This article is born as a synthesis and distillation of the presentation delivered by Cristián Saracco, Founding Partner of Allegro 234, to 40 executives and owners from the wine sector at the Club de Marketing de La Rioja, on 29 January 2026.
It does not aim to reproduce slides or offer closed conclusions, but rather to capture the underlying thread of a strategic conversation held with wineries that share a common concern: how to continue building real value, sustainable business and relevant brands in a context that no longer forgives improvisation or empty noise.
When Wine Needs Direction, Not More Noise
There are moments when a winery feels it is “doing everything right”. It has extraordinary vineyards, a solid technical team, a story to tell — and yet something still does not quite fit. Sales happen, yes. Hard work too. But margins tighten, the portfolio becomes more complex, distributors gain too much influence, and every year seems to start from scratch.
That was, at its core, the starting point of the conversation held with Rioja wineries in Logroño. Not to talk about labels or campaigns, but about a more uncomfortable, and therefore more relevant, question: what are we really building with every bottle that leaves the winery?
For years, the sector has fought for visibility. More trade fairs, more publications, more launches, more noise. The problem is that attention, as we all know, does not guarantee choice. It may spark curiosity, a visit, even a like. But it does not ensure someone will choose your wine when facing a hundred options, nor that they will choose it again once novelty fades.
This is where a word enters that changes the game: intention. Intention sustains business. It is real preference, repeat purchase, recommendation and defence. And unlike attention, it cannot be bought. It is built through coherence between company, business, brand and experience.
Wine today does not need more attention. It needs more intention.
When the Problem Is Not the Market, but How We Play
The context is tight, that is true. Strained channels, more selective consumers, stimulus inflation, new consumption occasions, pricing pressure. But blaming the market alone often becomes an elegant excuse for not looking inward.
Many wineries, even with extraordinary assets, operate reactively. Decisions are made based on distributor demands, competitor moves or what worked last year. Sustained over time, this erodes value. It turns the company into an organisation that runs hard, but without clear direction.
Turning vineyards into a company is a decision. And deciding means prioritising, renouncing and protecting. It means being clear about what you pursue and, above all, what you do not. When the company decides with clarity, the winery can execute with coherence. And the brand becomes the bridge between that internal clarity and a simple, defensible and recognisable external reading.
A key idea emerges here:
When there is judgement, business and brand stop improvising.
Purpose Is Not a Slogan, It Is a Management Tool
In times of pressure, a useful, not decorative, purpose fulfils a very concrete function: it brings order. It helps prioritise investments, clarify trade-offs and reduce reactive decisions. It is not about inspirational phrases on the wall, but about a framework that guides real decisions when things get tight.
The same applies to values. Few, alive and operational. Values understood as rules of the game: how a launch is decided, how a margin is negotiated, how a crisis is handled, how a supplier is chosen. When this is clear, there is less internal debate, more responsible autonomy and greater external consistency.
The market, moreover, no longer tolerates posturing. It penalises incoherence between what is thought, what is done and what is communicated. Sincerity, being true to oneself in how one acts, and transparency, being true to others in what one reveals, have become business assets. Not out of morality, but out of survival.
Clarity Over Complexity… The Market Appreciates It
One of the great enemies of margin is confusion. Portfolios that are hard to understand, weakly differentiated propositions and insecure purchase decisions silently erode value. The market rewards clarity over complexity.
Producing wine and capturing value do not always go hand in hand. They require uncomfortable decisions: which wines sustain the essence, which build prestige, which open new occasions and which, however emotionally painful, should disappear. High quality with low return, effort without proportional reward, constant pressure on prices and channels are signals worth reading in time.
At this point, a common myth needs dismantling:
Premiumisation is not simply raising prices; it is selective justification.
It is about building meaning before telling it. People pay more when they understand origin, perceive visible winemaking decisions, participate in rituals, learn sensorially, access the winery, feel part of a community and recognise brand consistency. Raising prices without that justification almost always leads to a slow-motion discount war.
Ambidextrous Strategy; Sustaining Today While Preparing Tomorrow
Wine needs to play at two speeds. Operational excellence in what sustains cash flow and results, and disciplined experimentation in what prepares the future. Without destroying, without confusing, adding. New consumption occasions, less elitist and more pedagogical narratives, new channels such as direct-to-consumer or experiences, limited editions or collaborations with meaning.
For this to work, a solid heart is required. When each wine knows for which occasion it exists and why, innovation stops being a desperate lifebuoy and becomes strategic exploration. Innovating is not following trends; it is deciding with focus, coherence and real consequences for business and brand.
In this context, artificial intelligence appears as a powerful amplifier. It reads signals, detects patterns, simulates scenarios and optimises content. But it does not decide who you are as a brand, what you renounce or what value you promise. AI amplifies judgement, or noise. It depends on what lies behind it.
Brand as the Operating System of the Business
Here one of the great misunderstandings usually arises:
Branding is not aesthetics or communication. It is strategic direction.
It defines priorities, organises decisions and reduces improvisation. It works as the operating system of wine: connecting vineyard, winery, wine and market; aligning discourse and reality; influencing product, packaging, narrative, channel, experience, data and internal culture.
When brand is well thought through, it simplifies business. It reduces coordination costs, speeds up decisions and allows adaptation without self-betrayal. In mature sectors, that coherent speed is a real competitive advantage.
Positioning is not inventing an aspirational story, but credibly promising what the company and its business were, are and aspire to be. Seeking similarities to facilitate choice and real differences to reduce pressure. And doing so from a clear personality that sells without explaining itself, reducing uncertainty on a shelf or a wine list. And uncertainty, it is worth remembering, is the enemy of margin.
From Campaigns to Systems; Building Intention Long Term
Brand architecture enters here as a key tool. Not to organise logos, but to govern decisions and prepare the company for the context already unfolding, not the one that existed yesterday. Traditional, demand-led or systemic: each logic responds to a type of market and a type of intention.
Wine competes in experiences that go far beyond label or score. It plays out at the winery, in restaurants, in eCommerce, on social media, at events, in service and very especially in sensorial education. An education that guides without elitism, makes accessible without trivialising and builds community.
Activating a brand is not chaining campaigns together. A campaign is a spike; a system is continuity. The brand must be “on” even when there are no launches. Only then is long-term intention built.
Strategy defines where to win; brand translates all of that into a simple experience. When everything aligns -company aligned, strategy clear, brand coherent- intention appears. And intention is not persuaded: it is earned. With it come margin, repetition, channel defence and resilience against fashions.
The Questions We Can No Longer Avoid
If these ideas resonate, it is often because the winery already senses that the challenge goes beyond marketing. It is a leadership challenge. Clarity is uncomfortable at first:
It forces choice, renunciation and the assumption of consequences. Value comes later.
Questions such as whether the brand helps or hinders the business, whether we are capturing the real value of our wines, or whether the portfolio is understandable from the outside are not comfortable. But they open strategic decisions. Without them, everything is decided by commercial urgency, visibility becomes an expense and technology amplifies disorder.
Harvesting with purpose is not a pretty metaphor. It is a way of managing. And not doing so has a cost. Each winery decides when to pay it.
Prost!
Image
- Myicahel Tamburini, Pexels
