Wine Marketing Podcast · Heather Daenitz

Extending the Pleasure of Wine Beyond the Tasting Room with Dan Petroski of Massican Winery

·1 hr 8 min·4 clips

Dan warns that education can push customers out of white wine if you talk too much.

1. Wine Marketing Podcast focuses on Massican Winery, Dan Petroski's Napa Valley brand built around Mediterranean-inspired white wines and editorial branding. 2. Heather Danitz hosts the conversation, and Dan Petroski speaks as Massican's founder and winemaker with a publishing background. 3. The episode asks how wine brands can extend pleasure beyond the tasting room and talk to consumers in their own language. 4. Petroski says he grew up in Brooklyn, rode the train from Brooklyn High School to Manhattan, and found escapism in magazines like Condé Nast Traveler. 5. He names internships at The New York Times, Interview, Antiques, Art in America, Benetton, and Tommy Hilfiger before landing at Sports Illustrated in 1996. 6. At Sports Illustrated, he worked on web pages, photo editing, and customer communication while the internet was just starting. 7. Petroski says he wrote a business plan for a sports-business magazine, which triggered a move into tour marketing at Time. 8. He describes learning wine through restaurant entertainment in Manhattan, where wine often cost three to four times more than food. 9. He bought Wine Spectator and Robert Parker books, then started talking about wine as a storyteller to clients. 10. He says that path led him to choose Sicily over a Wall Street Journal opportunity and spend a year working on a vineyard in 2005 and 2006. 11. After Sicily, he interned at Dumont in Russian River Valley and then became cellar master at Larkmead in Napa in January 2007. 12. Petroski says he moved from cellar master to assistant winemaker, associate winemaker, and winemaker over five years. 13. He says he wrote Massican's business plan during that period and switched the concept from a red wine to a white wine for cash-flow reasons. 14. He says Massican started with one lump sum of cash in 2009 and grew every year except one year affected by mother nature. 15. Petroski argues that successful wine marketing starts with getting on the other side of the table with the consumer instead of centering the winery's place story. 16. He says Massican reaches people through football talk, restaurant settings, and a single bullet point that makes the wine easy to explain. 17. He describes pouring at Don Giovanni during aperitivo hour with spritzes, fritto misto, and white wines, using the setting to make the wine feel natural. 18. He says Massican's editorial identity includes no tasting-room pitch, occasional bottle photos, a travel-magazine website, and Easter eggs like '18 to party, 21 to drink.' 19. Listeners who like wine branding, direct-to-consumer strategy, and publishing-style storytelling will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners looking for vineyard viticulture details or a technical winemaking deep dive may skip it.

As heard by us

Brand voice, practical wine marketing, and the small details that make a winery memorable.

Dan Petrosky of Masakan Winery reads as someone who treats branding as part of the product, not a side exercise. His publishing background shows up in how he talks about design, writing, and the slower work of building customer loyalty.

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Why you'd press play

Press play for wine marketing that treats brand voice like a sales tool.

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