Anyone who’s followed me for more than five minutes knows I have two great loves: community and wine. I’ve always treated them as if they were separate hobbies. One I do for a paycheck, the other… I’ll eventually do for a paycheck, maybe?
But what if they’re basically the same darn thing?
I shall make my argument.
1. Terroir is everything.
Same grape, different dirt, completely different wine. A Pinot Noir from Burgundy and one from Willamette Valley, Oregon are technically siblings, but they would not recognize each other at a family reunion. Like not even slightly.
Community works the same way. Same platform, same playbook, different company, completely different result. Your forum gives the flavors and aromas of your customers, your product, and whatever strange culture your founders left in the soil. Which is why that “proven community framework” from somebody’s conference talk tasted so damn funky when you poured it at your company. It was grown somewhere else.
2. It takes years… and nobody wants to hear that.
New vines don’t produce anything worth bottling for three or four years. Leadership, meanwhile, would like a thriving community by Q2 after you launched mid-Q1.
Imagine walking into a vineyard in January and asking for a Grand Cru by that spring. The winemaker would laugh (or chase) you out of the tasting room. Community managers also get the same question - albeit for super users and wildly impressive engagement - but we don’t usually get to laugh or chase you away.
3. Most of the work happens where nobody’s looking.
Pruning. Waiting. Checking the weather obsessively. Scrubbing tanks. Guests see the tasting room, the pretty labels, the guy explaining the oaky notes. Nobody books a tour of the part where someone hoses out a fermentation vat (unless you’re a wine nerd like me).
That’s our report queue. That’s our tagging cleanup and our onboarding flow and the eleven Slack threads it took to get a badge approved. Unglamorous, essential, invisible.
4. Not every bottle is a special occasion.
Some interactions are a $150 Barolo you’ve been saving for an anniversary. Most of them are the Tuesday night bottle of $8.99 Beaujolais you grabbed on the way home from Trader Joe’s.
The quick “thanks, that fixed it” reply is Tuesday wine. It doesn’t need a case study. It counts anyway, and it’s most of what keeps the lights on.
5. Everyone’s an expert after one class.
Take a single wine course and suddenly you’re swirling at dinner and announcing that the Sancerre is “a bit closed on the nose; definitely tasting the limestone from the soil.”
Launch a single community and suddenly you have very strong opinions about Discourse vs. Gainsight.
Ironically I’m more humble these days about wine (after a few certifications proving I know nothing) and community (after nearly 20 years of still always learning).
6. One corked bottle ruins the whole night.
Cork taint makes wine smell like wet cardboard and a damp basement. Really delightful stuff. But it’s usually one bottle out of the case… and yet the whole table walks away thinking less of the winery.
One toxic thread does the same thing. One unchecked member, one ugly exchange left standing too long, and the whole community gets a reputation. Your moderation policy is your quality control. Treat it that way.
7. Good ones age, bad ones turn to vinegar.
Wine with structure (tannin, acid, balance) gets more interesting with time. Wine built on fruit and hype tastes great for six months and then goes flat, or worse.
Communities with structure age well too: clear norms, real ownership, a few members who’d keep the lights on if you went on vacation. Communities built on a launch-day sugar rush don’t make it to their second birthday.
Pour me another glass, will ya?