V. Sattui Winery is launching six new micro-websites simultaneously to update the world on how multi-faceted the winery is. “We wanted to communicate in short artful bursts of information and give people an internet destination for what we offer,” explains Winery President Tom Davies. “People are restless and don’t have a lot of time---they may be looking for a Napa Valley winery that’s affordable to visit (www.affordablenapavalley.com) or one whose wines win the most gold medals (www.napavalleygold.com) or one where they can bring their pets (www.petfriendlywinery.com) or one where they can get married (www.greatnapaweddings.com) or one with enormous picnicking and prepared food choices (www.picnicnapavalley.com) or one that celebrates two of us having fun doing ‘virtual’ tastings (www.vsattuiwineguys.com),” he says. “We are literally all of those things and our new flock—or is it a fleet?!--of micro-sites convey our many messages in a fun and easy-to-digest way,” he adds.

Website designer Julia Belshaw of J. Red Digital Arts designed the microsites. “The winery can focus on one message at a time with this technique of simultaneously launching a number of web microsites,” she says. “Using a blog format allows the winery to update the content frequently and frees them to show a friendly, witty face to their visitors--something often difficult to achieve within the confines of a large corporate website,” she adds. “Just as the Internet has become increasingly crowded, so also have many companies’ sites become hard to negotiate, given the amount of detail a business offers. A microsite prevents an important message from being lost in a forest of web pages .”

Each of the microsites has a unique twist, whether it’s a pet word-search puzzle or the option to tell your own “I was married at Sattui” story or a picnic matching game. “People search for wineries to visit with different criteria in mind,” Davies says, “and these online ‘destinations’ will answer questions for people looking for a very specific and personal angle as they plan their time in wine country,” he adds.

"No other winery that I know of has taken a multi-site approach to promoting themselves," says Michael E. Duffy, a Sonoma County-based technology consultant. "It's a technique which leverages the fact that people often come to the Web with a need, not with a particular business--or winery--in mind. V. Sattui is breaking new ground by featuring the breadth of their offerings with individual sites," he adds. Duffy is a respected commentator on winery websites, blogs, and online wine marketing at his blog, http://blog.winerywebsitereport.com/