Eric Orange, LocalWineEvents.com Founder, Answers Eve’s Questions


1. Wow! Thanks for speaking to a local wine blogger!

Thank you for having me Eve, and thanks for being a LocalWineEvents.com advocate and a loyal subscriber to our free newsletter, THE JUICE.

2. Your site seems to be going through some exciting changes…what areas do you think my wine 101 readers might be interested in?

We recently launched the newest version of LocalWineEvents.com (the 6th upgrade in 10 years). We are very excited at the response, because we’re able to offer better visibility for some of the other “content” we have such as Wine Quiz, Question and Answers, Educators, blogs, etc.

3. Are the newsletters still free?

Indeed, The Juice is still free and we have 111,000 subscribers. We offer a premium version of The Juice, The Juice Grand Cru, which allows for extensive customization for your Juice, such as blocking postings from venues you have no interest in or only events within a price range that fits your budget, and more, http://www.localwineevents.com/eletters/upgrade (and it’s only 24.00 for an entire year.)

4. And it’s free to list an event, I know I have, that’s really cool! But it looks like you can add more stuff to your listing too for a little charge?

We offer two levels of “enhanced” postings that give more exposure to a posting. The “Magnum” is $35 and “Double Magnum” is $50. The enhancements raise the exposure both online and in The Juice by floating them to the top of the listings and adding some eye catching changes to fonts and borders. Enhanced also allows for adding graphics to spruce up your posting and one-step duplication to one or two other cities.

5. What do you do for Facebook friends? Do they hear about events that way too if they “friend” you?

All 14,000 of them. We publish updates of the site, highlight labels from our other site, www.WineLabelWorld.com, etc. We have also been dabbling with Facebook applications. We recently created a wine quiz app that can be shared (http://apps.facebook.com/wine-quiz/ ), and just this week launched our “Events” app that allows anyone to display the events for their local area, http://apps.facebook.com/wine-events With that app, you can have listing of current events coming up in your specific locations. So far the reaction is ECSTATIC!

6. So, what do you like to drink?

Big red wines and T&T’s. (Tanqueray & Tonic)

7. Do you ever attend events or plan events?

I do. Going to the The Philadelphia Food & Wine Festival this weekend, http://www.localwineevents.com/events/overview/us/592/main-line-wine However, my kids are young and I do not get out to as many events as I am asked to attend.

8. How did you get started?

In wine, or LocalWineEvents.com? Started in wine at Millbrook Vineyards in the Hudson Valley of New York. Went on from there until I was District Manager of Paterno Imports for Colorado. I did a wine maker dinner one night with very few attendees (embarrassingly so) and yet, was often asked by customers “How can I find out about those events?” The internet sort of sprang forth in full view in the fall of ’98 and I started working on the idea of one collective place where we could all put events and all find them.

9. So, you can never take a vacation, right?

Yes and no. I have great help that takes up the slack if need be. Really though, managing the site from virtually anywhere any time on my cell phone (Palm Pre), makes it very easy to keep on top of it at my pace.

10. What do you see yourself doing in the future?

We’re working on our latest site: www.WineLabelWorld.com.
Our Mission: Every Wine Label In The World, so I think we have our work cut out for us! Here is what it’s all about:

Has this ever happened to you? “I just tasted this fantastic wine. I don’t remember the name or where it’s from but I’d recognize the label if I saw it again.” – or – “The bottle had a great-looking label, but I wonder what the wine tastes like.” – or – “[Maureen] loves [horses]. I’d love to give [her] a good wine that has [a horse] on the label.” We created WineLabelWorld.com for situations like these. We’re here to help you find the wine you’re looking for, using wine labels as your guide. Don’t remember the wine name? Or who makes it? Or where it was made?

No problem. Just browse through WineLabelWorld.com. Our always-expanding collection can be sorted by country, style, wine color and other distinguishing features. We’ve got tasting notes, too.

If you don’t see your wine on WineLabelWorld.com, you can add it by going here: http://www.winelabelworld.com/Submit

Thank you for the interview, Eve. Time to enjoy a nice glass of Cabernet. Cheers!

3 thoughts on “Eric Orange, LocalWineEvents.com Founder, Answers Eve’s Questions

  1. I have had great luck with LWE – found LearnAboutWine and The Duke of Bourbon there. And my blog is listed there, too. Cheers!

  2. I get the Juice for LA, Napa and Santa Barbara every week. I even submitted a post, on Willi's Wine Bar, that they ran in the Juice one week. You should submit one of yours too Denise!

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