Community as Competitive Moat: Turning Customers Into Cultivators
What you're about to read has helped dozens of businesses rethink their approach.
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You know the customer who mentions your winery unprompted at dinner parties? Who brings friends to tastings without being asked? Who corrects people when they mispronounce your vineyard name?
That customer is worth more than ten people on your mailing list who bought once and forgot about you.
The wineries surviving consolidation and market contractions aren't always those with the best fruit. They're the ones who've built communities where members actively recruit other members because belonging signals something about who they are.
When someone says "I'm a member of [your winery]," what does that communicate about them? If the answer is just "they like wine," you've built a customer list. If it signals taste, sophistication, values, or identity, you've built a community. One of these is defensible. The other isn't.
The Cultivation Parallel
You wouldn't plant vines and then ignore them for a year. You'd prune, water, monitor, adjust. You understand that viticulture requires systematic attention across seasons, not sporadic intervention when you remember.
Yet that's often how customers get treated.
Your database is a mix of wedding guests from 2019, people who bought a single bottle at a charity auction, visitors who signed up for your newsletter to get the tasting fee waived, and actual wine club members. You email them all the same message twice a year when you have new releases. You wonder why conversion rates disappoint.
If community building got the same rigor as viticulture, acquisition costs would drop by half. Not because the tactics are complicated. Because consistent attention compounds in ways that sporadic campaigns never do.
The Framework That Works
Successful direct-to-consumer wine operations approach customers with the same systematic methodology as viticulture. There are four components:
Regular contact (monthly, not sporadic). Not promotional blasts. Actual content that maintains the relationship. What's happening in the vineyard this month. What you're tasting from barrel. Why this vintage is developing differently than you expected. The kind of information that makes someone feel like an insider, not a transaction.
Education that increases sophistication. Tasting notes that teach rather than market. Explaining why this wine has the structure for aging, what you mean by "acid-driven," how oak integration changes over time. You're not trying to sell them this bottle. You're teaching them to appreciate the category at a level that makes your wines more valuable to them.
Progressive commitment architecture. The path from single bottle to mixed case to allocation list should be visible and deliberate. People need to see where they can go. Start with accessible purchases. Create reasons to buy more frequently. Graduate members to higher commitment levels. Make allocation status feel earned, not arbitrary.
Harvest timing. New releases timed with intention. Holiday gift programs that feel special, not desperate. Vertical offerings for members who've been with you long enough to have purchased previous vintages. Library wines that reward loyalty. Each of these creates a reason to engage that isn't just "we made wine, please buy some."
These aren't innovative tactics. They're systematic attention applied consistently. The wineries implementing this framework or something similar typically see per-customer revenue double within 18 months without adding new names to the list.
What Community Actually Means
Community doesn't mean "people who bought from you." It means people who identify with what you represent.
Look at the wineries with genuine communities. Their members talk about the winery in personal terms. "My winemaker did something interesting this vintage." "We're getting an allocation of the reserve." The language of ownership and belonging.
This doesn't happen by accident. It happens when you're consistent about what you stand for, who you're for, and how you make members feel.
When Ridge Vineyards talks about their wines, they're not selling bottles. They're inviting people into a philosophy about winemaking, terroir, and tradition. Members aren't buying Ridge wine. They're participating in the Ridge approach to viticulture and vinification. That's identity.
When Kosta Browne built their allocation list, they weren't just managing scarcity. They were creating a community of people who felt they'd discovered something special before everyone else did. Being a Kosta Browne member signaled you had taste and access. That's identity.
What does membership in your wine club signal?
The Systematic Attention Problem
Most wineries treat customer communication like they're reporting news. "New vintage released." "Holiday sale." "Come visit us." These are updates, not relationships.
Meanwhile, you send your vineyard manager out to check on the vines weekly. You monitor brix daily during harvest. You taste from barrel monthly. You apply systematic attention to everything that affects wine quality.
Why not the same approach to the people who buy that wine?
Monthly contact doesn't mean monthly sales pitches. It means regular, valuable communication that strengthens the relationship. What are you learning this season? What surprised you about how the vintage is developing? What are you debating with your winemaker?
The wineries with strong communities don't have better wine than you. They have better communication systems. They've built the infrastructure for consistent engagement the same way they've built infrastructure for consistent quality.
The Economic Reality
Customer acquisition costs in wine have increased dramatically. Depending on your channel and approach, acquiring a new customer might cost anywhere from $50 to $300 or more. If that customer buys once and disappears, you've lost money.
But if that customer becomes a wine club member who stays for three years at $400 per quarter, you've created real value. If they bring friends to tastings who also join, you've created a referral engine that costs nothing.
The math favors depth over breadth. Ten cultivated customers who recruit others beat one hundred transactional customers who disappear.
This is why community functions as a competitive moat. Once someone identifies with your brand, once they've recruited friends, once they see themselves as part of your story, switching costs aren't just financial. They're identity costs.
You can't build that with twice-yearly email blasts and a 15% discount code.
Building Without Starting Over
You don't need to rebuild everything. You just need to start treating your existing customers with the same systematic attention you give your vineyard.
Segment your database. Not by purchase history alone, but by engagement level. Who opens emails? Who visits? Who buys regularly? These are different audiences requiring different approaches.
Create a communication calendar. Monthly at minimum. Not all sales-focused. Educational content, behind-the-scenes updates, seasonal vineyard reports. Content that makes people feel connected to what you're doing.
Build progression paths. Make it obvious how someone moves from first purchase to wine club to allocation list. Create milestones that feel like achievements. "You've been a member for two years" means something. Acknowledge it.
Design member experiences that non-members can see. When your wine club gets first access to library wines, tell people about it. When members get invited to the barrel tasting, post photos. Create visible benefits that make others want in.
The goal isn't tricks. The goal is treating customer relationships as systematically as you treat viticulture. Regular attention, seasonal awareness, long-term thinking, compound growth.
What This Creates
When you do this consistently, something shifts. Customers stop thinking of themselves as people who buy your wine. They start thinking of themselves as members of your community.
They bring friends to tastings because they want to share something they're part of. They defend your prices because they understand the value. They stay on allocation lists through vintage variation because they're committed to the relationship, not just the product.
This is what defensibility looks like in DTC wine. Not the best Cabernet. Not the prettiest tasting room. A community of people who identify with what you represent and recruit others who feel the same way.
You already know how to cultivate. You do it with vines every day. The wineries winning are the ones applying the same discipline to cultivating customers.
Same attention. Same consistency. Same long-term thinking. Different crop.
Adam Bird is Director of Strategy at Highway 29 Creative. He helps wineries build systematic approaches to customer relationships that create the same compound growth they expect from their vineyards.