Spring Is Coming: Is Your Tasting Room Marketing Ready?
The weather is shifting, trip-planning season is underway, and tasting room traffic is about to pick up. This is the good news. The bad news? If you're reading this and thinking "we'll get to our spring marketing when spring gets here," you're behind.
The tasting rooms that stay full from April through June aren't the ones with the best wine or the prettiest views. They're the ones that showed up in someone's planning process three weeks before the trip happened. People don't stumble into wine country on a whim and wander from door to door the way they did fifteen years ago. They research. They scroll. They book. And if your winery isn't visible and compelling during that research window, you're invisible when it counts.
The hotel industry figured this out years ago. Marriott doesn't wait until summer to market beach properties. They start running "book your getaway" campaigns in late winter, because they know the booking window for leisure travel is 30 to 45 days out, according to Phocuswright's U.S. Travel Market Report. The same principle applies to your tasting room. Someone sitting in Sacramento or San Jose on a Thursday night, planning a weekend in wine country, is your customer. But only if you're already in front of them.
So let's walk through what it actually takes to be ready.
Refresh How You're Showing the Experience
Start with your website
It's probably doing less work than you think. Pull up your tasting room page and look at it like a stranger would. Does it sell the experience of visiting, or does it just list your hours, address, and tasting fee? There's a massive difference. One gives someone a reason to choose you over the thirty other wineries within a fifteen-minute drive. The other gives them logistics they could find on Google.
Look at your photography
If your tasting room photos are more than two years old, they're working against you. People can sense when imagery feels dated or staged, and nothing kills the appeal of a visit faster than photos that look like stock images from a wine industry template. You need shots that communicate what it feels like to be there: the light hitting the bar in the afternoon, a group laughing over a flight, the view from the patio with glasses in frame. Feeling, not just setting.
Test the actual booking path
Start from your homepage and try to get to a confirmed reservation. How many clicks does it take? Is the calendar easy to use on a phone? Does it load quickly? Every unnecessary step in this process costs you visitors. Baymard Institute's checkout usability research has consistently shown that the average online checkout abandonment rate hovers around 70%, and while that data is focused on e-commerce, the underlying principle is universal: friction kills conversion. If booking a tasting takes more than a minute on mobile, you're losing people. If you're not sure what to look for, Highway 29 Creative's breakdown of the most common winery website mistakes is a good place to start.
Now look at your social media presence with the same stranger's eyes
Would someone scrolling your feed want to visit? Or does your feed look like a catalog of bottle shots and vineyard sunsets without any human energy? The wineries that generate real pull on social media are the ones showing the life of the place: the staff, the guests, the atmosphere, the moments. A ten-second video of a wine educator pouring a vertical while telling a story about the vintage will do more for your reservation numbers than twenty polished beauty shots of your Cabernet. If you haven't posted a video of your tasting room in action recently, put that at the top of your to-do list. It doesn't need to be produced, it needs to be real. For more on why authentic content outperforms polished marketing, check out Highway 29 Creative's guide on user-generated content for wine marketing.
And then there's your Google Business Profile, which might be the single most underinvested asset in your marketing stack. For many potential visitors, your Google listing is the first and only thing they see before deciding whether to visit. Not your website. Not your Instagram. Google. Are the photos current and appealing? Are your hours accurate for the spring season? Are the links working? Are you actually responding to reviews and questions, or does your profile look abandoned? Active, complete profiles are rewarded with better visibility in local search results. Spending just fifteen minutes a week responding to reviews and updating photos can directly impact how many people find you. Highway 29 Creative wrote a detailed breakdown of why your Google Business Profile matters as much as your website, and it's worth reading if you haven't revisited your profile recently.
Re-Engage Past Visitors
Your email list is full of people who already know your name, have already tasted your wine, and already had a good time. They don't need to be convinced that you're worth visiting. They just need to be reminded that spring is a great time to come back.
This is not complicated. A well-timed email to past visitors with a subject line as simple as "Spring at [Your Winery]" and a few photos of the property in bloom can drive reservations. But the key is segmentation. Someone who visited three months ago needs a different message than someone who hasn't been in two years. The recent visitor might respond to "come try our new spring release." The lapsed visitor needs a reason to return: a new experience, a revamped menu, a limited tasting you're only running through May. If segmentation feels like a big lift, it doesn't have to be. Highway 29 Creative's guide to wine club segmentation strategies walks through practical approaches that work with the CRM tools you already have.
Give past visitors a specific reason to come back. Highlight new releases. Mention that you've updated your pairings. Promote a spring-only tasting or a limited experience that won't be available in the summer. Even small changes to your lineup are worth talking about, because what you're really doing is giving people permission to make the trip. Most people don't need to be sold on wine country. They need a nudge and an excuse.
Target the Right Audiences
Spring visitors are not summer visitors. The crowds showing up in April and May tend to be a mix of locals looking for weekend plans and early-season tourists doing research trips before a bigger summer vacation. Their motivations are different, their planning timelines are shorter, and your messaging needs to meet them where they are.
For locals, the message is about convenience and discovery: "Something new to do this weekend" is more compelling than "Plan your Napa Valley getaway." For tourists who are planning ahead, you need to be visible in the channels where trip planning happens: Google search, Instagram, travel blogs, and the websites of local tourism boards and hotel concierge services.
Paid advertising is one of the most direct ways to fill your reservation calendar, but only if you're specific about it. Geo-target the metro areas that actually send you visitors. For most California wineries, that means the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Los Angeles as primary markets. Retarget people who visited your website but didn't book, because they already raised their hand. And promote specific experiences, not just a generic "come visit us." An ad for "Spring Barrel Tasting: This Weekend Only" will outperform "Visit Our Beautiful Tasting Room" every time, because specificity creates urgency and urgency drives action. If you're new to paid media or want to benchmark your current spend, Highway 29 Creative's digital advertising benchmarks for wineries is a practical starting point.
Don't overlook local partnerships, either. Hotels, vacation rentals, and concierge services field "what should we do?" questions every single day, and most of them are happy to recommend wineries that make their own guests' experience better. Local tourism boards and wine trail associations drive meaningful traffic if you're actively participating. Cross-promotion with restaurants, other wineries, and local businesses creates a rising-tide effect that benefits everyone involved.
Making Sure the Booking Path Is Frictionless
You can do everything right in your marketing and still lose the customer at the point of conversion if your booking process is a mess. Pull out your phone right now and try to book a reservation at your own winery. Time yourself. If it takes more than three taps and sixty seconds to get from your homepage to a confirmed booking, you have a problem.
Check that your availability actually reflects reality. Nothing erodes trust faster than a customer trying to book a Saturday afternoon slot that shows as available online but gets rejected or rescheduled after the fact. Make sure your system is synced and your staff knows how to manage it.
Your confirmation and reminder emails matter more than you think. These are not just transactional messages. They're the first touchpoint of the visit experience. Use them to set expectations, build anticipation, and suggest add-ons. Include directions, parking information, and a brief note about what to expect. A customer who shows up feeling prepared and excited is going to have a better experience, spend more money, and be more likely to join your club or come back.
The Bottom Line
The wineries that fill their tasting rooms in spring are the ones that started marketing before the season started. Not after the first warm weekend when they suddenly realize they're understaffed and underprepared.
Refresh your content. Re-engage your list. Make sure you're visible where people are actually planning their trips. And remove every possible barrier between someone's interest and a confirmed reservation. These are not expensive or complicated moves. They're the basic marketing infrastructure that separates wineries with full tasting rooms from wineries wondering why the traffic isn't coming.
The investment is small. The window is closing. And the wineries that act now will be the ones pouring wine for new customers while everyone else is still updating their spring hours.
If you're looking at this list and thinking your team needs help executing, that's what Highway 29 Creative does. We help wineries build and run the marketing systems that turn seasonal traffic into year-round customers. Reach out and let's talk about getting your spring strategy in place before the first warm weekend catches you off guard.