The principle: time, not spend
What a client remembers is how long you spent with them and how little of it was about the deal. A six-hour day in the Hill Country, with a drive each way where the conversation wanders, does more for a relationship than a dinner at three times the per-head cost. Build the day around unhurried time together and let the business come up on its own, which it will, usually in the van on the way home.
Formats that work for a client group
A full day · The one we would choose
A private wine day for six to ten
A Sprinter picks up the client and your team at their hotel. Three wineries, reserved and seated, poured by the winery's own people. Lunch at long tables. A patio at golden hour. Door to door, nobody drives, and the day has no agenda beyond being good. Dripping Springs keeps it to six hours; Fredericksburg makes it a full day with a Main Street dinner at the end. A tasting challenge between the two companies, with a bottle on the line, is optional and always popular.
Two hours · For the client who knows wine
The seated tasting with the winemaker
Some Hill Country wineries run small, seated, paired tastings led by the people who made the wine. For a client who collects, or who thinks Texas cannot make serious wine, a private table at one of these is a quiet flex. Pair it with a long lunch nearby.
An evening or a morning · Austin's standard moves
A suite or a tee time
A suite at Q2 Stadium for Austin FC, a box at Moody Center, a round at Barton Creek or Austin Country Club. Reliable, and for the right client exactly right. The limit is that the event is the focus and the conversation fits around it. Good as the second day of a visit, not the whole of it.
October · For the client worth the trouble
Formula 1 weekend
The US Grand Prix at Circuit of The Americas is the biggest client-entertainment weekend on the Austin calendar and the hardest to execute: hotels triple, cars are scarce, the traffic to the circuit is a known problem. If you are doing it, book everything in the spring, and plan a quiet Hill Country day on the Friday or the Monday as the counterweight.
Summer afternoons · Four to twelve
A boat on Lake Austin
A private boat with a captain, out of the marinas on Lake Austin, from late afternoon into the evening. Cool, informal, and nobody can leave early, which is the point. Pair with dinner on the water afterward.
Two hours · The baseline
The dinner, done properly
If it is going to be dinner, make it a private room and make it somewhere with a point of view: a chef's table, a tasting menu, a restaurant the client could not have found alone. Austin has plenty. And arrange the car, so the evening has a beginning and an end that you control.
A client day in the Hill Country, hour by hour
- 110:00 — Pickup at the client's hotel. Coffee on board, a short drive where the conversation finds its level.
- 210:45 — First winery, a seated tasting led by the winery team. Nobody is at a bar.
- 312:15 — Lunch, long table, somewhere with a view. Order for the table; do not hand out menus.
- 42:00 — Second winery. If the two companies want to compete, this is where the blind tasting happens.
- 53:30 — Third winery, a patio, golden hour, nothing left on the schedule. This is the hour the day was built for.
- 65:00 — Back to the hotel, or straight to dinner downtown, with a case of whatever the client liked in the back.
The etiquette nobody writes down
- Match their pace, not yours. If the client is tasting lightly, the host tastes lightly. Water is always on the table.
- Ask about non-drinkers in advance, discreetly, and make sure the day works for them without anyone noticing it was arranged.
- Do not pitch. If the client raises business, engage fully; if they do not, let the day be the day.
- Pay for everything invisibly. Tastings arranged ahead, lunch on one account, no card ever on the table.
- Send them home with something. The bottle they liked at the second winery, already in the van.
- Keep the group small. Past ten, the host cannot talk to everyone and the client notices who got the attention.
- Make the logistics disappear. One vehicle, one driver, one host who knows the plan. The client should never wonder what happens next.
Dripping Springs or Fredericksburg for a client
Dripping Springs when the client is in town for one day and has a flight. It is thirty-five minutes from downtown, the day is six hours, and they can still make dinner. Fredericksburg when the client is here for two or three days and the Hill Country can be the whole of one of them: the bigger estates, the longer drive, the town for the evening. Either way the vehicle collects them at the hotel and returns them to it.
Austin Wine Car
A day your client will bring up on the next call
Tell us who is coming, where they are staying and what they like to drink. We will build a private day around them, and you will get to be a guest at it.