The month of March has been ridiculously good, and I have to thank all of our Angels who make this wild ride possible. The month has been full of heart warming stories, celebrations of success and some huge amounts of love from journalists all over the country.
In short, we had a stellar month and we owe it all to our Angels. The way they support our winemakers gives us the ability to be the best wine company in the world. And if it weren’t for their incredible support, we’d be nothing. That’s the truth.
This March, we celebrated the Winemaker of the Year awards. Our amazing Customer Happiness Team won the top prize for innovation in Customer Service. We hit a major financial milestone that proves this company is capable of changing the wine world forever. And we got featured on Good Morning America and in newspapers around the country for our fun, un-pretentious philosophy about wine. It’s been a killer month.
Carmen Stevens is Winemaker of the Year 2015
Holy smokes! Over 640,00 ratings from normal wine drinkers all around the country were tallied up and we announced the winemaker of the year was Carmen Stevens. She’s a real pioneer in South African winemaking and an absolute star – it’s hard to imagine somebody who deserves this honor more than Carmen.
Her heart-warming acceptance speech has been viewed over 50,000 times on Twitter and Facebook.
We’re all on the edge of our seats to hear what wines Carmen is going to make with the $400,000 in Angel funding she’s been awarded as winemaker of the year.
Gold Prize for Customer Service
Our customer happiness team won an amazing distinction – the top prize for Innovation in Customer Service from the Stevie Awards (the world’s top sales, business development, contact center and customer service awards). That’s an international competition with over 10,000 entries from 60 different countries where our Happiness Team beat out huge companies like DHL and Delta.
This is a huge achievement and well-deserved. When we announced the award on our facebook page, over 600 customers shared the post, liked it, and gushed over what an amazing job the CHT does for them every time they need help.
Easter Candy and Wine Pairing went viral this March
Wine pairings don’t have to be elitist or pretentious, so we filmed a little tasting session where we paired Easter candy and wine. The tasting generated an unbelievable amount of interest!
Over 30,000 people have watched the Facebook videos of the tasting. And the pairings were picked up on the cover of the New York Daily News food section with a two page spread. Then the story got picked up again in the LA Times, Chicago Redeye and InStyle.
To top it all off, we were included in the Easter Sunday episode of Good Morning America!!! Millions of people watch GMA and we love the recognition. Hopefully we’ll get a lot of new Angels who are interested in a company that knows wine should be fun.
Oh and a bit of a financial milestone this March…
Money isn’t everything, but the trust that hundreds of thousands of Angels put into us and our winemakers has helped us reach new heights.
I’m very proud of what we’re doing for winemakers like my parents and wine drinkers like our Angels. We hit a big milestone this year (100 million pounds in sales or 140-some million USD). And that means we can help even more winemakers in the future.
What an epic month!?