Wine Marketing Podcast · Heather Daenitz

Crafting Emotional Connections in Wine Marketing with Andrew Means of Transom

·58 min·3 clips

Andrew says wineries must ask what emotional problem they solve, not just what product they sell.

Heather opens by welcoming Andrew and setting up the conversation. Andrew says he has always been drawn to aesthetics. He talks about designing posters for a punk band in high school. He also remembers building his first website around 1998 for his college radio station. From there, he goes back to school and his philosophy degree. At the time, he thought he might become a philosophy professor. His department gathered the philosophy majors and told them not to go to grad school if they could avoid it. That advice pushed him in a different direction. Heather and Andrew move through that story with a practical, unforced tone. The episode also ties their relationship to the Brand Better or Die Trying seminar at this year’s DTC Wine Symposium in Monterey. From there, the discussion shifts into brand strategy for wineries. Heather asks how wineries can reach a younger generation without losing what made them appealing in the first place. Andrew says it starts with understanding what younger people care about. He also says it helps to understand how they consume media. He notes that many studies show young people care far less about scores and magazine reviews than older wine businesses assume. Andrew shares a current client example of an organic biodynamic winery facing that exact question. His point is that the winery is already doing work many younger drinkers value. The challenge is to translate that reality clearly instead of chasing an old prestige signal. The conversation ends on a wider tension the wine industry needs to understand: what to keep, what to reframe, and what no longer deserves to stand in for relevance.

As heard by us

A practical talk about keeping wine brands intact while speaking more clearly to younger drinkers.

Andrew Means and Heather Danitz spend the conversation on a familiar winery problem: how to talk to younger drinkers without sanding off the brand that already works. The strongest stretch is the one that treats the issue as media fluency.

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Need a sharper read on younger wine buyers? Start here.

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