WineQuesters.com features and benefits

WineQuesters.com is a big search engine for California winery tasting rooms! We also have the most accurate maps and you can customize and print them.

• Features for wine tasters
• Features for wineries

Features for wine tasters:

• Search and discover - Plan your wine tasting road trips with our comprehensive search and other tools. We have the most complete winery search available. Search for tasting rooms with over 170 criteria! Search by region or all of California. (Other states and countries to be added.)
  
  Winery profiles list dozens of features that aren't available on their Web sites or through other media. Sort and select by varietal, family friendly, dog friendly, trophy landscaping, architecture, ambiance, user ratings and reviews, picnic areas, and dozens more criteria. Now you have the information to easily and quickly craft the best wine tasting road trips for you and your friends!
• GPS accurate maps - We drove to and GPS mapped over 600 California wine tasting rooms that are located in well-known regions and open to the public on a regular basis. Other online maps use geo-coded street addresses, which as we all know can be a long way from the actual location.
• Map markers with current information in their info windows - Wineries can post special promotions and events directly to their map markers in real time. Shop the maps for bargains! Click on the icons that are 20% larger than the others for specials and events.
• Winery ratings and reviews - Tasters can rate winery features and review their experience to help others sort through the maze of wineries and find one that will meet their expectations.
• Communicate, share, learn - We have more information for planning your trip.
  • Scan the Dashboard to see the latest postings of events or other information.
  • Forums - Ask questions about the regions, wineries, or share your road trip information. Jim is monitoring them and ready to help.
  • Groups - We have a few groups for our own small and friendly events.
• Suggested day routes - With most regions having 30 or more wineries to select from, where do you start? We've selected four wineries in each region to help tasters begin their adventure. They are selected to give tasters a diverse experience on that first day and to move them around the region so it becomes familiar. This is not a list of the "best" wineries and that isn't the purpose.
• Subscribe to the Wine Questers Blog - Stay current with the Preston's latest wine country adventures. Also, follow Jim Preston on Twitter at winequester and join us in Facebook.
• Coming soon - We are currently in production with 22 Web videos for 19 California wine regions that will explain what is there and why go there. We will begin launching them in the summer of 2009. An iPhone app is in development that will bring key information from the site to your iPhones to make your wine tasting road trip more interesting and fun.

Features for wineries:

WineQuesters.com is an online platform for marketing tasting rooms to tasters planning wine tasting road trips. We have developed this software and features at the request of hundreds of vintners, tasting room staff, and tasters. We developed powerful marketing features available nowhere else.

• Powerful self-maintained profiles - Information in your profile is available immediately to tasters researching for their next wine tasting road trip. See our search engine for a list of some 170 criteria that tasters want to know and that are available nowhere else. Market ALL of your winery's assets and features for the first time ever.
  • Google Maps markers display profile information in their info windows. Display current specials, events, and of course your contact and location information. Changes to these fields in your profile will change what tasters see in real time. You can change promotions by the hour! Map markers with specials or events are 20% bigger than the others.
  • Post your events to the calendar. Each week we promote the listed events on various social media sites for a broad and rapidly growing reach deep into social networks. Some of our friends and followers in these networks repost them to their networks. Markers with events are 20% larger than the others and get noticed. (We recommend that you also post to other sites such as Local Wine Events and your Facebook page or group.)
• What to do -
  • Signup as a winery and create your profile. We seeded the site with some 600 winery profiles. If yours is already on the site then you should have received a letter with your login information. If you don't have this information then email us.
  • Enter promotions in the Profile edit "Current specials" text box and they will display in the map markers and in our iPhone app. Click on your map marker at the bottom of the first Profile edit tab and you can add comments such as a pitch that will display in the map marker. Use these for real time promotions.
  • Post your events in the calendar for deep reach into social networks and to display in the map markers and iPhone app.
• What's next -
  • We are developing an iPhone application that will give tasting rooms direct real time access to tasters driving around their region. It will use the internal GPS to display the locations of nearby wineries in Google Maps and display data from the profiles. Show tasters the benefits of visiting your tasting room in real time.
  • We are producing our Discover California Wine Regions video series for YouTube and our Web site. We expect this growing library of videos to be a popular way for tasters to become acquainted with regions that are new to them.
  • WineQuesters.com is still very young. Visitor traffic is growing nicely but it will take time to get the word out. Our region map pages usually show on page 1 of Google searches.
  
  

Site feature summary

Wine tasting road trip planning:

• The only comprehensive search of winery features.
• GPS accurate maps with real time winery info in the markers. Shop map markers for tasting room specials.
• Rate winery experiences and features.
• Get suggestions in our Forums from winery road trip guru Jim Preston.
• Suggested day routes to get started in a region.
• Videos describing each wine region are in production.
• iPhone app with the key info needed by tasters is in development.

Winery promotion and marketing:

• Use as a platform to directly reach and interact with tasters - in real time.
• Use the map markers to drive traffic to your tasting room and Web store.
• Help tasters plan their trips and optimize their experiences with your profile information.
• Post your events to the calendar and they display in your map marker and soon on iPhones.

California Wine Travel Planner