The talk by Matteo Ranghetti, Co-founder of Wine Suite, together with the video contribution from Jim Agger, CEO of OrderPort, was one of the key moments of the Wine Tech Symposium 2025.
At the centre of their message: the birth of the first global integrated platform for wine tourism, direct-to-consumer sales and long-term customer loyalty. A concrete shift that starts from a very specific place in the winery, the tasting room, and connects all the way through to the CRM, e-commerce and Wine Club.
Table of contents:
- A global platform for Direct-to-Consumer wine sales
- The tasting room as a revenue engine
- From counter to relationship: rethinking the POS and integrating processes
- Wine Suite 2.0: POS, e-commerce, Wine Club and automations in a single flow
A global platform for Direct-to-Consumer wine sales
The “beyond” of Wine Suite starts from a game-changing announcement: joining the Performant Capital group, a US-based fund that has invested in both Wine Suite and OrderPort, a leading DTC platform in the United States. Together, the two companies form a unique ecosystem that already serves over 1,200 wineries across Europe and the US.
The goal is not just to add numbers, but to integrate know-how, technology and approaches: OrderPort’s experience with POS, tasting rooms and Wine Clubs, and Wine Suite’s strong expertise in wine tourism, CRM, marketing and winery integrations.
In a scenario where wine consumption is declining in the medium to long term, wine tourism and direct sales can no longer be treated as optional. The platform is designed to help wineries make that organisational and technological leap that gives real weight to the direct channel in the P&L.
The tasting room as a revenue engine
At the heart of Matteo and Jim’s shared vision is a simple idea: the place where the real business happens is the tasting room. That’s where guests taste the wines, hear the winery’s story, live the experience first-hand and decide whether to become repeat customers or not.
Many wineries have become very good at attracting visitors – thanks to their territory, communication and experience offering – but are less effective at turning one-time visitors into loyal customers. The gap is not only about “sales skills”, but also about:
- lack of clear processes in the tasting room;
- staff with little training and few incentives to sell;
- generic POS systems not integrated with CRM and relationship tools.
As Jim Agger also reminded everyone in his video, “the tasting room is where your brand comes alive”: it’s where guests taste your wines, hear your story and can become loyal members, not just occasional visitors.
Watch Matteo Ranghetti’s talk at the Wine Tech Symposium 2025: Wine Tech Symposium 2025
From counter to relationship: rethinking the POS and integrating processes
One of the strongest messages from the talk was the need to rethink the POS as an integral part of the experience, not as the “end point” of the relationship. The traditional counter, a physical barrier, often marks the moment when the dialogue ends.
The model Matteo looks at is Apple’s: in Apple Stores there is no fixed checkout desk, every table is potentially a place for relationship and sale. The idea is to bring a similar logic into the winery.
- Mobile POS, following guests at the table or in the tasting room;
- each table as an opportunity to collect data, propose the Wine Club and support assisted sales;
- removing the “wall” between guest and staff, in favour of a more fluid and continuous relationship.
This is where the new integrated Wine Suite POS comes into play:
- designed specifically for wineries;
- fully integrated with the CRM and customer database;
- built to manage loyalty, gift cards, Wine Clubs, discounts and promotions;
- digital-first and paperless, to reduce waste, simplify compliance and improve the guest experience.
In this way, the POS stops being a neutral object and becomes a key step in the relationship process: from the first tasting to contact registration, from the sale in the tasting room to the next email marketing campaign.
Wine Suite 2.0: POS, e-commerce, Wine Club and automations in a single flow
This vision for the tasting room takes shape in the Wine Suite 2.0 and beyond project. Matteo summed up this roadmap for change in three main pillars:
1. New Wine Suite POS
-
- Mobile POS, natively integrated with the CRM and wine tourism module.
- Designed to work in tasting rooms, shops, events and mobile stations.
- A key tool to bring customer data into Wine Suite from the very first purchase.
2. Plug & play e-commerce
-
- From the product master data in Wine Suite to online sales in just a few clicks.
- Integration with partners for tax, excise duty, shipping and logistics calculations.
- Continuity between what the customer experiences in the winery and what they can repurchase from home.
3. Native Wine Club
-
- Create and manage your Wine Club directly from within Wine Suite.
- Activate and sign up members both online and in the tasting room.
- Align physical experiences and digital memberships to build lifetime customers.
In summary, the key takeaway is clear: turn the tasting room into the winery’s best sales channel, moving “from experiences to lifetime customers”. This can only happen when POS, wine tourism, direct sales, CRM and marketing work as one integrated process, from the first booking to the last repeat order of a loyal customer.
Request a free demo and discover how Wine Suite can transform your business: Contact us
