospitality industry is beginning to release its Christmas menus and open festive bookings.
