In our business we are lucky because we get to talk about places.
Places have history, places have stories, places have culture, and places have identity. And by using a map in your trainings, seminars, sales pitches, and presentations you bring forward the sense of place.
Some hints and tips:
Purchase and download the iPad copy of The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson. It’s a great resource to have at your fingertips and by whipping it out during a sales call or staff training you can be sure everybody in the room not only knows where Burgundy is, but where Chambolle-Musigny falls within Burgundy, or how the high Eden Valley is truly different from Barossa, or how to drive up Spring Mountain from St. Helena.
If you’re often talking about Barolo, Chianti Classico, Valpolicella, or certain other Italian or French regions, seek out and purchase the Alessandro Masnaghetti maps. These are some of the most beautiful wine maps in the world, and will stun a crowd or a buyer ahead of tasting the wines. See all the maps available here, and in the USA purchase through the Rare Wine Company.
The latest map series from Wine Folly are the cleanest, most elegant, most easy to read maps for educational purposes or staff training. You can purchase the new ones or download the old ones for free.
For the wall at the office or the wine bar, great poster sized maps are available from VinMaps. These are stunning for larger rooms, offices, and group wine education.
If you are a wholesaler, have somebody in the office find a wide range of great maps online via Google Image Searches (highest resolution possible), download them and rename them to make sense, and put them all in one cloud based folder. That way your sales team can access a library anytime without having to repeat endless web searches for material.
Maps are the key to any great wine presentation. Use them. Print them. Hand them out. Leave them behind. Give them as gifts. If you’re doing a presentation on a particular region, be sure everybody has a map in front of them. Nothing sparks wine curiosity more than looking at a good wine map, and anything that sparks curiosity is a powerful sales tool.