New dgwinemaking.com Services
Over the last few months, Denise Gardner Winemaking has been making some behind the scenes changes to accommodate more winemakers – and wine consumers – in ways that best serve them.
One of these changes has been leaving the “Darn Good Winemakers” program behind and now offering two virtual membership options: DGW Insider and DGW Elite. These memberships have been created to
- Provide more how-to’s and commercial winemaking protocols for winemakers and cellar employees.
- Improve opportunity and service to more winemakers that require expertise and assistance.
- Enhance wine quality-driven education with practical solutions for winemakers and cellar employees.
What is a DGW membership program?
Membership programs offer a chance for more people, like you, to interact with DG Winemaking in ways that best serve you and your winery business.
Memberships are automatically renewed every month or every year for the annual membership option. Members can pay by credit card and avoid invoicing fee structures.
There are two tiers of memberships at two different price points:
DGW Elite
Price: $120 per month, with new DGW Elite members offered the opportunity to join at specific, periodic times of the year
Members can cancel their membership at any time.
Provides:
Access to most of the DG Winemaking material online, which is updated monthly. See “DGW Insider,” below, for more details on all of this material.
This membership tier also provides:
- An onboarding page for joining the DGW Community. This virtual instruction is immediately accessible on the website, provides resources for making the most of your membership as soon as you join, and offers several winemaking curricula focused on specific areas of need.
- 2 Monthly “Winemaking Q&A” Calls with the DGW Community, hosted by Denise Gardner. This is where winemakers and cellar staff come together to ask questions, get answers, and join the discussion. While I (Denise) lead the session and answer the questions, we occasionally get input from all members, learning and growing together. After each session, a summary of the calls is provided online, and you can find an example, here. Make the most of your membership by asking questions regularly and coming to the group calls.
- Access to the DGW Community Private Facebook Group: We’ve been building our private Facebook Group to better allow the community to interact, learn, and grow from one another. If you’ve been looking for comradery in the wine industry, then we hope you’ll join us!
- Discounted Hourly One-on-One Consulting Fees: If you ever need more assistance for your specific winery, you can schedule time with Denise for a reduced consulting fee all year round.
Put another way…
While the initial price of the membership may cause sticker shock, in a 5,000 case winery (roughly 12,000 gallons) the cost of being a DGW Elite member is about $0.02 per bottle of wine produced!
In other words: the membership contributes pennies – literally 2 – to the cost per bottle produced at your operation.
Participating as a DGW Elite member, and making the most of the services,
- eliminates time associated with guessing what to do,
- provides tools you can’t find anywhere else to make wine commercially, and
- reveals tips on producing the wine styles you desire.
Additionally, you’ll have a winemaking expert available to you as a resource to guide and improve your winemaking practices throughout the duration of your membership.
DGW Insider
Price: $35 per month, or save 5% with a one-time $400 annual fee
On the monthly option, members can cancel and re-join at any time.
Provides:
Access to most of the DG Winemaking material online, which is updated monthly. These materials:
- Provide tools to drive commercial-winemaking decisions and help operations get away from home winemaking or enthusiast winemaking practices.
- Teach winemakers fundamentals and unique production practices for creating wines of style and quality.
- Detail process flow and necessary steps for producing a wine to style.
The DGW Insider membership includes access to:
- ARTICLES: Practical, in depth written pieces that describe wine production techniques essential to drive wine quality. Two DGW Articles, “Fermentation Nutrition: What to Know and Why to Know It” and “Are Eastern-Produced Wines a New World Style?” are free, open, and available as example Articles.
- CELLAR TOOLS: Literal winemaking tools! How often are you searching for how-to’s in order to complete a cellar task properly? Well this section of the website has it all and continues to grow! This includes
- Production Guides with step-by-step instructions,
- flow diagrams,
- spreadsheets (formatted for Excel or printable),
- checklists, and
- timelines for improving wine quality.
- Other tools include Protocols and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that can get printed and used immediately in the cellar.
You can find two free Cellar Tools examples: “Checklist: Winery Prep for COVID-19 Mitigation” which illustrates what a checklist looks like and “Worksheet: YAN Calculations” which is a teaching tool for better understanding YAN.
- WEBINARS: Webinars are used as winemaker and cellar staff continued education. I know your time is valuable and you may not always have the time to watch the webinar when you need it. Therefore, each DGW-produced webinar is supplemented with printable notes that cover the main points of the webinar as well as include links to anything covered during the webinar.
- Winemaking Q&A Summaries: DGW Insider Membership have access to the “Winemaking Q&A” virtual meetings’ summaries. While the DGW Insider membership does not include access to live Q&A hours, they can review material covered in that meeting. You can find an example of what these summaries look like, here.
Who is this is the DGW Insider membership for?
If you’ve been looking for solid, practical commercial information for starting your winery or are looking to improve the production space (i.e., the cellar), then this is the membership level for you.
This is also a great place for home winemakers, enthusiast winemakers, and those looking to maintain an on-going educational winemaking-focused program to get more involved with the DGW Community.
Are You Looking for Winemaking Solutions? Are You Searching for a Winemaking Community?
If you answered yes to either question above, then consider opting into one of our new and improved membership programs.
While the DGW Insider program is available at any time of the year, the DGW Elite is only available through the end of January 2021. After that, you’ll have to wait until May/June 2021 for the next opening period for new members.
