Sent: Wednesday, March 02, 2005 12:40 PM
Subject: Orangewood Wines News - 14

To Our Wine Aficionados,

Introduction

It’s the second of March and why haven’t I written a newsletter since January 1?  Things have been hectic as usual, both personally and business-wise.  I could ramble for pages after the two month gap, but instead I will try to be very terse.  I’ll cover business items in the early sections and personal items in the ramblings section at the end.

Box Score

Restaurants/bars:               +7

Retail outlets:                     +6

Sales people:                     +1 -2

Wineries:                            -1

Contents

Upcoming Events

New Restaurants and Retail outlets

New Sales Folk - Beth Reiswig

Injured Sales Folk

Prescott Sales Folk

Rambling

Upcoming Events - http://www.orangewoodwines.com/wine-events.htm

These events are usually described on our web-site. 

New Restaurants and Retail outlets

      Eccentric Gourmet - Anthem

      Dakota Café - Tucson

AJ’s - Tucson

      Bistro Zin - Tucson

      Blue Fin Seafood Bistro - Tucson

      Monkey Box - Tucson

Lotus Garden - Tucson

      Red Sky Café - Tucson

Rare Earth - Scottsdale

Jug ‘N Barrel - Glendale

Cru Fine Wines - Scottsdale

Wine Studio - Scottsdale

Liquor Barn - Prescott

New Sales Folk - Beth Reiswig

Beth Reiswig has signed up to sell our wine in parts of Scottsdale and Phoenix.  She, like Craig in Tucson, also sells wine for other distributors.  This should give us the benefit of being able to leverage her existing account relationships to our mutual benefit.  Beth originally hales from the Buffalo area.  She lived in the “Sideways” appellation of California for a while where she spent time pouring wines in tasting rooms.  She is part owner of a vineyard.  As a result she is quite knowledgeable about wines and will bring our wine IQ up a few more points.

Injured Sales Folk

Alison is now allowed to drive her car again and is able to pursue her primary job of selling healthy foods to food stores.  She is not yet fit enough to do critical activities like riding horses and so forth.  While we expect Alison to continue to contribute in the consumption side of the business, we do not expect that she will be selling.  Thank you, Alison, for your help.  We hope you will be skateboarding again soon.

Prescott Sales Folk

Dria and Craig decided there are insufficient wine outlets in the Prescott area, so, unfortunately, Dria is getting a real job.  Thanks to you both for your efforts.

Wineries

Chateau Benoit decided they are serious about their quality upgrade.  They will be emphasizing their new Anne Amie label which produces primarily Pinot Noir.  As we have not been carrying this new label, our decision became whether to represent a new winery.  Given that thought, we re-tasted the wines and decided to pass.

We are in conversation with two Sierra Foothills area wineries.  If we move forward with them, it will increase our Foothills focus.  Watch this space next month.

Rambling

As part of the diagnosis associated with Laurie falling off her horse a few months ago they found a growth on her thyroid.  Biopsy results pointed to a papillary carcinoma, which is the closest to benign that a cancer gets.  The recommended action is removal, so on Monday this week Laurie had half her thyroid removed.  Reexamination of the growth during surgery indicated no cancer, so Laurie spent the next 24 hours recovering and is now back home taking it somewhat easy while we await final test results.  Stress aside, we are both fine.

A couple months ago I was reading the Google news results for “Cave Creek” and came across an item for getting on the ballot for the Town Council.  Upon further enquiry I found that only 7 people were standing for 6 positions on the council, and that those people were short on corporate and small business backgrounds.  So I became the eighth candidate for the election that is occurring next week.  If you know someone living in the Town of Cave Creek, please encourage them to vote.  If you think that I can add value to the council, ask them to vote for me.

Cheers!

Richard and Laurie