Twenty years ago on July 4, 1997, Jennifer and Paul Tincknell founded Tincknell & Tincknell, Wine Sales and Marketing Consultants, in Healdsburg, Sonoma County. Tincknell & Tincknell assist clients with business, marketing, and sales strategies, and provide marketing support, packaging design, and industry advice, including start-up assistance. Over the last two decades, the firm has assisted over 100 clients from around the world, from the Qingdao Fushiwang Putaojiu Company in Pingdu, China, to Amphorae Wines in Kerem Maharal, Israel. Beyond wineries, clients have included industry related businesses such as cork and barrel suppliers, wine importers, packaging suppliers, local charities, and industry marketing organizations.
Notable projects over the firm’s history include authoring a marketing audit and five-year, mid-term marketing plan for Louis M. Martini Winery in 1999; developing the brand positioning, packaging art direction, and inaugural product style for the launch of Black Box Wines in 2002; assisting in the start-up and directing national sales, 2000-2006, for Via Pacifica Imports, a pioneering importer of New Zealand wines; researching alternative wine packaging and drafting a market feasibility study for the Daiwa Can Company of Japan in 2014; and researching the New Mexico wine industry and crafting a five-year, mid-term marketing plan for New Mexico Wine (New Mexico Wine & Grape Growers Association) in 2016. Tincknell & Tincknell have assisted several dozens of wineries and local companies with designing and implementing their websites, including ecommerce, since 1997. Their own website, www.marketingwine.com, was among the first million sites on the World Wide Web.
Current clients include the largest biodynamically certified, single vineyard operation in Sonoma County, Eco Terreno Wines; artisan start-up Flambeaux Wines in Dry Creek Valley; the 14th-century estate of Villa di Geggiano near Siena, Tuscany; and the boutique J Wrigley Vineyards of McMinnville, Oregon.
The two partners, Jennifer and Paul Tincknell, a husband and wife team, each have over 35 years in the wine industry. Fluent in French and Italian from attaining major and minor degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, Jennifer has traveled extensively throughout the major wine regions in Europe, South America, and New Zealand. She worked for wine importers Bercut Vandervoort and Company in the 1980’s, and was the Vice President and National Sales Manager for Wine Distributors and Wine Imports based in San Francisco in the early 1990’s. Her consulting practice prior to Tincknell & Tincknell included Hanzell Vineyards, Private Cellars/Four Vines Inc., and Dufour & Company.
Paul’s experience prior to Tincknell & Tincknell includes retail wine sales (Partners In Wine, Pacific Wine Company, and Draper & Esquin Wine Merchants), on-premise beverage management (Hilton Hotel Ann Arbor), and winery marketing and sales as Assistant to the Director of Sales and Marketing at Chateau Montelena, and Senior Marketing and Direct Sales Manager at Cuvaison Winery in the 1990’s.
“We have been very fortunate to work on an amazingly wide variety of projects, which keeps work and life interesting. We never shy away from something new, offbeat, or different – like wine pouches, new tech, or wines made from other plants – because every idea and project keeps expanding the wine industry to new people, those joining our industry and those enjoying wine. I think that can-do outlook accounts for our successful 20 years, and keeps T&T current in today’s industry,” notes Jennifer Tincknell.