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Posts tagged napa

One Down

Sep28
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So we had our meeting today with ABC in San Francisco. Getting there turned out to be fairly eventful as a couple of blocks of market were closed because of a bomb threat on a muni bus, of course the bus was parked about a half block down from the building we had our meeting inside of. Additionally, the parking lot we had planned to use was blocked off as part of the perimeter. After getting out of gridlock and being extremely happy that we left with plenty of time to spare, we made it to the building, stopped for a cookie and headed up to our meeting.

Everyone at ABC was very nice and friendly and the process was fairly simple. Our paperwork was all in order, except for a short letter that we were unaware of. Of course, any time you’re dealing with a staff that is completely overworked and over extended, being prepared and friendly yourself greatly increases your chances of a positive outcome. We were cognizant of that going into the meetings and were happy we took the time to try and put ourselves in their place afterward.

Murphy's

After the meeting we asked the security guard in the building for a lunch recommendation and he sent us over to Murphy’s Pub which was a few blocks away. I had a Hefeweizen and a tri tip sandwich which were both quite good, and frankly as good as I’d expect in San Francisco.

We finished the day by setting up our alcohol signs at our warehouse location which is really coming along. We have some final clean and set up to take care of, but the space is basically ready for us to install our air conditioning unit into.

Tomorrow brings a day in Napa. I’m greatly looking forward to it.

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What a Week It Will Be

Sep25
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So over the next couple of days I’ll be packing for my second major trip to Northern California since the launch of Uncorked Ventures. I’m looking forward to the trip for a number of reasons, it will certainly be busy but I’m sure on the way home on Sunday, we’ll be closer to shipping then we have been before.

Monday will be an interesting day. We have two meetings in SF to help get our permits moved along. Frankly I’m glad I can be there for them and I do agree with my business partner Matt in that these two meetings are going to be the most important part of the trip.

Tuesday morning we’re planning on heading out fairly early. We’ve debated doing some formal tastings with small producers we’re interested in, but given the number of wineries we have mutual interest in already, we may simply go and taste a few places with the intention of approaching them formally around the new year. Again, we won’t ever ship something we wouldn’t buy for our own cellars and getting out in the field is an important part of the wine club business. We don’t ever want to simply wait at the office and only work with suppliers that ship us samples, we want to be out there, literally looking for new, high quality wineries before anyone else knows about them.

Wednesday brings us the real reason for the trip and something I’m incredibly excited to have the opportunity to do. We’ll be working a day of harvest at Alpha Omega. Exactly what we’ll be doing, we honestly have no idea, but we have heard that Cab Franc and Merlot are close to ready to picked so given good temperatures over the weekend, we may get to be involved with some interesting red wine grapes.

For me personally, I’m also interested in having the chance to compare and contrast the set ups at Alpha Omega and Eagles Nest. I know the two wineries would both freely admit that they probably don’t have much in common and I honestly don’t expect to find much of anything in common at all, but I think it will continue to give me an idea of the challenges facing the wine industry and of course the triumphs.

I think the more I can understand the process and ultimately the concerns of winemakers and their staffs the better we’ll be able to tailor our business to insure our customers(both domestic and international) get the highest quality product each and every year no matter how good, or bad, the overall economy is.
Thursday brings a sort of family obligation, which I won’t mention here (it’s a good thing, that I’m happy to be there for) and then my wife will arrive on Friday.

All in all, I’m very excited for the trip….we should have plenty of pictures and blogs both during and after it has concluded.

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Mondovino-A review

Aug24
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

Mondovino

I honestly haven’t seen many wine movies(there aren’t many made) but the other day at Blockbuster I saw Mondovino on the shelf and thought that a wine movie might be interesting.

I hadn’t heard about it before my wife and I sat down to watch it and we didn’t realize it was documentary style until we took it out of the box. It’s a rather complicated documentary and the film makers intentionally leave out any real understandable storyline which to both of us made the work as a whole feel rather incomplete and after it was over left us wondering…….. What was the point?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHBPvgOO29M&hl=en&fs=1&]

Ok, so I probably don’t have a career coming as the next Syskel or Roper or Ebert….but I did enjoy parts of the movie.

I’m going to start by saying that every documentary filmaker or commentator has their point of view and his certainly comes through at points. To me, it seems that he is trying to make the point that large scale wineries/corporations like Mondavi, a few French examples such as Mas De Daumas Gassac, wine consultant Michel Rolland and wine critic Robert Parker are taking away from the artistry gained from small wineries and giving more and more power to larger companies.

I take issue with the premise on a couple of levels. One of his most clear examples is Opus One winery in Napa which is a joint venture between Mondavi and Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild. My wife was surprised when I told her that Opus One had been around since the late 70′s. If deals like this would have meant the end of the wine industry in both Burgundy and Napa…..why haven’t we seen many more(any more?) examples of this in the 30 years since? Opus One still only makes 1 wine- a Napa blend which has been highly rated by both critics and the general public in most releases.

Opus-One-Szmurlo

Secondly he seems to take issue with Robert Parker and his influence on the wine industry and the taste of consumers. I understand that this is going to be a major concern with wineries, but I have to admit that almost every wine drinker I know from the serious to the casual, seem to have similar tastes to Parker. If he were constantly rating wines highly that the wine consuming public didn’t like, then he would lose his following rather quickly and people would pay more attention to other publications which the filmaker seems to leave out for the most part, with a small reference of Wine Spectator and their 2M+ yearly readers.

050831_WW_RobertParkerJR_ex

Lastly there is the issue of Michel Rolland and the images of his lab in Bordeaux. The film repatedly shows him telling his clients to micro-oxygenate the barells.

From Wikipedia: Since the film, Rolland has said that he is “not a fan of micro-oxygenation. The film suggests I am. Some of my clients inquire about it. It can help in special conditions — if the tannins are fierce or hard, micro-oxygenation can make them softer and rounder. In certain countries with certain terroir, like Chile or Argentina, I may use it.” Wine Spectator’s James Suckling notes in an article about Rolland that “He is not a proponent of micro-oxidation in wine-making as some suggest, and never has been”.

Ok so outside of some artistic license that the film maker seems to have taken I will say that I took some things away from a few of the people shown in the movie:

Michel Rolland- Seems like a likeable guy who knows everyone who is anyone in the industry. His reputation and sense of humor come through quite a bit…frankly speaking he seems like an interesting guy who would be a good choice to meet for a glass of wine….or a beer.

Mondavi- I don’t subscribe to the view that Mondavi is the Wal-Mart of the wine industry. Frankly speaking I think they still make some very good wine and we need to be realistic about a company which was sold for over 1B dollars and the type of access a documentary filmaker is likely to receive. I’d assume that a press atache or PR person would be present for an interview with the family, especially if they don’t know the journalist. That being said….. is it still a family run business? Probably not, but that is ok too. Most vineyards(yes even in Napa and France) are family owned despite the size. They aren’t shown in a good light in the film, but I would hope that people would remember that they are only making business decisions(the film maker seems to want them to no longer look for profit, they are a publically traded company and need growth/profit for their shareholders) as well as their many charitable and civic projects throughout Northern California. To me, the Mondavi story is an interesting one in that one man and his family took a small winery and made it into a huge multinational corporation in about 40 years. That type of success I’m sure we’d all like to have a small part of.

Small French wineries- They definitely come off as the sympathic characters in the story, but I do want to take a couple of minutes and explain what terroir actually is, since they brought it up in every conversation throughout the film. Terroir is not simply the area where the grapes are grown, but is meant to take into account the culture of the people growing the wine as well as the history behind the bottle. To me, I love history…..but how do I taste that in the bottle? How can culture come through a bottle? I appreciate being able to cellar a wine for 15 years and then drink it…..but how many people across the world really have an adequate cellar space to do something like that? How many people have the disposable income?

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the so-called Americanisation of wine isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All those small wineries in France are still operating and we now could buy a bottle of their wine because of globalization. They haven’t been put out of the industry and frankly speaking having independent reviews of wine is a good thing. We need more critics, more wine blogs and more reviews….not less. I’m not willing to say that simply because old world wine regions have been around for a long time that they make the best wine anywhere in the world forever. Yes I like some of the complexity that comes with old vines…..but isn’t comparing and judging wine a good thing for the industry long term?

I think watching the movie made me think of today in some ways. Rampant globalization isn’t good for the wine industry if it means that small family producers are driven out of business….but I don’t see that happening. This afternoon my business partner is attending a family winemaker conference in San Francisco. I’m sure many of these producers have these same concerns of their French counterparts in the film. If they make outstanding wine, we’re very excited to work with them to get their products out to the general public. With more wine being consumed every day across the world these issues will continue to manifest themself, at Uncorked Ventures we love working with small producers that produce outstanding wine….we’ll always continue to do so, after all we’re a family business as well.

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Final Napa/Sonoma wrap up

Aug21
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So I’ve been asked to give a quick wrap up of our trip by a couple of friends and since both Matt and I have been straight forward about what wineries we were visiting…..I’ll be much more honest then I probably should be politically speaking.

We’re excited to partner with(yes in alphabetical order): Alpha Omega, Audelssa, Copain and K Vitners(from Washington state). We also have a couple of wineries from the Central Coast that we like and should work with as well. To be honest, from a wine sourcing standpoint we’re in excellent shape, at least for our September and October shipments.

After meeting with Cornerstone Cellars as well as Elizabeth Spencer I don’t anticipate moving forward at this time with either of them.

So what’s next on the Uncorked Ventures agenda? We’re constantly working on SEO stuff because we do believe that long term that is going to be a key to our business. Matt and I are also more activly engaging our personal networks to see what they’d like to see from our wine clubs. One thing that has come up repeatedly is a corporate gift either on an ongoing monthly basis or a one time gift for either a birthday or holiday.

Those conversations will lead to another section of our website(Gifts) which we plan to have completed by Tuesday of next week. You’ll also see some changes in format to the About Us page, the Other Media page as well as at least 3 new articles added to the Education section around that same time period.

Lastly we’re continuing to work toward sourcing new and exciting wineries. We have a few that we’re looking forward to speaking to on our next visit to Napa and Sonoma.

Specifically I think we may be a little Cabernet Sauvignon heavy right now, so a great Zinfandel producer would be nice…..of course I also love more Pinot Noir.

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Audelssa Tasting Experience

Aug20
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

I’ve talked at some depth about a couple of our winery visits in Napa, but as I’ve said we’re especially pleased to be moving forward with Copain (as Matt states very nicely in his blog) Alpha Omega and of course Audelssa.

Audelssa was a winery that I was looking forward to tasting with at the end of our trip for a couple of reasons. Like most of the other wineries on our list they are family owned and have been very open to talking with us. I’ve appreciated the time Dan gave me on the phone, including his stories of previous frustrations with exporting wine, especially the taxes and exploding prices involved, I’ve gotten to know Gloria a little bit from both Twitter and email (we are at a similar place, how do you correctly use Twitter to actually sell a product?). Lastly I am pretty much fascinated with their V 27 concept.

A quick run-down of V 27 and remember I worked in real estate for a while, so this is probably especially interesting to me. V 27 explained simply is a timeshare. They are building a Tuscan Villa on their mountain ranch (where they grow most of their grapes) after buying into the concept you’d have the right to stay there, I believe 4 weeks a year, plus the capacity to create your own red wine blend with their resident winemaker. Please don’t hold me to exact details, but I’ll say I think it is underpriced for what they’re charging….how many people do you know that would love to have a second home in wine country? What about a 2nd home that comes with the ability to bottle your own wine? Pretty interesting concept huh? I’m guessing you know more then a few people who would be interested depending on price….. and this is going to put you back well less, well much less, then a 1 bedroom condo in Napa/Sonoma. Plus, check out the view:

Audelssa view

Ok, so we were set to meet with Mike at their Glenn Ellen tasting room at 2pm on Thursday Aug 13th. Matt and I thought we would have plenty of time since our Copain tasting was at 10am and the trip, according to Mapquest, would take about 45 minutes. We left Copain around 12:30 thinking we’d still have time to get a quick lunch at a small cafe in Glen Ellen and decided we would take, what we thought at the time, the safe route to the tasting room. The safe route takes us down the 101 south to the 12 east and then right on Arnold Drive….more on that later.

After being on the 101 for some time and discussing our previous meetings, both the positive and negative, we realized that we were seeing signs such as Welcome to Petaluma. I’m not a bay area resident but I do now that Petaluma is about 30 miles north of San Francisco….we were suppose to catch the 12 somewhere around Santa Rosa…..which is 17 miles further north.

Needless to say that meant we weren’t going to have time for lunch…..so just make that right on Arnold. Well to make a long story short we missed Arnold…mostly because it isn’t marked Arnold from the 12….it’s marked Glen Ellen….yeah we should have known better, but what can you do.

In any case we arrived at the Audelssa tasting room at least an hour late, Mike was still waiting for us, which was quite kind especially because the air conditioning was being worked on. It was set up to be a bad tasting, we hadn’t eaten all day, were hot, tired and frustrated.

We sat down and got a chance to try all the different wines(which are all red) and we were impressed by all of them.

We started with the Tephora which is a $25 retail bottle, we hadn’t seen the price point yet and were guessing that it came in around $40 which has been backed up by other friends and family when we’ve had them try it as well, except one family member who named the $25 price tag exactly, but I’ll let her stay anonomous for now.

In fact we opened one of the bottles I brought home last night and my mother in law (who knows her high end wine, especially those of French varietals) said quite simply that for $25 she’d definitely buy more of this wine which is a nice compliment in my book. My wife agreed that it was certainly worth more then the $25 that Audelssa is charging. The bottle went very, very well with a steak from the BBQ and also with a couple of pieces of dark chocolate for dessert.

The two real standout wines for my palate were the Zephyr which is a right bank Rhone blend which was an interesting wine. I don’t believe I’ve tried any, at least not many, wines from Napa/Sonoma that come from volcanic soil like this one does. You definitely get a stronger fruit taste then you do from many Napa/Sonoma wines, we were told it is because the grapes are grown at altitude which leads to a much smaller yield and more intense flavors of the fruit then you get at the valley floor.

Lastly Matt and I both quite enjoyed the Summit estate wine. Like many great blends it takes some of the major parts of all its components like the Cab Sauv, Merlot and Cab Franc. I’d hesitate to try and describe it in detail here, but I will say that it is very nice wine. I’m having a moderate size dinner party over the weekend to finish up my 30th bday activities and will be bringing a bottle with me. Of anything we smelled the entire week, this was perhaps the best and I do enjoy complicated tastes in my wine….so this was a real winner and one that I’m looking forward to trying to figure out more about this weekend.

Overall Audelssa was a good tasting experience and offer a nice series of wines that we can feature in our wine clubs. Despite our experiences their Glen Ellen tasting room is pretty easy to find. At Uncorked Ventures we’re looking forward to working with Audelssa and featuring their wines in one of our first wine club shipments.

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Alpha Omega Meeting

Aug17
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

On Wednesday morning of last week(Aug 12th, 2009) Matt and I had the chance to sit down with Jean Hoefliger the lead winemaker and the general manager of Alpha Omega winery in Napa. To start Alpha Omega is in a great location on highway 29 in Rutherford, just a couple of miles south of St. Helena. They have recently opened a new tasting room which we were impressed with both in terms of architecture and the general feel inside.

The winery itself is much as you would expect with the vines surrounding the tasting room and some construction still going on, the one point of interest is definitely the fountains that they have between the tasting room and highway 29. It really is a beautiful location and the tasting room is situated in such a way, and slope, that you don’t notice highway 29 while you are there.

Alpha Omega Tasting Room

Alpha Omega Fountains

After arriving and meeting Jean he took us into a side room which had a long table with seats for approximately 10 people, leather chairs, rustic orange chandeliers which we later found out had been installed that morning and place settings for the three of us.

We spent the next 90 minutes or so talking with Jean about his wine-making philosophy, the history of Alpha Omega and how our two companies could work together in the future.

It was definitely a fascinating conversation especially because Jean’s passion for his work definitely shined through and he was completely at ease talking about everything from why they use only naturally occuring yeast, to how he was recruited to Alpha Omega, to his like for new ventures.

Our conversation was intermixed while tasting their 6 different wines, so I’ll go over conversation first and wine second.

Jean Inside the Tasting Room

A couple of things especially stick out in my mind:

*Alpha Omega uses only naturally occurring yeast in their wines. Instead of using one type of industrial yeast they allow their wines to spend more time in barrel (100% French because the grain is finer and imparts a more even flavor) in order to allow the 7 types of yeast that occur naturally on grapes to work without an outside addition.

* He tastes each wine daily as it is barrel to check and make sure it is being blended appropriately, it is definitely a more hands on approach then most winemakers use.

*98% of wine sold in the USA is consumed within 48 hours of purchase. Although this isn’t hugely popular in winemaking circles, he understands this fact and needs to create wine that will be good when consumed immediately as well as aging well when cellar-ed.

*Specifically in regards to both the Proprietary Red and ERA, asked what the blend was exactly. Interestingly Jean said he wasn’t sure off the top of his head because he never wants to think that he made the perfect wine a couple of years ago and now he needs to try and duplicate it. Each year will have a different blend because different fruit gives different results.

As for the wines:

I thought everything offered would stand the test of time, some notes on the 4 wines which stick out in my mind to this day:

Chardonnay Napa Valley 2006: By far the best Chardonnay I’ve ever tasted. I typically find the varietal too acidic but this was quite smooth and the flavor combinations which I found to be unique really did shine through-specifically honey and almond. When we got into the car we were wondering why we didn’t bring home a couple of bottles. To give you an idea of the winemakers taste he said he would bury this wine in the vineyard and drink it in about 15 years. I’m not sure I’m quite that patient.

Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley 2006: I thought this was simply put an outstanding wine. It is quite masculine because you do get a sense of pepper as well as cherry. The three of us all remarked that this would be an outstanding Cab to pair with a slice of grilled meat. We took home two bottles of this wine.

Proprietary Red Wine Napa Valley 2006: To me, if you want to see what Alpha Omega does differently in their winemaking then many of the other wineries around the world, you need to try their blends. To start the wine is a beautiful purple color and on the nose you really can easily pick up red cherry. On the tongue the wine is smooth and overall it comes across as balanced. I would gladly drink this by itself, or with a meal. We took two bottles home with us.

ERA: Ok, so yes we did taste the $160 a bottle ERA. Did it live up to expectations? Yes it did, it is the smoothest wine I’ve ever tasted. The three of us all agreed that it is perhaps a more feminine wine then the others we tasted, most likely because it has a much higher amount of petit verdot, which incidentally is Jean’s favorite wine grape. Matt and I didn’t take a bottle home but would certainly buy a couple of bottles for a special occasion, especially if our wives and mother in law would be drinking because we know without doubt that all three of them would love the wine. I did especially enjoy the wine as well, frankly if we weren’t allocating funds to our business purchases we would have loved to bring home a few bottles and cellar them for a while.

Lastly we were able to talk with Jean about moving forward with a business agreement between our two companies. We are extremely happy to say that we will be featuring an Alpha Omega wine in one of our first shipments. Jean was very gracious and shared our opinion that having a long term partnership between our two companies would be good for both of us moving forward. I can’t say that at Uncorked Ventures we disagree, we’re very happy to add Alpha Omega to our growing list of partner wineries.

At the end of the day, this was a great meeting for Uncorked Ventures and we can’t thank Jean Hoefliger and the staff at Alpha Omega enough. We’re looking forward to working a day of harvest with the staff in the next few weeks.

Jean, Mark and Matt outside Alpha Omega

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You Cannot Always Drink Wine

Aug16
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

I haven’t had a chance to go into more detail about the wineries we visited on our Napa trip, I’m certainly excited to move forward with great names like Alpha Omega, Audelssa and Copain but I do find sometimes that it helps me get some clarity about a business trip if I sleep on it for a couple of days.

With that in mind I spent last night at my wife and I’d favorite Mexican restaurant, Miguel’s which has two locations in the San Diego area: Point Loma and Coronado.

We chose Coronado-the Crown City. A couple of reasons for going there even though it’s about a 45 minute drive for us now; To start we lived there for about a year before a job change necessitated a move and secondly it is one of the most beautiful areas in southern California. Coronado is an “island” (actually it does connect to Imperial Beach by the Silver Strand which is a very thin strip of land, made somewhat famous by it being the home of Navy Seal training) with about 20,000 residents just about a mile off downtown San Diego. It’s basically split into two parts, one part residential with a great main street style set up and the other North Island-a large Navy base where two carriers and about 20k seamen are based at any one time. Coronado’s best known feature is the Hotel Del Coronado, but my wife and I love spending time out there because it gives a truly small town feel which is getting extremely hard to find in and around San Diego. It also is one of the places where the local community and military really do live hand in hand which is always great to see, especially with so many service men spending so much time away from their families.

Ok so what is Miguel’s? It started in the early 80’s from a pretty famous restaurateur family in San Diego, but last night was kind of nice in that my wife, my mother in law and myself were seated back in a new addition to the Coronado location which has for sale artwork and is a sort of boutique store in and around the tables which makes for a pleasing visual experience.

The Somewhat hidden entrance

So generally speaking the food is excellent, I can definitely suggest the carne asada plate which is more of a traditional marinated steak then some of you may be used to. How often do you order something at a Mexican restaurant to be asked how you want it cooked?

Carne Asada Plate with rice, beans and guacamole

Overall we had a great time, one small snafu on the drink front was that the bartender was new and did not know how to make my wife’s margarita which was a combo of pineapple juice and cranberry(I believe) anyway after waiting for it for a while….well it actually came after the food…..it sort of resembled jungle juice that a lot of us used to make in college. On the good side, they removed it from the bill and the other two margaritas were both quite good.

Strawberry margarita flanked by salsa and spicy carrots

Margarita served in shaker

Again, you can’t drink wine all the time and we had a nice evening out in a beautiful area. I’ll be going into some more wine depth over the next couple of days but Matt and I have been invited to work a day of harvest which we are both very much looking forward to, it should be quite the experience!

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A great day in Napa

Aug13
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So a quick synopsis of our day today in Napa. Matt(my business partner) and I have had a great trip thus far despite at least 1 small hiccup.

We started our day without much trouble in the way of traffic, we had some extra time and stopped in at Bouchon bakery. I had an almond-strawberry scone and a cup of coffee, the scone was a rare treat having a nut related item….my wife is allergic so I typically obstain from eating nuts products that I’m not familar with.

We then headed over to our tasting at Alpha Omega. We had a great time visiting with Jean who as I’ve mentioned before is both the GM and winemaker. Both Matt and I were impressed by the full selection of wines as well as Jean’s passion for his type of winemaking and the type of support he has at AO to make truly top shelf wines. I plan on giving a more detailed review of both the winery itself and some of the conversation when I have some extra time over the weekend. Bottom line we enjoyed the wine and believe it represents a unique style that will be enjoyed by our wine club customers.

After spending about 90 minutes with Jean we headed over to lunch in St. Helena. We had a nice meal at Cindy’s, one of the best burgers I’ve had.

After lunch we headed over to Cornerstone Cellars tasting room, which incidently is now off premisis of their winery and right across the street from Bouchon. We weren’t able to taste as scheduled with Craig who is their general manager because of a scheduling problem. I’ll go into some more detail later, but with a lot of the wine we’re thinking of including in the club we’re not sure Cornerstone is going to offer the right compliment to some other producers we’re positive we want to work with.

After Cornerstone we stopped by and spent some time with Skip Karabian who is the director of sales and marketing for Elizabeth Spencer. We did like the wine and would be interested in having more substancial discussions with Elizabeth Spencer in the future, although to be perfectly honest we might not be a perfect match to move forward together.

Lastly we had a quick bit to eat at the Bear Republic Brewery in Healdsburg. Good meal and a beautiful area to spend some time in. We also stopped in to Golden Spoon for a yogurt before spending some time driving around to take a few quick photos.

Tomorrow brings meetings with Copain and Audulssa.

Very much looking forward to both and please come back the next few days for more substancial updates on each of our meetings.

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Packing….Ready to Go

Aug10
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

Every so often I think we all feel like we reach a point in our lives where things are about to change. That can happen with personal relationships, work or even within ourselves. I get the feeling that professionally I am reaching one of those points this week.

I leave for my first Napa trip since forming Uncorked Ventures tomorrow morning. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to really start taking the next step forward with Uncorked Ventures and do believe that we’re very close to closing on agreements with a few producers on this trip.

One of the great things about the trip for me is that it seems it is coming at the perfect time. We have an expanding interest list and we’re getting close to having a fully completed and functional website.

While we have plenty to do, we’ve come an incredibly long way in about a month. I’ll be packing much of the day today so this will be shorter then normal and while I cannot promise definitive updates from wine country….we plan on having an extensive review of our trip as well as finally getting the first of our videos and podcasts rolled out.

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Birthday Part 2

Aug10
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So I had another sort of birthday dinner last night with my wife and in laws. We celebrated with my favorite meal arroz con pollo (chicken and rice with saffron) a bottle of St. Francis Cabernet Sauvignon and various starters as well as mighty good cherry cheesecake, which evidently we neglected to get a photo of before it was cut into pieces- the Wagon Wheel Restaurant makes some of the best pies in all of Southern California.

Arroz con Pollo

A quick review of the wine which retails for between $22 and $27 depending on where you buy it. It was well received by everyone, it is a big Cab so maybe the arroz con pollo isn’t its perfect match, but good food and good wine always can work together.

St. Francis Cab Sauv Sonoma

I can definitively say that it holds up with the Sonoma/Napa tradition of moderate tannis and a pleasing texture/aroma. I wasn’t able to pick up much in the way of oak, cherry or chocolate flavors which are more easily accessed in their higher priced bottles. Overall it isn’t a wine that I’ll make a point to buy, but it is a solid drinkable wine that I enjoyed and would gladly purchase again if it were available at a local grocery store. It added to a good meal with good food and good company which is always appreciated.

Yes, the wine went over well

Thanks again for reading and please join us over at Uncorked Ventures.

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Business Update + Napa Trip

Aug05
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

Before I get into the fun stuff, business is getting in the way. Had the best conversation to date with my business partner Matt this morning about our priorities moving forward. As I’ve said before we have different perspectives and frankly it makes for a lively discussion, but adding the two viewpoints together in a constructive way, which we’ve been able to do to this point, should give us the maximum chances for really growing this business into something we can be proud of.

Basically the decisions come down to how we should be structuring our time. Do we focus on efforts which will make the business grow best 1 month from now? Or do we focus efforts on what will make the business grow best 3-6 months from now?

Yes, we’ll be doing both without trying to overdo either side of the page. It is nice to have a firm to-do list though as we both have plenty on our individual to-do lists.

Not surprisingly, given I’ve been responsible for the website and most of the SEO, I’m more accustomed to looking farther out. My wife would agree that I’m not the best with smaller daily details(did I add milk to the grocery list after I drank the end of it?) but that is something that Matt is excellent at. Making a structured list of what needs to happen in order to get to the bottom line as well as setting up intermediate steps along the way.

It’s a good partnership on a number of levels.

In more fun news we are scheduling our meetings for our two day trip to wine country. We’re planning on visits to 2-3 wineries per day….hopefully with time for lunch.

We’ve scheduled both Copain and Cornerstone Cellars already and are waiting on confirmation from 2 other wineries we’ve already spoken with. We’ll be adding a 5th winery as well for a time slot on Wed Aug 13th. It’s bound to be an exciting trip filled with outstanding wine and people. I’m especially looking forward to visiting a nice range of well known wineries as well as up and coming wineries that haven’t been noticed for their great product as of yet. We’ll have a lot to discuss and relay once we arrive home as well.

Thank you for reading-if you’re in the Napa area on the night of Aug 12th and are interested in meeting my business partner and I for dinner…..let me know.

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Plans

Aug04
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

Ok so this blog has been a little(or a lot according to my wife) business heavy lately. As I sit here with a cup of Salvadoran coffee I wanted to share my plans for the next two weeks or so.

Coffee From El Salvador

I’m turning 30 on Friday. I’m actually quite excited I have a feeling that my 30′s will be a better decade then my 20′s were and frankly I’m ready to get started.

On Friday my wife and I will be kicking out of work after a half day and taking a short trip up north. We’ll be stopping by Palumbo Winery in Temecula. Again, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression, I’d much rather be stopping by Dumol in Napa…..but I live in San Diego and it’s nice to stop and get a glass of wine after dealing with Southern California traffic. Additionally Palumbo is the type of winery that I like. The owner is also the winemaker, they make small batches of wine, all red and only what they can grow themselves. The tasting room is only open 3 days a week and it is off the beaten path. It should give my wife and I a chance to chat without any significant distractions. Frankly I’m interested in seeing what is reportedly the best Temecula has to offer.

After that we’re heading to Lake Elsinore for dinner(no idea where) probably a cup of coffee and a cookie and then a minor league baseball game.

In some ways I guess you could say that wine in Southern California is like the minor leagues in comparison to Napa/Sonoma and even the central coast.

I’ll also be taking that long mentioned trip to Napa to work on getting a couple of agreements finalized with my business partner. I’m looking forward to the trip very much. I’ve talked a lot about loving the whole experience of wine tasting, Napa is especially fun because the experience is so much grander. Great architecture and outstanding best in the world wine, who can complain?

Lastly I’ll be having a wine tasting party with a few friends, I hope to video the responses to this gathering where we’re planning on blind tasting 3 California Chardonnay’s as well as 3 red wines which are yet to be selected.

If everything goes well I’ll have a short video posted shortly.

As always please visit us over at Uncorked Ventures.

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Why We Love Wine

Aug02
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

One of the reasons why I prefer wine to beer is that each bottle from the same winemaker and vineyard is different year after year. You can get interesting taste arrangements that you weren’t necessarily suspecting.

I enjoy the fact that you never know exactly what you’re going to get, often you’re pleasantly surprised and sometimes you’re disappointed.

This comes to mind because Northern California had an unusual weather year in 2008. There were substantial fires in June 2008 which is peculiarly worrisome because as most of us know summer is the main growing season for grapes.

How much of that smoke was trapped in the fruit? I’ve heard that some grapes trapped a significant amount of it and no matter how much the juice has been filtered, all of it cannot be removed.

To me, we all need to be aware that this could be a problem with the 2008 vintage. We’ll find out which micro climates were affected and which were not. We’ll learn which winemakers are the true class of their region based on how they handle what could be an extremely difficult situation…..or it could be nothing.

That’s part of the fun with wine.

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Quick Saturday Thoughts

Aug02
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

So very quick before I go to a “surprise” birthday party tonight….I say “surprise” because our friend who is the guest of honor and turning 29 years old has figuired out about the party and will be playing along. Happy b-day Amy, rough luck on the planning Tom.

What’s on my mind in general?

We’re reaching the point where I’m very much looking forward to sending our first shipment in September. We’ve made massive progress in about 2 weeks of launching the website. We have gone from the #100Million+ website according to Alexa usage stats to number 7Million or so last week.

We’re planning meetings for our time in Napa this month, I’m turning 30 this week, we’re finalizing partner agreements and generally speaking this is the time we’ll probably look back on and laugh at how simple we thought everything would be.

Also, I can’t believe Top Chef has never been to Las Vegas before.

As always please visit us over at Uncorked Ventures!

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Last Day Of Summer

Jul30
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

I hope everyone is doing well on what is another beautiful Thursday in San Diego.

I took most of the day off today, save this blog to spend some time with my wonderful wife who(as a school counselor) returns to work first thing in the morning. Not only willl she miss being able to sleep in past six thirty, I’ll miss being able to see her during the day.

That being said, I’m extremely excited to start really, really pushing to get Uncorked Ventures up and off the ground in a timely and stable manner.

I’ve had a few more interactions with wine owners over the past few days and everything continues to be a complete positive experience. It also has reminded me that not all of my real estate background is going to go to waste in the wine industry. For example, I have spoken with Doug McCrea from McCrea cellars, the Washington winery I’d previously mentioned. He has talked about a couple of things I find especially interesting that I’ll come back to in later entries:

1) The location listed on the bottle is where the wine was bottled, not where the grapes are grown. In some areas this isn’t that important because climates are consistent(think Tuscany Italy) but if you’re paying for Napa grapes….you should be getting Napa grapes and not Victorville grapes.

2) The national wine publications don’t give enough respect to west coast wineries outside of northern California. I would say the quality of the Napa/Sonoma region surpasses what you find anywhere in the world outside of Bordeaux, however there are plenty of other wineries that provide an outstanding product. I wish I had an old copy of the Robert Parker map that I saw in a Santa Barbara wine store, but the picture of the west coast showing the wine making regions showed California only between Napa and Santa Barbara. To me I do see a sense of that type of thinking, I think having a couple of people working to start a wine club who haven’t been brought up in the industry should allow us to look at certain underappreciated labels with fresh eyes.

For example I know my business partner Matt has been very happy with the quality of wines offered in Paso Robles on the central coast. Finding areas that are producing consistent, what he considers 90+ point wines across different varietals and bottlers is not common.

We’re looking forward to working with great winemakers that produce consistently great product…..that might just not have gotten the right breaks to really expand their business yet.

What’s on tap for me? You should be able to “hear” this blog via podcast in the very near future.

Thanks for your time and please join or Interest List, or Become a Fan on Facebook.

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New wine regions……good for us!

Jul20
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

To start I wanted to thank Barry Moltz for stopping by and leaving my first comment. Kind of nice to get a comment from the author of a book that has helped me out along the way so far.

As always when writing a daily blog it can be hard to find inspiration when you really need it….like each and every morning especially when you’re writing a whole bunch of other stuff throughout the day…..website copy, FB profile etc etc

I’ve often heard that areas of the world that produce the most wine, also import the most wine. That is to say that once an area starts to produce wine they will soon begin to import higher and higher amounts. To some people this is counter-intuitive. Why not drink your own stuff first? Well we all do and our tastes are affected by what we drink most often.

That being said I have the utmost respect for California wine, especially from Napa and the Central Coast. However, I can still enjoy the great choices from France, Italy and many others such as Argentina and Spain.

I bring this up because I saw an interesting website today:

Wines From Brazil

It’s always nice to think that the world’s 9th largest economy is starting to get serious about wine. I’ll also point out that the website is written in English, not Portuguese. They are clearly wanting to export their wine, I say great! Just don’t be surprised when a few years from now your wine drinking population is clamoring for the classic choices from Bordeaux, Tuscany and Napa.

Of course everyone wants China into the wine game somehow-perhaps we should encourage them to find a nice Mediterranean climate in their own country so they can start producing their own vintages.

It’s just a thought. I’ll have a more significant post about Dumol Winery tomorrow.

As always please visit us at Uncorked Ventures…or just click
HERE to learn more about our wine clubs.

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Alpha Omega Winery

Jul19
2009 Leave a Comment Written by admin

alpha omega photo

In my last post I started to talk about a group of wineries that I’d love to work with in regard to our high end wine club and also our wine export services to Central and South America. Needless to say these are some of the great names in the wine industry and although I am sure they are approached by different wine clubs often, I think our export services may give us an advantage that others lack.

Maybe its just Sunday morning talking as I sit here with a cup of coffee and the golden retriever that I’m dog sitting sitting on my feet, but I think we can add significant value to these wineries by opening up markets that they do not currently have a significant presence in, or really any presence at all.

I’m asked by friends and family which one winery would you love to work with? It’s not really possible to answer that question so much of the answer is going to come from the personal relationship side of things in addition to the actual wine, but from the wine perspective there are probably 50-75 wineries that are based in California, Oregon and Washington that would all be close to the top of my list. I won’t differentiate between those wineries in this space, at least not at this time.

The winery that I wanted to give some background on first here is Alpha Omega Winery. It’s located in the Rutherford part of Napa and includes more then a few historic vineyards.

Why would I love to work with Alpha Omega? I have a ton of respect for the business decisions that they have made. I think all businesses struggle to find the correct ratio between profit taking, investing in their product and providing value to their customers. Alpha Omega took an incredible step when they hired Michel Rolland starting for their vintage back in 2006. For those of you who don’t know who Michel Rolland is, here is a little background along with his photo:

Rolland

He’s from a famous French winemaking family.
Is a Bordeaux based oenologist
Is the foremost wine consultant in the world
Favors technological advancements to improve wine(good for him!)
Probably the most influencial winemaker in the world
Owns a couple French vineyards
Consults with over 100 truly high end wineries

I found what I consider a great quote from the man himself:

“What I bring is a range of experience and a span of reference that other people here, however talented they might be, do not have…A consultant cannot know everything. I am here to give advice with an open mind to the resident winemaker. So the personality of the people is an essential. It’s fundamental. If you have no contact with the people, it’s impossible. I’m no magician.”

Quite frankly what I see in Alpha Omega is a winery which is completely committed to providing its customers the absolute best wine that it can produce. Hiring Rolland shows how committed they truly are because I’m sure his consulting services are not inexpensive. Given his quote above I would think that Alpha Omega’s resident winemaker Jean Hoefliger (see photo below) would be an interesting person to speak with.

Jean Hoefiger

Aside from what sounds like an interesting life experience(born in Switzerland having lived in South Africa and France for some time) I’m always impressed by people who are comfortable in their jobs and are able to bring in the best talent possible to help them along the way, I know from limited experience this isn’t always the easiest decision to make.

Hoefiger-Rolland

Oh yeah-the final and most important reason why I’d love to work with Alpha Omega. They make great wine that is even improving. We’ve liked their products for a while and now Robert Parker is starting to agree giving them a score as high as 94 on one bottle.

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