Why are there so many awful winery names?

And how to avoid the trend

Heard while driving a friend through Sonoma County:

“Why are there so many awful winery names? Who thinks of these names?”

It’s crazy to me that there are so many winery names that are difficult to pronounce (in any language), or easy to pronounce but make no sense, when the name of the winery, brand and vineyard are so incredibly important. These are the names that customers use to remember your wines, and how they tell their friends about the amazing wine they just had. Choosing a name poorly can have a significant effect on sales. If customers can’t remember your name, or if they mispronounce your name, you’ve lost future sales.

I know this for a fact because I once had a wine brand called Libelula. The wines scored well, but no one (even native Spanish speakers), could pronounce it reliably. People who loved the wines would describe it as: the one with the blue label and the dragonfly. Unfortunately you couldn’t search that description online and end up at my winery website. This resulted in single sales, great reviews, much fewer follow up sales and very few recommendations.

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