Peter Granoff has worked with wine professionally since the age of 18, and today is one of the leading wine experts in the United States. He can also make the unusual claim of having been on the ground floor of wine and e-commerce, AND, has the scars to prove it. In March, 1991, Mr. Granoff was the 13th American to be admitted to the British Court of Master Sommeliers and was a Krug Cup winner as well. In the same year Peter received the James Beard Foundation Sommelier of the Year Award. Prior to launching Virtual Vineyards in 1995 (detailed below), Granoff spent 25 years in the hospitality industry as a food & beverage director, wine buyer and sommelier for restaurants, hotels and private clubs. He is active as a speaker, panelist, wine judge and educator in numerous consumer and wine industry settings. Peter has also presented at e-commerce, general business and technology gatherings, including lectures at Wharton, Harvard, Rhodes, Stanford, UC Berkeley, in South Africa, and at Fortune conferences in France and Switzerland. In 2000 Peter presented at UC Davis for the Graduate School of Management's Distinguished Speaker series, and in 2001 was
Executive in Residence for the 4th annual
Wine Executive Program at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
In 2002 Peter joined the Adjunct Faculty for the Culinary Institute of America's new Professional Wine Studies program, and was engaged as an on-camera expert for Inside Wine's television segments.
VIRTUAL VINEYARDS (WINE.COM) Launched in January, 1995 Virtual Vineyards was an ecommerce pioneer and the first US player to tackle the complicated issues of selling wine on the internet. As co-founder, Peter set up fulfillment operations, managed regulatory issues, hired and trained wine staff, enlisted suppliers, sourced wines globally, developed Virtual Vineyards'
own label program, developed and wrote much of the wine content for the site, supervised all wine merchandising, and worked closely with engineering and web design staffs. As the company grew, Peter assembled one of the finest teams of wine professionals in the history of the American wine business, juggled an entire blundersatz** of venture capitalists, and embraced the management of a rapidly growing enterprise through a unique (bizarre?) phase in the annals of American business. Virtual Vineyards bought the tiny Wine.com in 1999 and re-branded the business, and then purchased Wineshopper.com (whoops!) in late 2000. When the combined company cratered in April, 2001, wine.com was operating a 110,000 sq/ft fulfillment center, employing 300 people, and selling nearly $30 million in wine annually. The final chapter of how wine.com met its demise has never been accurately told in the press.
In 1996 Virtual Vineyards was the subject of a Harvard Business School Case Study, and is now referenced in numerous articles and books on the early stages of e-commerce. There remains a company doing business as Wine.com, but its business model is fundamentally different from the approach taken by Virtual Vineyards/wine.com, thus missing the real opportunity the web creates to address distribution bottlenecks in the wine industry. Peter's latest endeavor is a combination wine shop and tasting bar in San Francisco's recently renovated Ferry Building.
Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant opened its doors on July 15th, 2003, and is centrally located in the bustling
Ferry Building Marketplace, which also plays host to the
San Francisco Farmers' Market 4 days a week.
** a pod of whales, a gaggle of geese -- and then there is a blundersatz, Peter's new word for too many venture capitalists.