Mark's Wine Blog

Happy New Year-Feliz Ano Nuevo!

I’ve been thinking quite a bit the past few days about what I want to continue talking about as business at Uncorked Ventures changes forever in the next few days. Given the new year I considered writing about some of my goals for the new year whether those are business related (wine club members, export time tables) or interpersonal (blogging more often, continuing to be open about our business) or even personal.

I realized after watching Julie and Julia with my wife that one of the reasons people are interested in blogs is because they give you some insight into a person’s life. I don’t ever want this space to become a corporate blog that sounds like a series of press releases or marketing pieces. Frankly, when I see those types of blogs I don’t go back and read them ever again. A generation ago being able to interact in this type of medium was unheard of, but why not embrace it completely?

So, in short order some of my resolutions for the new year:

-To blog each work day, even if it is 5 sentences long.

-To interact with my readers more, what are you interested in hearing about this business?

-To continue building lasting friendships.

-To appreciate all that my wife does each and every day.

-To Export a container of wine at some point in 2010.

-To build a wine club list of the most satisfied members in the industry.

Ok, so what are we doing today? Fun stuff actually, we’re working to set up our affiliate program. Excuse the marketing talk for a while but an affiliate program is basically a way for a web based company to gain a sales force that you pay only based on sales (commission basically).

In this case, if you find an Uncorked Ventures wine club or wine gift that you like by coming through a different site, like the Wine Club Directory we pay that website owner a commission.

It’s a simple set up and frankly we’re excited to get started. Given our ability to purchase wine directly from wineries, instead of going through a distributor like most, if not all of, our competitors we can offer affiliates a generous commission without sacrificing quality to our customers.

A fun couple of days.

I always enjoy getting the chance to spend time with family, especially those that live so far away. On Monday I had the chance to go to Disneyland with most of my family, including my brother in laws first time. We had a good time, it was a long day with long lines(over 2 hours for Space Mountain, just to have it break down as we got to the front) but the park is always fun to see around Christmas when they go all out for decorations.

It’s an advantage to living in Southern California that I can get in the car and drive for the day-especially when family is in from out of the country.

At Uncorked Ventures we’re doing a series of tastings over the next week or so which should lead to some interesting blogs once things settle down after the holiday season.

What a crazy week.

So I attended what has been a holiday tradition for my wife and I for some time last night, La Pastorella here in San Diego.

For those who don’t know what a pastorella is, it is basically the semi-religious or very religious(depending on the version) story of the shepards going to witness the birth of Jesus.

We peculiarly like this version for a couple of reasons. To start it’s the 2nd longest running holiday live play in San Diego, next to the Nutcracker. Secondly and most importantly it is incredibly well written poking fun at events of the past year. This year included a few jabs at Sarah Palin, a Michael Jackson impersonator and by far the most talented cast I’ve seen them have. It’s a humorous look back at the year, which is something that my wife and I enjoy quite a bit.

Over at Uncorked Ventures we’re still working on the new version of our website. Of course, there are plenty of database constraints that we’ve had to work out including everything from shipping prices per state to which couriers to use to deliver wine to each state.

It’s a long process, but one I’m comfortable with the progress we’ve made, especially the past few days. It’s an exciting time!

Ugh….Spammers have found my blog.

So I awoke today to 65+ spam comments on my blog. I had a good laugh at some of the stuff people thought were going to be ok…..I’m not interested in men’s Gucci shoes, prescription drugs, cheap handbags or even male enhancement. Ok, small rant over, but come on spammers if you’re going to take the time to leave a comment at least act like you’ve read the post first, ok?

As for Uncorked Ventures we continue to work with our web development team to have our new site up and running as soon as humanly possible. Getting the back end to work correctly is taking a while longer then we initially thought, but the end result will certainly be worth the wait.

We’ve also begun to write/craft our initial newsletter that will be going out to the corporate gift orders we’ve received, plus a little bonus to everyone on our interest list that signs up for one of our wine clubs.

It’s a fun time and I’m very much looking forward to January when we get to do it all for real, for the first time.

I’m often asked by people now when they find out that I’m starting a wine business, what the difference is between a great bottle of wine and some of the impersonators….which are good table wine, but not world class quality.

This weekend gave me a good example to use in that explanation. My wife and I were having dinner with someone who although he enjoys wine, perhaps his palate is not as sophisticated as others are at this time. For example he hates Pinot Noir, drops an ice cube in his white wine etc.

So we didn’t want to spend much on a bottle of wine to bring with us, but we wanted to have a drinkable bottle for ourselves at the same time. Over the years I’ve heard good things about the quality/price ratio offered by some of the wine carried at Trader Joe’s, so we thought we’d give it a try. As a plus since moving we’re now in walking distance of a pretty nice Trader Joe’s, which has an active wine selection.

A quick Google search took me to a wine blog dedicated to Trader Joe’s wine, Jason’s wine blog. It’s an impressive site, unlike a lot of wine blogs(this one included) he really gets to the point even offering top 10 lists of his favorite wine for each season at TJ’s. If you’re going to be buying a bottle of wine at TJ’s, I’d highly suggest giving his blog a quick glance…you’ll be glad you did.

Ok, so the selection was pretty picked over when we showed up(around 4pm on a Saturday) so we weren’t able to find anything that Jason had previously recommended as a Buy It….so we tried a label called Epicuro, which he has said he likes.

What we ended up with was the Benevantano Aglianico 2007. My overall impression was that it was worth the $5 we paid for it. On the nose it didn’t offer much, the overwhelming taste was a dark cherry, the texture was quite velvety which was nice. I’m sure a lot of people would describe the wine as smooth….given some of the more traditional Italian wines and their tendency to be overly tannic I was surprised by the bottle. Would I buy it again? Not really sure. Perhaps if we needed a 12th bottle to make a case, although I do think there are going to be other, better options even in that price range. It isn’t that I didn’t think the bottle was a good value, simply that it was neither interesting nor memorable. At any price range I want to have some experience with wine, so this bottle didn’t do it for me.

As always please visit us over at Uncorked Ventures. Have a great week!

So I’ve been saving a specific bottle of wine to enjoy with my wife since my first trip to Napa and Sonoma after starting Uncorked Ventures, a Copain 2007 Monument Tree Pinot Noir.

I believe I’ve talked a little about Copain before in this space, but I am a fan of much of the wine they make and their winemaker Wells Guthrie. He has a rather unique style for the area and has really been at the forefront of pushing other winemakers to attempt to control the alcohol levels in their wine. Much of the wine that Copain makes ends up with alcohol content 1-2% lower then the competition. They’re able to do this by being very careful about where they source their grapes(usually colder climates) as well as how/when the fruit is harvested(middle of the night when possible to control heat transfer during fermentation).

From a business to business perspective I appreciate the way that they’ve treated us as a start up and as a consumer I greatly appreciate the fact that their wines occupy a range of prices starting at around $20 for their Tous Ensambles series. I do believe they leave some money on the table on a number of their wines which are sold in the $40-$50 range-which are consistently great values many scoring 90+ ratings from Parker and the Wine Entusiast.

Ok so about that Pinot…..as good as I remember it. In fact maybe a bit better given the 6 months or so of rest as well as the thirty minutes of decanting(yeah, yeah I know not ideal). On the nose it’s hard to pick up individual flavors, but it definitely is a dark berry type of smell. On the palate it is noticeably brighter then you’d imagine with cherry being the predominant flavor-the structure of the wine is quite good and really shows Wells ability as most Pinot’s don’t hold up this well.

Overall at around $50, to me it is a clear buy. I am an unapologetic Pinot Noir fan(both because of the flavor profiles and the story of the grape itself) which comes sometimes much to my business partner and father in laws dismay, but I will be interested in comparing this Pinot to some of the more highly hyped Oregon versions.

Lastly I would be remiss if I did not mention where the Monument Tree moniker comes from. Monument Tree is a vineyard about a two hour drive north of San Francisco. Since Copain aims to trim alcohol levels they source fruit from both the Central Coast of California(think on the ocean just north of Santa Barbara) as well as some of the cooler valley’s north of SF. As you can see Monument Tree vineyard is named after a redwood tree which still stands in the middle of the vineyard.

As always thank you for reading-I look forward to making the announcement soon about our initial shipping date.

This past Friday night was the first of what we hope will be a series in tasting events brought to you by Uncorked Ventures. We had planned this evening with the help of our friends Sarah and Chris to bring together a group of their friends who are self professed wino’s in an effort to legitimize the choices that Matt and I have begun to make about the wines that we’d like to source in our first few shipments.

To start we’d like to say a short thank-you to Sarah and Chris for hosting and providing food-it’s was a nice event and we hope to do it again sometime soon when schedules allow.

We had a group of about ten people tasting, we tasted everything blind in combination with appetizers that included prosciutto wrapped figs, bread, cheeses and other various items…all of which were very good.

We started the evening offering two different Napa Valley Chardonnay’s. The first was purchased from Beverages and More for around $22, it was a 2005 Bouchaine Napa Valley Chardonnay. The second was a free sample sent to me from Prime Vineyards in Napa. Prime sent over their 2008 Chardonnay.

The Prime Chardonnay came out with a score about 5% better than the Bouchaine.

We asked everyone to score each wine on sight(2pts), aroma(5pts), taste(9pts) and overall quality(4pts).

Prime scored 1 point better in total than Bouchaine on average per taster, however most people thought that although Prime had the potential to be a much, much better Chardonnay it was too young to be a real winner. Additionally, although the nose of the wine was outstanding, the taste was too tropical for most people’s tastes. We came to an agreement that both wines were probably being oversold by a few dollars.

To me, I see a lot of potential in the Prime Chardonnay. Yes, the flavors are complicated, but given their success with the wine’s nose and their Cabernet Sauvignon (coming later) it is a wine I will be tracking over their next few vintages. I’d also like to try the wine after it had been set down for a year or two to see how the flavors evolve in that time. I do give them a lot of credit in that they didn’t follow the standard Napa Chardonnay route and simply make the main flavors consistent with oak/butter….the experimentation is something that I think can lead to much better wine down the road.

We had assumed that the white wine tasting would end up being more of a warm up for the reds as we’ve spent much more time working to find workable red wines for our club. We were happy to see that a small, boutique winery was able to come out with better scores then a nationally distributed wine. In some way I felt that started to legitimize our business model.

So, over the weekend I had one of, if not the most, enjoyable day since starting Uncorked Ventures. My wife and I went to Eagles Nest Winery in Ramona, CA about 15 miles east of where we live) to help with the bottling of their free range Cabernet Sauvignon.

We arrived around 9am and had a couple of moments to chat with Dennis and Julie, who fill the multiple functions of winery owner, vineyard manager and winemaker. They were both extremely pleasant and both my wife and I enjoyed chatting with them both throughout the day, even though I imagine my thoughts about meeting the two of them are similar to what people think about my wife and I….Julie is much more chatty then Dennis is….just as Michelle is much more chatty then I am.

After meeting some of the volunteers, including Bill Eyer of Cuvee Corner we went with Julie down to another part of the farm to help organize some of their standing inventory because we would be bottling approximately 75 cases later in the day. We spent about two hours moving boxes, organizing wine and generally trying to create some extra space where available. I’m not the most organized guy in the world (far from it) so it was good to have Michelle there to help….plus we weren’t complaining in being an air conditioned room as summer has made another appearance in California.

After getting last year’s vintage organized we moved up to the bottling room with the other volunteers. What we found there was a bottle filler….A pump moves the wine from the barrel up into a holding tank and then four bottles can be filled at once, there is a sensor to shut off the filler once a bottle is filled to the correct level.

After being filled they are moved over to be corked. As we found throughout the day the ladies did a better job with the new corking machine as they weren’t as impatient as the guys. The guys typically moved too quickly and would cause the machine to lose pressure and necessitate a couple minute wine drinking break….maybe it wasn’t such an accident lol!

After corking it came time for the seal to be placed over the cork. Here we found another new machine of Italian origin. After getting a good laugh at the instruction manual (yes it was in English as well as Italian) because it never suggested a setting for the heated element, we tried out a few different techniques. It seems that the correct technique to have a balanced melt of the seal is to move downward quickly and then slightly pause at the bottom, before moving up again quickly. I can definitely say, this was not a strong suit of mine….I enjoyed filling the wine bottles much more!

Normally you’d also apply the label at that time and near the time when we left they started applying some of the labels, but Eagles Nest does a lot of custom labeling for customers so much of the wine is not labeled until directly after sale….which also necessitates part of the organizing of the wine storage area!

A picture of some of the wine going down to the storage area:

All in all both Michelle and I had a great time. Eagles Nest served a lunch of lasagna, garlic bread, salad and wine as well as sending us home with two of their dessert wines. They have a cottage on the property which is like a really, really nice studio apartment which is available for rent. It is just a ways down from where Julie and Dennis (the owners) live and is in the middle of the vines as well as having an amazing wrap around porch with a view of the entire Ramona Valley.

Since this is mostly a wine blog and I am starting a wine business it would not be complete without a mention of the wines we tasted.

During the bottling process we were able to taste their free run Cab…which we generally thought was ok. At lunch we had a glass of Souzaoo which I thought was pretty good and an excellent pairing with the lasagna.

After seeing the winery up close and seeing the amount of time, effort and capital that Eagles Nest is spending to improve its product I have a new appreciation for the struggles that new wineries face. It also makes me understand the old adage from Napa that in the wine industry it takes a large fortune in order to make a small one.

This is the type of family owned, small production winery that we’d love to be able to work with, assuming they are producing world class wines.

At this time, to be perfectly honest I’ve tasted wines in that same price range that I’ve been more impressed with. We have been invited to come back and taste some other wines with Dennis and Julie and may take them up on that offer in the future.

I would encourage anyone in the San Diego area, if you want to spend a night at a very nice location with very nice people and take home some wine that’s better then what you find in Temecula, give Eagles Nest a try.

Sometimes it’s funny when things happen. I’ve been pretty honest on this blog about spending a ton of time on SEO over the past few weeks, honestly I was starting to feel like I wasn’t making any progress on our first keyword target….then this morning happened. We moved from #92 in Google’s results for our target keyword all the way up to #38….needless to say I’m thrilled on a couple of levels. First of all, it is nice to see some real tangible benefit to the time I’ve been putting in, secondly I think we’re starting to get to the point where it is realistic to expect to be in a position to gain some organic search engine traffic by the time all of our permits are set and ready to go.

We did watch an interesting movie last night that made me think that patience is a virtue that I need to continue to work on. Czech Dream is the story of two student filmmakers that use a government grant to advertise the opening for a new Supermarket (basically a Costco it seems) in the suburbs of Prague. So there isn’t a Supermarket, the whole thing is a hoax. About 4,000 people show up for the opening, my wife and I were nervous watching the movie because with that many people being upset, we thought the filmmakers were going to have to run out of there. In effect, nothing happened, the people just wanted the filmmakers to explain themselves….it was a drastically different reaction then you’d expect in the states. That’s not to say better, but I can’t imagine an American saying that it is a nice day and it was nice to take the bus 45 minutes to walk around a field and see the scaffolding of a fake store. To me, although they don’t state it implicitly, the filmmakers were trying to make the point not to let the governments heavy advertising affect them in terms of the upcoming vote in the Czech Republic should become a member of the European Union or not.

The advertising campaign itself was interesting to see, their logo was quite different (as you can see in the above picture, it’s the bubble) but their ads were posted everywhere and said things like “Don’t Come” and “Don’t Spend”…..their tv commercial had a man telling the camera that in his Supermarket he didn’t want any ugly women working there.

I’m not sure if there is anything that we can learn at Uncorked Ventures from the advertising campaign, but it has made me aware that there are plenty of ways to advertise your product. I think as of now we have a pretty standard campaign as far as the wine industry goes, except that we’re giving much greater access than any other wine club I’m aware of. We’re also focused on smaller wineries which is unique because it not only takes more effort on our part, but also because it cuts down on our profit margin.

I’ll continue trying to think of any possible ways to use, the counter-culture type messages that were so effective in the movie, in advertising for our wine clubs and export services.

So, I’ve been asked quite a few times in the past couple of days for my opinion on USA Today launching its wine club. To start, yes we’re always concerned when a significant competitor comes into the market, but after some basic research I can’t say I’ll give it another thought.

To start, we’re talking about drastically different price levels. USA Today is working with My Wines Direct and providing 6 bottles each quarter for about $70. Some quick, inexact math leaves me at $11 per bottle for club members and I can only assume that USA Today is paying somewhere in the range of $5-$8 per bottle from the wineries. Thinking of the type of wine that we’re working to source, I cannot imagine any winery that we’re currently working with selling any wine they make at such a severe discount. In that way this new wine club probably isn’t going to be a big competitor, they’re simply marketing to a different audience. That’s ok and that price level certainly makes some sense, we’re comfortable that a $30-$40 per month for our entry level club is a good place to start so we can still provide top notch wine to our customers.

The one thing that I do think is very interesting in regards to their club is that they will have tasting panels helping to select the wines. Frankly speaking that sounds like a ton of fun and something that I’d like to be able use on some level with my clubs. I enjoy the social aspect of wine, I did end up with a couple of thoughts and plans for action after reading the USA Today wine club article.

On Twitter I’ve talked in passing to Sandy Aichner, a Realtor based in Lake Norman, North Carolina. She is part of a wine tasting group that includes about 700 members. These type of wino groups are a clear target market for our wine club. I do believe that with the type of wine and food pairing that we’re set to feature will allow us to reach out to groups like this, even though they already work with a number of local wine merchants. I know from conversations with a few of our partner wineries that Alpha Omega and Audelssa are just starting to be available outside of California, getting some of our wine in the hands of groups like this one is going to be a goal once all of our paperwork is approved by the state of California and in this case, North Carolina…..which doesn’t have the easiest paperwork requirements for third party suppliers like ourselves as we have to include all brands that we’ll be shipping.

Secondly I’ll be working on hosting a virtual tasting of some type. I’d like to use Skype, but this is on the to-do list. I think finding easily attainable wine across the country could be difficult. Costco? Beverages and More?

As always thanks for reading, please leave your comments!