What Does It Mean to Run a Great Small Winery Well?

They make only 2,800 cases a year — no more than 200 per wine — and sell 85% of what they make direct to consumer. Staying small and special, and discovering extraordinary vineyards has always been the goal.

Running a winery like this requires a particular relationship with time. You plan years out knowing the grapes on the vine now won’t reach the market for a while. “You have to have a long-term perspective if you’re in this business,” Rebecca says. Patience is the business, but the clock changes once you're running it day to day. What Black Kite needed from its technology was a match for both — something that worked on their timeline, not against it.

For years, Black Kite ran on a platform that made simple tasks hard. It was difficult to segment buyers by preference, pull a quick report on who’d purchased what, or reach the right customer for a specific wine.

Colin, who manages day-to-day operations, describes the shift: “When I wake up in the morning, I turn on my computer and log into Offset — checking who signed up on the website, sending new signup offerings, pulling reports.” What used to take an afternoon is now done quickly. “If we’re ever trying to sell an older vintage, we’re able to find those customers specifically — and it’s done in a couple of minutes, which is ideal.”

Black Kite runs allocation, wine club, and tasting room POS through a single system — each channel serving a different kind of customer, each needing a different kind of support.

Allocation is still the core. Twice a year, Offset’s segmentation tools let Colin build targeted lists by purchase history and vineyard preference — so the right wine goes to the customer most likely to want it. Releases that once required days of manual outreach now go out in minutes.

The wine club, launched two years ago, has become one of Black Kite’s larger revenue sources. For years, they’d resisted it — with a team of two, the operational lift felt like too much. Offset made it workable. “The flexibility with the customization aspect of the club makes the customer experience very easy,” Colin says. “They’re able to pick the wines they want in their shipments without picking up the phone.” As a result, Black Kite's club retention is strong.

In the tasting room, the POS changed the rhythm of the visit.

The biggest thing the transition to Offset gave Black Kite wasn’t a feature, it was time. Colin can pull a targeted list and send a campaign in minutes. Incorrect delivery addresses get flagged automatically. And if something comes up, support from the Offset Commerce team is fast. “The responsiveness — if there’s an issue, they’re on it right away. It’s a minute, maybe a minute and a half before they respond.”