Sent: Sunday, October 23rd, 2005 7:55 PM
Subject: Orangewood Wines News - 21

To Our Wine Aficionados,

Introduction

Business is brisk, the summer is officially over.  We have yet another record month and there is still a week to go.  Alright!

Box Score

New Restaurants/bars:   5

New Retail outlets:          0

New Sales people:         0

New Wineries:                 1

Contents

New Locations

      North, Tucson

      Pastiche, Tucson

Vivace, Tucson

Ti Amo, Cave Creek

Vincent’s on Camelback, Phoenix

New Wineries

      Barlow Vineyards, Napa Valley

Upcoming Events

Rambling

New Locations

North, 2995 East Skyline Drive, Tucson

North is one of the Fox Restaurant Concepts restaurants.  Also Bloom, Zinc Bistro and Sauce belong to this group.  New concepts will be showing up – like the Greene House at Kierland.  These places are well thought out and well executed.  Eat and drink there, they are good.  The staff is trained about the food and wine.  It is a business doing pleasure with them.  (Thank you Craig for reactivating that phrase).

Pastiche, 3025 N Campbell Ave, Tucson

Dining or gourmet food and wine store.   Looks like a place to go when you are making up your mind about whether to eat out or at home.

Vivace Restaurant, 4811 E Grant Rd, Tucson

Danny Scordato has been serving up high quality Italian food here since Internet reviews were available.  Just one more place that I have to sacrifice my waistline to when I am in Tucson.

Ti Amo, Cave Creek

Beth has been working on this new restaurant for several months.  They are about to open.  They have our wine, including Noceto, Frank Family and Young’s.  It’s in our backyard, so Laurie and I will be checking it out soon.

Vincent’s on Camelback, 3930 E Camelback Rd, Phoenix

Vincent Guerithault has been cooking at this location for over 19 years.  His blend of French and Southwestern Cuisine is well recognized and deservedly so – if our memory serves us well.  The last time we actually ate here was with our son-in-law’s parents, Jim and Bobbi.  I decided our portfolio and sales expertise had risen to a level that we could break into such accounts.  It has taken several months of getting to know Howie – the wine guy – but we have now delivered a selection of Frank Family, Bella Vida and Patricia Green wines.  All right, Jim and Bobbi, it’s time to check this place out again.

Upcoming Events -

These events are usually described on our website.

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

New Wineries

Barlow Vineyards, Calistoga, Napa Valley

Dave Brechner is one of the wine stewards at AJ’s at Arrowhead Ranch. He takes these incredible vacations.  In 7 – 10 days he visits 60 – 70 wineries tasting 4 -5 wines at each.  This takes detailed planning and a lot of spitting.  He keeps detailed notes on all of the wines and recommends AZ distributors when he is really knocked out by the wines.  Barlow Vineyards was one such knockout winery and we were one of the lucky distributors.  Barlow Vineyards is on the west side of the Silverado Trail on the last curve before reaching Calistoga.  Tasting are by appointment only and conducted at the family home there.  They grow cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes from which they make Cabernet, Merlot (no surprises so far) and a blend of the two that they call Barrouge.  All three are highly recommended by Dave.  They have a strong structure (structure like steel, says Craig) and will delight those lucky enough to find them.  First delivery will be in a week at…AJ’s at Arrowhead Ranch.

http://www.barlowvineyards.com/

Rambling

Since the last newsletter, when I announced the merger of Craig’s Wine Patrol West portfolio with that of Orangewood, things have been somewhat hectic as the Orangewood infrastructure took a big growth step, threatening to break systems from shipping to check depositing.  Somehow Craig and I managed to fit in a visit to Oregon, where we stayed at Stoller Vineyards and visited Bella Vida and Patricia Green Cellars.  We flew to Portland and drove down to the Stoller Vineyard where a celebratory party was just starting.  The celebration was due to the readiness of the new winery to accommodate the 2005 vintage.  I am careful to say that the winery was not finished, but enough of it is complete to allow wines to be made.  While we were there, the roof was being completed, for example.  The new winery is substantial and will accommodate the planned growth from 3,000 cases per year to 10,000 cases per year.  They grow and make primarily Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Twelve years ago this acreage was a turkey farm owned by Bill Stoller’s cousin.  However, the turkey business needed vertical integration (into packing and so forth) to survive and the cousin was not up for the investment.  The property is pretty hilly, as I found out on a morning hike.  The next day we visited Bella Vida vineyards, where Allison Whiteside welcomed us after a hair-raising drive up the hill to the tasting room.  Allison explained their concept of having different wine makers make wine from the various parts of the vineyard.  This allows them to have three different Pinot Noir wines for each vintage.  Each winemaker has slightly different grapes to start with and then makes and matures the wines in their own style.  Fascinating.  Later we visited Patricia Green Cellars and met with owners Jim Anderson and Patty Green.  With crush imminent, Patty had been collecting samples of fruit from one of the vineyards from which they source fruit.  The ubiquitous Ziploc bags had a couple bunches of grapes from each vineyard.  I watched as they checked Brix (sugar content) and pH (acidity): 23.5 and 3.7 respectively.  They reminded me that 3.7 on the pH scale is acid.  After all this, they said they really time harvest based on taste – the analysis is secondary.  Jim took us for a tour of the estate vineyards.  The truck went up hill at 20mph, just keeping up with Stella, their Labrador/German Shepherd.  The vineyards are dry farmed, meaning that there is no irrigation, and this encourages the roots to go deep and to be healthy.

One other thing we learned about on our trip was birds.  Apparently when the first cold snap hits Alaska all the robins head south and should they take a fancy to a vineyard can strip 40% of the fruit off in a few hours.  To guard against this, some places have guys with shotguns firing at random times in random directions (Stoller); other places have recordings of distressed birds calling out across the vineyards (Bella Vida); some places have netting, but this is expensive both for the nets and for the labor of putting them up; other places have automated gunshots from machines around the vineyard.  Such machines run during the day and are switched off at night.  Even when switched off they may still have enough compressed air to make it through the next cycle and “Watch out this thing is about to…”  KERBOOM!!!  Jim, Craig and I rushed away from the device, but Stella was smart enough to be long gone.

Ciao,

Richard and Laurie

Richard (newsletter writer) and Laurie Corles (editor)

Orangewood Consulting LLC

480.488.4794 or 602.410.3774

http://www.orangewoodwines.com

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