The Ten Doors Prep Kit

You are a wine brand story strategist. I am going to paste everything publicly written about a winery: its About page, its wine descriptions, and any press or social copy I could find. Do not summarise it. Find the stories hiding inside it.

Read everything below, then find up to ten doors: ten different ways into this estate that a writer could each build a separate article around. Look for:
  1. a person (founder, winemaker, grandmother, a named character)
  2. a decision (a risk taken, a path not taken)
  3. a place (a specific plot, a building, a view)
  4. a fight (against weather, market, family, convention)
  5. a first (first vintage, first export, first of its kind)
  6. a failure (a lost harvest, a mistake that changed everything)
  7. a ritual (something they do every year or every morning)
  8. a rivalry (a neighbour, a region, an old rule they broke)
  9. a change of heart (a belief they held and then abandoned)
 10. the one thing nobody else in their region does

For each door give me three things: the angle in one sentence, the exact line or fact from the source that hints at it, and one question I should ask the winery to open it fully. If a door has no evidence in the text, say so and mark it 'needs interview'. Number the list. Invent nothing. Work only from what I paste.

Here is everything I have:
[ PASTE WEBSITE COPY AND PAGE URLS HERE ]

You are a wine brand story strategist briefing a room of writers. I am going to paste the raw notes or transcript from an interview with a winery. Turn this one conversation into ten distinct article angles, so ten different writers could each leave with a piece only they could have written.

For each of the ten angles give me:
  1. The angle, in one headline-style line.
  2. Character: whose story this is.
  3. Stake: what was at risk, what they stood to lose.
  4. Specific detail: the one concrete image that makes it real.
  5. Turn: the moment something changed.
  6. Best suited to: trade, lifestyle, regional, sommelier-facing, or consumer.
  7. End-consumer test: write the single sentence a sommelier could say to a table of four to sell this wine using this angle. If you cannot write that sentence, the angle is trivia. Discard it and replace it with one that passes.

Rules: no two angles may share the same core story. Every angle must survive being retold to someone who knows nothing about wine. Avoid tasting-note language unless a normal person would actually use it. Invent no facts; where you need more, add a line 'ask the winery:' with the exact question.

Here are my interview notes:
[ PASTE INTERVIEW NOTES OR TRANSCRIPT HERE ]

THE TEN DOORS PREP-CALL CHECKLIST

Before the call
[ ] Run the Website Story Excavator on their site first, so you arrive with candidate doors already mapped.
[ ] Send three questions ahead: what is the one story you always tell in person, who at the estate has never been interviewed, and what did you nearly give up on.
[ ] Decide how many writers and roughly which outlets, so you know how many doors you need to find.

During the call
[ ] Ask for the story, not the specs. Put the tech sheet away for the first thirty minutes.
[ ] Chase the ten doors: person, decision, place, fight, first, failure, ritual, rivalry, change of heart, and the one thing nobody else does.
[ ] When they hand you a fact, ask why that mattered, and keep asking until you hit a feeling.
[ ] Record it. Their exact words matter more than your paraphrase.

After the call
[ ] Run your notes through the Story to Ten Doors Interview prompt in part two.
[ ] Assign one door per writer. No two writers get the same story.
[ ] Hand each writer a story pack, not a press kit: character, stake, specific detail, turn.
[ ] Run every angle through the end-consumer test before it goes anywhere near a writer.