Not gonna lie. Sometimes it feels very much that I write these Enolytics 101 posts in a vacuum.

As in, are they making a difference? Are they reaching the audience we intend them to reach? Are they helpful? Will anyone take action as a result of what they read? Will the conversation around wine + data get a boost, ultimately, because of what we do here each Friday?

Not gonna lie. Some weeks it’s hard to tell.

It’s a challenge – call it an apathy challenge – and I’m afraid that I’m not alone in feeling this way in the wine industry right now.

But then.

But then what we do – doggedly, and seemingly in a vacuum at least some of the time – receives an unexpected boost, from an unexpected source.

Last week it was an email from out of the blue by a former MBA student at the University of Bologna, who’s now working at one of the largest sparkling wine producers in the world, asking for a demonstration of how our tools can help their team.

This week it was speaking to an entirely different group of students, this time in a Wine Marketing course at Cornell, who emailed almost immediately afterward to ask how our work could inform their Master’s thesis and others who asked how we could help select inventory at their family’s local bottle shop.

Just yesterday it was a word-of-mouth recommendation from a repeat client, who spoke in an unsolicited way about how our work helped him reach his quarterly and annual goals.

Here’s the point: it’s no secret that starting a new company in the wine industry is an uphill battle especially when, at least on the surface, the industry is wrestling with an apathy problem about new ideas or even doing things just a little bit differently than how it’s always been done.

I hear that. I do.

But then. Then!

The seeds we planted long ago start to germinate, finally.

The tracks we’ve been laying start to gain traction, at long last.

The see-saw of doubt versus affirmation starts to tip in our favor, ultimately landing on the upswing.

No one said this was going to be easy, and no one promised continual endorsement.

Instead, it’s about the effort to keep trying, and to keep the focus on the people who don’t fall prey to apathy, who know that there’s there there, and are willing to dig in to find it.

If you’re one of those people, Thank You. You’re why we’re here.

In gratitude,

Cathy