Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 7:48 PM
Subject: Orangewood Wine News - Volume 3 Issue 1

Introduction

Orangewood Wines’ newsletter is being transformed from a newsletter targeted primarily to consumers to one primarily directed at our restaurant and retail customers.  We found that we need to communicate more effectively with our customers, so we will be signing them up for this new newsletter.  This is going to change our content somewhat.  If it still looks entertaining to you, our long standing wine aficionados, stay with us, otherwise, let me know and I will be happy (well, not that happy) to remove you from the distribution list.

Box Score

New Restaurants:         2

New Wineries:              0

Contents

Welcome

Wine Tasting Events

Trade Tasting Event

Special Offers

Awards

Rambling

Welcome

As you may have guessed from the introduction this newsletter is being transformed to provide information to our restaurant and wine store customers.  If you are a newly signed up customer, welcome to the Orangewood Wines Newsletter.  Feel free to let us know what you think of the newsletter, either directly or through your sales consultant.  I expect it will take a while for us to figure out what we want to say in this communication, so bear with us.

Wine Tasting Events

For the last 5 years we have been publicizing events at which we were pouring in the newsletter and on our website.  As events have become more frequent we have not kept up with them in either place.  Fortunately, there is a company that specializes in tracking wine events and sending newsletters.  We are going to rely on them in the future.  You can sign up to receive notification of events to attend, or you can post events that you are holding.  Here are the links for these two activities.

Be notified of upcoming events:

http://www.localwineevents.com/be_notified.php

How to post events -- and -- why you should:

http://www.localwineevents.com/about/about_faq.php

Trade Tasting

“High Five” Tasting Event

            What: Trade tasting event

            When: Sunday, 24^th September 2006 (Monday, 25^th in Tucson)

            Where: Scottsdale Culinary Institute – specific site TBD

This is the fourth year that several of the small distributors have gotten together for a joint event to allow you, our customers, to taste some of our wines and learn about wineries that are new or that you may not be familiar with.  What we did last year was to pick one wine from each winery that we thought was representative.  We expect to do the same this year for both the Phoenix and Tucson areas.

New Restaurants

Saba’s Mediterranean Cuisine

37555 Hum Rd, Carefree, AZ 85377

Phone: (480) 575-6574

98 South – Wine Bar and Kitchen

98 South San Marcos Place, Chandler, AZ 85225

Phone: (480) 814-9800     

Specials Offers

Last Christmas two of us rented a truck and drove to California to collect some wine from several wineries, because the usual logistics would have left us with no wines for Christmas.  One of the places we visited was Ventana Vineyards in the Arroyo Seco region of Monterey County.  The vineyards and winery are near Soledad and the tasting room is in Monterey by the John Steinbeck museum.  Doug and Luanne Meador have 400 acres and supply most of it to other wineries in California and New Mexico.  They focus on making food friendly wines in traditional French style.  Their Gold Stripe Chardonnay is a great accompaniment to food because they do not overwork the fruit, or mask it with too much oak.  It contains enough acid to cut through the fats in the food you eat.  We collected some of the 2002 vintage, but due to irrational exuberance at the time got more than we needed.  The 2003 vintage is now available, but a few cases of the 2002 are available at a substantial discount.

Tom and Peggy Westberg live in Paso Robles at the top of a hill.  Tom works in the wine industry - previously as a winemaker at Peachy Canyon, and more recently at Echelon - and took the time to terrace some of his hill and plant some grapes.  He and Peggy made 150 cases and we sold the wine they couldn’t drink or trade.  They used to have 8 barrels but the earthquake damaged 3 of them.  It broke their hearts and they stopped making their own wine.  Their red wine labels are based on a painting of an old truck on the Dante Duzi Ranch.  We have a few cases of the 2000 Zinfandel.  These wonderfully made (I am trying them as I type), but inexpensive wines need to be drunk soon.  I am doing my best, but the remainder is available at a just under half price. 

Awards

Mantra, Frank Family and Boeger had Zinfandels that were praised in Robert Parker’s most recent Wine Advocate.  In the Oregon section, Stoller was recognized for their Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs.  We have some of the referenced wines, though not all from the vintage described.  Contact us if you would like to taste.

Rambling

When someone suggested that I write a newsletter 5 years ago, I had no idea that we would have grown so much by now.  July of 2001 we sold 3 bottles of wine!  The original newsletter we called Wine at Orangewood Consulting (WOC).  After we found we were being confused with wine consultants – whose job it is to chase distributors on behalf of wineries – we changed our name to Orangewood Wines, and the name of the newsletter to Orangewood Wines News (OWN).  We emailed 46 editions of WOC and 28 of OWN.  I now think of this as Volume 3, and this is the first edition.  As always, let us know what you think.

Cin-cin, alla salute!

Richard & Laurie

Richard (newsletter writer) and Laurie Corles (editor)

Orangewood Wines