San Rafael, Calif.—Wine industry media and marketing company Wines & Vines has completed its merger with the quarterly journal Practical Winery & Vineyard, both based in San Rafael, Calif. Beginning with the April issue, the editorial content of Practical Winery & Vineyard will appear in a special section within each monthly print edition of Wines & Vines, in its digital editions and on its website.

The merger will bring the best parts of PWV to the pages, website and digital editions of Wines & Vines. Don Neel, publisher and editor of PWV, will continue to source and edit content about grape and wine production for the new section using the same strict standards that have earned wide respect among grapegrowers and winemakers for 33 years. The two companies have been collaborating on circulation management and already were linked by ownership under parent company Wine Communications Group of Sonoma, Calif.

Winter 2013 is the final PWV issue to be published independently. Existing subscribers to PWV will begin receiving the Wines & Vines print edition each month and should expect the same quantity and quality of information and advice about grapegrowing and winemaking topics they have enjoyed from PWV, plus the additional content expertise of Wines & Vines. In turn, Wines & Vines readers will benefit from the insights of the expert wine industry columnists in viticulture and enology that PWV has worked with for many years.

Those PWV subscribers who are also Wines & Vines subscribers will have their W&V subscriptions extended by the length of their remaining PWV term.

PWV editorial content will reach an increased audience, because of Wines & Vines’ larger circulation, and that circulation will grow significantly with the addition of the PWV readers. PWV readers also will receive a much larger flow of information due to Wines & Vines’ greater frequency. Plus, for the first time PWV article archives will be available in full online. To start with, the back issues of 2011 and 2012 will be searchable online starting in April, when the first issue of the merged magazines launches. Subscribers have requested this capability for some time.

Wines & Vines has the longest track record of any wine industry magazine—published since 1919—but it is very up to date on content delivery. The publishing industry’s evolution from pure print to a blend of digital and print requires that all publications have the level of strong technology capabilities that Wines & Vines now offers. It has a wider swath of wine industry readers and reaches them with more diverse and convenient formats, including digital editions for the web and mobile devices, email newsletters, a very active website and social media.

Wines & Vines focuses on winemaking, grapegrowing and wine marketing topics for the North American wine industry, with emphases on regional coverage and boutique wineries. Its new circulation including PWV will total 8,300, with more than 50% on the West Coast and the remaining readership distributed widely in other regions.

Well-known as the publisher of the Wines & Vines Directory/Buyers Guide in print and fully searchable online, the company has increased its editorial content and marketing services aggressively during the past five years in multiple media. Several new offerings stem from proprietary and partner-enabled market research on wineries, vineyards, direct-to-consumer shipments, wine flash sites and off-premise sales.