BACKGROUND: ZAP as we know it now was founded by Margaret Smith.  Zinfandel Advocates & Producers became a 501(c)(3) non-profit association which organizes seminars, educational programs and tastings at wineries and other settings across the U.S. to explain the uniqueness of the Zinfandel grape. ZAP now has almost 200 `Producer' members (wineries & growers of Zinfandel) and 5,000 `Advocates,' consumers from across the country who are not in the wine business. This constituency is unique in the crowded landscape of wine-related groups because it unites producers, the trade and the public, all of whom express a very specific enthusiasm and exuberance about Zinfandel.

geo: The logo that's used today?

Margaret: Yes. Because of Kathy's graciousness, she let the organization have the logo. That's a great logo.

Dr. Seps called me because I'd put on a conference for Women For WineSense. His wife Sigrid had gone to the conference and said "Maybe Margaret Smith could do a wine tasting in San Francisco for this ZAP group." Everyone in the group had paid $500 to be involved in the organization, and by the time they all got together they had something like $4,000, which they thought was a huge amount. My background is event planning, and in San Francisco, $4,000 won't get you very much, sorry. So they asked me if I would if I would put on the tasting, and I said, "No, because it's not going to do you any good. But if you want to have something that's going to continue on, you need to have an organization, you've got to have follow-up, and what does ZAP mean?"

They said, "Zinfandel Advocates and Producers." I asked "What are advocates ?," and they said "People that enjoy Zinfandel."

"Does that mean consumers?"

"Yeah, I guess so..."

They had never thought of consumers being involved. The name was clever, and the Producers, that was easy so I said, "OK, let's start an organization with the consumers and the producers." At at later time Joel Peterson commented "Yeah, Consumers really want to join, they want to be there." Joel was consumer oriented in a lot of ways.

Dr. Seps said, "OK, you give me a proposal." I talked to him and I had a proposal for how this organization would run, how it would have a consumer section and a producer section and get the two together. I got a call back, and Jerry said, "I've got ZAP members and they want to meet you, so would you come up for dinner?"

I had never met Dr. Seps and he didn't know any of my background. I walk in and I see Joel Peterson whom I've known for a long time. There were at least five people there. Basically what happened was that I knew a lot of these people that were in the ZAP group. When I come in there were big hugs and greetings. Jerry asked Sigrid to take me to the library so that the men could decide whether they wanted to have me do the organization. I'd made my presentation as being an Executive Director of a group. I was looking for a job, let's face it! They came back and said,
"Well, we decided that it would be a good idea to hire you."

So basically, I formed an organization so that I could be paid a little bit!

Dr. Seps wanted to have this very formal high end tasting in San Francisco. We're talking 1992, in March. The 1990 Zins were just out and this was the first really good vintage of Zinfandel, I mean really good. Zinfandel at that point was not selling. Except for those of us who like it, it had no caché for the new wine drinker who had just learned to pronounce Cabernet and Chardonnay.  ZAP was going to the Meridian Hotel, which was really hot at that time and very expensive, to do
the wine tasting. As an event planner, I knew there were problems with the ABC (the Alcohol Beverage Control of California). In order to have an event that public people pay for, it has to be sponsored by a non-profit 501 (c)(3) very specifically. Kent Rosenblum was the treasurer and he had sent in all the paperwork to the ABC and had paid the fees and the ABC called me and said, "You don't have a 501 (c) (3) number. We'll shut you down." The call came on Thursday and the tasting was on Saturday!

Roger: They also wanted 8 1/2 x 10 glossy pictures of the venue where the event was to take place, and Margaret said, "It's a hotel! We're supposed to give you color pictures of a hotel?!"  She got past that. Well, things work out, and I happen to be President of a small non-profit organization and I had a non-profit number. So I dug around and found it and suddenly that group became the sponsor of the first ZAP tasting. And because the first ZAP tasting was such a roaring success, we gave them I think $50 out of the non-profits that we made, just to kind of say thank
you! But this was only the beginning of a whole bunch of things that I thought was JUST the most LUDICROUS thing Margaret had ever gotten herself into because it looked like this was the apex of an event that was going to go downhill from there!

Margaret: So we invited the trade, we invited the press, we invited consumers. Thank heavens for Grgich Hills who had joined ZAP before the tasting. Grgich Hills sent out their newsletter and said they were going to be pouring their Zin at this tasting at the Meridian Hotel. It fit them perfectly; Meridian, class act and that was great. That was where most of our consumers came from, all 25 or 30 of them! We had 22 wineries, all the principles were there, and I thought, "This is interesting, THEY DIDN'T KNOW EACH OTHER!"

Roger: Afterwards, I didn't want to tell her it was a flat loser, but that's what it was. And Margaret said, "No, this is terrific!" I said, "Terrific?" She said, "I realized these people don't know one another. Ravenswood, Rosenblum and Ridge, all together, and THEY HAD NOT MET!" They got to taste each other's wine, they got to talk about Zinfandel. There wasn't anything going on and that was all they had in common!

Margaret: And I realized getting together was what was going to make Zinfandel work, because before every tasting and before every meeting, they tasted each other's wines. It was really interesting to see how those wines that were not as good got better, because winemakers had a chance to taste only Zinfandel. It was never done before. I mean in the whole wine industry.

If it hadn't been for Shirley Sobon had her grown children helping with registration and helping us, I could never have managed.... At that point, I said, "Volunteers, I need volunteers!" I mean this whole thing was on the fly, because it had never been done before.

The next time, we went to Fort Mason, we signed people up at that time to be advocates and then we started a newsletter to get the advocates there. It was very simple. It was guerilla marketing, it wasn't anything showy. We thought we had to have some levity here, so we put in the newsletter, "Zinfandel, the wine you can pronounce!"

Anyway, we survived those crises and I thought I'm just going to do what I want to do because I'd had years of experience and I'm not going to do something on my own that I don't enjoy doing.

So even though we only had 25 sign up at the first tasting, the enthusiasm was incredible, and I knew if ZAP was going to go, it was going to go with the consumers. ZAP started building. I also knew that I couldn't count on the wineries alone to pay my fees. Half the income in the 1st two or three years was from consumers and half was wineries. Wineries paid their money and that was it.
They didn't do anything more.

Roger: One ingenious thing about ZAP was that it was based on one winery, one fee, one vote.

Margaret: Now that was Jerry Seps creation, and he wanted it to be democratic. So Storrs has the same vote as Sutter Home. It was a great concept.

geo: Was the concept of barrel samples there from the beginning?

Margaret: The producers wanted to do that and I would say that was probably Jerry Seps idea, because he did it for a couple of years. The Carneros people had done a Carneros Pinot Noir, and Jerry said "Let's do a combined barrel of Zinfandel," and that's how that got started.

The 1st tasting was in March; the 2nd tasting was in January because we were looking for a January date, and I am thinking marketing, marketing, marketing. When do people release their wines? In March you had Cabernet going out, and after our experience with the Meridian, we needed to go to the Federal property which was Fort Mason, because you don't have to deal with the ABC, and you could also sell your wines. We went to the Fort Mason Center, and then it was, "When do you do the tasting?" The only free time the winery owners could be at the tasting was in January. So pragmatically we said, "OK January is when we will do it. You can't have it too close to Christmas, so you have it the last weekend. Well let's do it on Sunday." None of us who were planning considered this until Kent Rosenblum said, "Isn't that Super Bowl Sunday?" Just quietly asking the question. And we went, "Oops! Well, how about Saturday?" So we booked in for Saturday at the Conference Center. It had been growing, so instead of 20 wineries there were 40,
and what we did was to use one room in the Conference Center for a slide show of appellations on areas. The Sierra Foothills had a 20 minute slide show, Dry Creek Valley talked about their area, and we tried to make it as educational as possible, because I knew it's consumer oriented, therefore it's got to be educational.

Allan: My first tasting was the 2nd one. We were in the Conference Center in Fort Mason and what was interesting was we had the main room with a smaller room adjacent to it, which is probably 1/4th the space. Well since the wineries were arranged alphabetically, Ridge and Ravenswood and Rosenblum were all in that room, and it was gridlock. From the time the doors opened, you couldn't get in that room, and once you got in the room, you couldn't get out, and you couldn't get within 15 deep of any of those tables. It was really quite something.

Margaret: But everyone was in good humor. And what happened was, Allan and all of the consumers that came in were saying, "Tell me more about your wine!" And the producers are saying, "What?! Somebody's interested in my wine?! They're not telling me how I should make it, they're interested in how I make it?!" And they said, "I LIKE this! They are knowledgeable people and they care about what I am doing!" And so, for the next 4 tastings, all the principles would be there, the winemakers themselves, and that is unusual for tastings.

I was pleased because I had a concept, I thought it would work and it did.

Kim: When did the membership skyrocket?

Margaret: Well the tasting kept growing, and I'd always be afraid that nobody would be there. We would have crowds and sellouts, so we'd go to a bigger place. Each year it would double. In marketing terms, you need to hear the word Zinfandel 7 times before it sinks in, and my whole mission was to get the word out. And when the word got out more and more and more, it built more and more. So it went geometrically and the tastings kept increasing.

So we went from the Conference Center to the Herbst Pavillion and then 2 years to the Festival Pavilion, the big place.

Allan: If I may, another aspect of the organization and a reason for the organization's success is something that needs to be addressed, and that is the core group, the volunteers locally and the series of events that Margaret was able to coordinate in the early years, some of the most wonderful wine events I have ever been to. I remember an event that Margaret coordinated at Demptos Napa Cooperage, there were 50 or 60 of us there. They put on a barrel making demonstration for us and we tasted the same wine from different oak treatments and had a wonderful simple supper afterwards where everybody brought a different bottle of Zinfandel. It
was an extraordinary evening.

And I have to tell you about the other event at Souverain, which was just as the restaurant was closing. It was essentially for the press, but I was one of the few Advocates that was permitted to be there. It was a splendid luncheon and there was a table 8 foot long and four foot wide end to end with bottles of Zinfandel. And we sat at a table with 8 or 10 people and there were 2 winemakers and 2 people from the press there, and THOSE are the events that made ZAP so magical.

And the core of the group in that regard has not changed, they're very real people, very friendly, and it's not unlike the internet wine community.