Nicole Darracq didn’t exactly major in business. Raised in Sacramento,
California, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California
at Davis with a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Civilizations, with minors
in History and Art History. In the early eighties, with the rest of the
world going high-tech, a major like that takes you straight to graduate
school while waiting on tables.
And wait on tables Nicole did, in dinner houses in San Francisco and San
Diego. She learned the restaurant and hospitality industry from the ground
up, and was soon specializing in wine, attending seminars and educating
other staffers in the niceties of beverage service. In 1990 she became a
corporate trainer for the Paragon Restaurant Group and began her wine training
in earnest, developed training programs on wine appreciation, wine and food
pairing and wine service for restaurant staffers and consumers. Back in
Northern California, her extensive on-premise experience earned her a position
in the marketing department at Beringer Vineyards in California’s
Napa Valley.
There she learned top-notch national marketing, handling Beringer’s
European markets and the Wine World Imports portfolio. (Still wondering
where the Classical Civilizations fit in? So is she.) Her brands included
Gabbiano Chianti from Tuscany, CVNE from Rioja in Spain, and Travaglini
Gattinara from the Piedmont region of Italy. She managed the successful
introductions of brands from Northern Italy, Chile, and France, implementing
point-of-sale, direct mail, couponing, major display programs, ad campaigns
and sales incentives to create awareness, sales and profits. Her experience
handling vendors is extensive, and she maintains warm, long-term relationships
with a cadre of photographers, graphic artists, printers, sales reps and
producers that keep her one of the most effective project managers in the
business.
Darracq left Beringer for the marketing directorship at Wildhurst Vineyards,
a small, grower-owned winery that had been struggling for six years. Nicole
incorporated her food and wine training into Wildhurst’s marketing
strategy, demonstrating the unique delights of a well-paired meal, training
restaurant staffers and wholesalers and presiding over wine dinners in top
accounts across the country. During her tenure at Wildhurst she doubled
national sales and launched a tasting room operation whose sales exceeded
half a million dollars within four years.
In 2002 she started her consulting business, adding agritourism marketing
to her product launch management and image development services and expanding
her client base beyond the wine industry to a wide range of small and mid-size
businesses. Most recently she has combined her polished marketing savvy
with the award-winning creativity of Darren Schmall, ag tourism’s
innovative “Pizza Farmer”, adding another level of experience
and value for all of their clients. For fun she teaches wine sensory evaluation
at the community college level and continues to “guest sommelier”
charity galas and private events. Her speaking engagements draw raves from
the hundreds of people who then use the tools she gives them to increase
their own success.
Her approach is refreshingly simple, direct and free of the snobbishness
that characterizes much of wine industry marketing - she knows people buy
what they like, and they like what they know, and they prefer to understand
rather than stand in awe. All of this she delivers in a witty, approachable
style that demystifies marketing and makes for a highly entertaining, very
educational experience whether in the conference room, classroom, tasting
room or board room. |
