Between The Rows
I haven’t been to Napa in Months, but I’m headed up there in a few weeks and looking forward to sights like this. This time of year the mustard makes for gorgeous scenery, growing up between the rows and catching every ray of light in sight to create a backdrop of glowing yellow for the dark rain-sodden vines — Alder Yarrow

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For anyone who hasn’t been paying much attention or who doesn’t really care, the wine industry going through a rough patch, especially here in California. Actually “rough patch” is a bit of an understatement, but more on that later this week.

For now, I’d like to focus on a single, early casualty of the times. As reported in the Press Democrat last week, Roshambo winery will be closing its operations down permanently, and its founder, Naomi Brilliant, will be attaching the winery’s name (and attitude) to a little farming operation she has started up on her family’s land in the Russian River Valley south of Healdsburg.

Roshambo had already downscaled operations some years ago, selling its sleek modern winery on Westside road to Silver Oak’s Twomey brand, and moving its wine production to a custom crush facility, while it opened a tasting room in a shared space in Sonoma and in its hard-to-miss Roshambus.

But now even those vestiges of an operation will be shuttered as Brilliant takes some time away from the wine business, perhaps to contemplate (or perhaps to forget) how things could have seemed to be going so well, and then end so poorly.

Indeed, Roshambo may be a perfect case study of how difficult it is to succeed in the wine business, even when you get many things right.

Roshambo debuted in 2002 with a splash. The winery’s rock-scissors-paper logo and brand concept were wonderfully designed, incredibly memorable, and fully exploited for all its irreverence, fun and originality. The winery’s production facility just off of Westside road featured sleek, concrete slab and glass construction, falling water, and an art gallery that, last time I was there, featured various bronze sculptures of vulvas and thumping house music. The winery’s annual Rock Scissors Paper Championships drew massive crowds, and the brand’s presence at wine events was always non-traditional and fun.

In my opinion, Roshambo was simply a fantastic execution of marketing and branding that targeted Millennials, the up-and-coming demographic that promises to be the biggest generation of wine drinkers this country has ever seen. It would be too easy to say that Roshambo was merely a winery ahead of its time. It was perfectly timed to the changing times, and a great counterpoint to the mostly staid marketing that characterizes most California wine.

While I don’t know all the factors that led to the winery closing its doors, certainly in part it seems to be a victim of its own early success.The winery facility was lavish, and sized for 50,000 cases of production, which the winery never achieved, though it gamely tried. The winery grew quite rapidly at first, and production ramped to nearly 30,000 cases at one point, I believe. While I don’t know what size it was at when the economy fell off the cliff last year, if it were anywhere close to that level the winery would have had a serious problem on its hands, as do many wineries these days with that level of production and most of their wines priced around $20 and higher.

Nor was this a case of wine quality falling short of the marketing. In my opinion the wines were decent, and in recent years, getting even better. With better than decent wines and a great brand, something behind the scenes was most certainly the culprit, whether it be planning, management, or the challenging three-tier system. And, oh yeah, there was that recession, too.

Regardless of the reasons, Roshambo offers a cautionary tale to anyone who believes a winery’s success can be assured through marketing. Roshambo’s was brilliant, but that was not enough.

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You folks are phenomenal. Thank you so much for your support. With your generous donations of both prizes and bids for them, we raised $70,900 for the UN World Food Programme. That’s a truly remarkable amount of money, and a testament to the passion and generosity of you, my readers, and the blogging community as a whole.

If your name appears in the list below as one of the winners, I will be contacting you over the weekend with instructions on how you can claim your prize (I will put you in touch with the folks that offered it, and you can coordinate).

For those who offered prizes, I will also be in touch to let you know how to proceed.

Congratulations to all the winners, and I hope you enjoy the fruits of your generosity. If you happened to bid on other prizes besides wine related ones, you can find the master list of prize winners at Chez Pim.

WB01 Dinner with NY Times Wine Critic Eric Asimov
Winner: Sonya Philip

WB02 The Brunello Experience: A Week’s Stay at Il Palazzone in Montalcino Tuscany
Winner: Liz Mortensen

WB03 Sustainable Napa from Clif Family Winery & Holme Grown Wine Tours (incl 6 bottles)
Winner: Alejandro de Jesus

WB04 2 Nights and Wine Tasting in Santa Barbara Wine Country (incl 6 bottles)
Winner: Josh duLac

WB05 Two Magnums of Wine from Soter Vineyards (incl 2 bottles)
Winner: Christina Arndt

WB06 The Old School Wine Collection (incl. 6 bottles)
Winner: Anya Naschak

WB07 The New Guard Wine Collection (incl. 6 bottles)
Winner: Ori Kushnir

WB08 Wine Book Bonanza
Winner: Lynne Newton - Carlson

WB09 Magnum + Case of Verge Syrah, and a Tour of Bradford Mountain (incl. 13 bottles)
Winner: Thomas Pantelis

WB10 Wine Bottle Hurricane Lanterns from Savoring Thyme Gifts
Winner: Ursula Pieper

WB11 Two Nights + Dinner +Tour in Tuscany at Il Borgo at Castello Banfi
Winner: Ori Kushnir

WB12 Cape Ardor Collectors Executive Wine Gift Set (incl. 3 bottles)
Winner: Ligia Ortega

WB13 Banned in ‘Bama Wine Gift Box (incl. 8 bottles)
Winner: Jeffrey Petree

WB14 A Case of Your Own Custom Blended Wine
Winner: Cindy Ruth

WB15 Stolzle Decanter and Four Wine Glasses
Winner: Ligia Ortega

WB16 Happy Canyon Wine “Horizontal” (incl. 14 bottles worth $584 retail)
Winner: Susan Brodie

WB17 Wine Jewelry, Wine Book gift package from WinewomenPSP
Winner: F Brooke Clendaniel

WB18 The Twisted Six Pack (incl. 6 bottles)
Winner: Leigh Iwanaga

WB19 The Twisted Tour and Pick Any Bottle (incl. 1 bottle)
Winner: Hank Shaw

WB20 Vinography as Your Sommelier for the Night (incl. 4 bottles)
Winner: Randi Axelrod

WB21 Brazilian Cachaças Tasting Set (incl. 5 bottles)
Winner: Jason Dietz

WB22 Dinner with Randall Grahm, a Special Bottle of Wine, and His Latest Book
Winner: Margaret Pillgrim

WB23 VIP Wine Country Tour with VIP Hostess Alana Gentry aka Girl with a Glass
Winner: Renee Kuo

WB24 Cashmere and Cabernet From Wine Valet
Winner: Deborah Bower

WB25 Magnum of Torbreck Wine plus Private Vineyard Tour
Winner: Edmund Thralls

WB26 A Wine Vacation at Meadowood Resort in the Napa Valley
Winner: Christina Sorenson

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