Really Grape
About the Client
Really Grape is a European wine experiences directory built to connect English-speaking travelers and expats with the independent winemakers and authentic wine experiences that most tourists never find. The platform serves two distinct audiences: wine lovers looking to book tastings, attend events, and join a curated wine subscription — and the small European wineries who want to reach them.
What they needed
The original design for this project was created by Current Design Studio.
The founder behind Really Grape has a big vision for the future of this platform. She’s full of ideas, always thinking about what the brand could do next, and moves fast. Her old website was constantly struggling to keep up. Every new feature request ran into a wall. The answer was either a hard no, or a yes that came with so many workarounds the end result barely worked the way she envisioned.
The website was running on 30+ active plugins and a limiting directory theme. The back end had become genuinely difficult for her team to navigate day-to-day. Content updates were clunky, the site was slowing down, and the infrastructure was getting in the way of the business rather than supporting it.
The goal was an intricate platform that’s lean, fast, and flexible.
What we did
Four User Types. Four Custom Dashboards.
Really Grape serves four completely different types of users — wine lovers, winery partners, Sippers Club members, and site admins — all on the same website. Each one has their own private dashboard built for exactly what they need. When someone logs in, the site figures out who they are and sends them exactly where they need to go.
Wineries manage their entire presence from the front end.
Wineries interested in listing on Really Grape go through a guided sign-up process: they register on the site, complete a checkout to activate their listing, and fill out their full winery profile through a multi-step form. From there, everything is in their hands.
With their own private dashboard they can manage everything: view incoming bookings, add and edit experiences/events, message guests directly, track commission earnings, and update their winery profile. Creating a new listing is as simple as filling out a form. It’s a full partner management portal built directly into the site.
Custom Events Calendar + Event Publishing via Google Sheets
Visitors can browse Really Grape’s events on a fully custom interactive calendar, flipping between a month-by-month calendar view and a traditional list view depending on how they prefer to browse. Past events are visually muted so upcoming experiences are easy to find, and on mobile the calendar automatically switches to a clean agenda layout.
Behind the scenes, managing all those events is just as clean. Instead of logging into WordPress to add new events, the Really Grape team adds them to a Google spreadsheet. A custom sync script picks up each new entry, creates the event on the site, automatically generates a product for any paid events, and publishes it to the calendar — without anyone ever logging in to the backend of WordPress.
Sippers Club members get their own private hub.
The Sippers Club is Really Grape’s monthly wine subscription — bottles delivered to their door each month, live guided tasting, and a community of fellow wine enthusiasts. Members gain access to the Sipper Hub: a private, members-only area of the site where they can find their tasting materials, replay past virtual tastings, and access member resources. It’s available the moment a subscription activates, and exclusive to active members.
Simplified Content Management for the Really Grape Team
