🍷 Who’s Having Fun in Wine Country?

Because if it’s not your guests, something’s broken.

Last weekend, I hosted a group of women on a tour through some of my favorite wineries in the Willamette Valley. These weren’t just friends, they were the exact kind of guests every winery wants to attract.

In their thirties. Smart. Successful. Curious. They’ve built a weekly tradition they call Wine Thursday, where 15 women gather to share bottles, stories, and life with each other. They aren’t sommeliers. They don’t talk tannin structure or barrel toast. But they love wine. They love what it makes possible- connection, conversation, joy.

I was excited to show them the beauty and depth of our region. We kicked off the day with breakfast and bubbles at Red Hills Market, and it felt like we were off to a perfect start.

But as we made our way from tasting to tasting, something shifted.

The laughter in the car rides didn’t follow us into the rooms.
At each stop, we were seated, handed a script, and gently talked at about soil, elevation, clones, canopy management. It was well-meaning, but completely disconnected from who we were.

No one asked us what we liked.
No one cracked a joke.
No one read the room.

It was as if someone pressed play on a pre-programmed hospitality experience and we were expected to sit still and receive it.

I visit 50+ tasting rooms a year, and I love them.
But I’m an insider. I’m visiting friends. The experience I get is often intimate, joyful, warm.

Watching outsiders, the average guest, go through tasting after tasting with glazed-over eyes? It was brutal.
I felt like a bad host, powerless to stop the energy from draining out of what should have been a vibrant, unforgettable day.

And this group? They’re fun.
In the car: music, laughter, stories.
In the tasting room: silence, stillness, polite nods.
The seriousness and formality just… sucked the joy out of it.

It made me stop and ask:
Has the industry changed?

When we worked with our first winery ten years ago, things felt different.
There were characters in the room.
People who took their wine seriously, but not themselves.
People who made you feel something.

If you’ve ever sat with Denise and Scott Flora, or Doug and Dionne Irvine, you know what I mean. You’ve laughed. You’ve bantered. You’ve heard, not just about the wine, but the lives, the risks, and the love behind it.

That’s hospitality.
That’s what people remember.
That’s what brings them back and makes them want to belong.

So now I ask:
Who’s making sure guests are having fun?
Who’s reading the room? Who’s inviting people in, not just to taste wine, but to feel welcomed, delighted, and alive?

As tasting rooms multiply and great hospitality staff becomes harder to find, the danger is this: we replace connection with programming. We swap storytelling for scripts. We mistake education for engagement.

And we lose people in the process.

At Wildlight, we believe wine is about joy.
It’s about the stories told between pours, not just the notes inside the glass.
We help wineries reconnect with that truth and with the guests who are craving more than a lecture.

Because no one ever joined a wine club because they loved your canopy management breakdown.
They joined because you made them feel something.

Let’s bring the fun back to wine country.

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