How did we come up with the name WINECULT?

I’m comfortable telling people it reflects our slavish devotion to fine wine. While Geena and I certainly do obsess over great wine, that’s not really the whole picture. A cult is a community, granted a community with a few screws loose. But that’s what the wine industry is, a community of oddball miscreants held together by a shared love of the vine. That’s my view in any case, so WINECULT seems fitting.

Our goal in launching Riviera Wine Group was to connect people to new wine experiences. That means varietals you haven’t tried before, AVA’s you’re not familiar with and producers you probably haven’t heard of. We wanted to do this, because our belief is that if we offer people a glimpse into the wine industry as we experience it, they will fall just as deeply in love as we have.

Some of our friends and family expressed this concern when we first proposed the idea, that “cult has such a negative connotation… People might not want to join a cult”.  Very sensible people we surround ourselves with. Geena had the perfect response from the beginning, “If people can’t see the levity in how we chose to name our club then all hope is lost”. My response was a little more flippant, something like “If anyone’s concerned, we’ll set their fears to rest with a new tag line… WINECULT – No Koolaid, just grape juice”.

All jokes aside, we want our brand to reflect the idea that we are THE Wine Lovers Wne Club. That’s why we feature producers like Paix Sur Terre. Winemaker Ryan Pease has a beautiful portfolio that should get any wine enthusiast excited. His Picpoul Blanc is harvested from the Glenrose Vineyard in Paso Robles and highlights everything you could ask for in a Summer wine. Complex citric flavors, balanced with a delicate salinity and a clingy mouth feel. This is the type of wine that refreshes your palate with every sip and seriously threatens your new diet (sorry Whole30, I didn’t make it).

This bottle is a microcosm of what we want our wine club to be. Accessible but complex, crafted with care, representative of the best ingredients sourced sustainably and most of all, something we and you will want to return to over and over again. Sort of like a cult meeting, just without the Koolaid.

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