Subject: Orangewood Wines Newsletter - Volume 3, Issue 30 – August 23, 2009
Sent: Sunday, August 23,
2009, 3:44pm
August is nearly over, schools are
starting their autumn term, and nights are often cool (65F) here in Cave
Creek. Restaurants that have been
getting by with no stock of some of our wine are getting embarrassed by its
absence. Business is showing signs of
life. Phew! It is, however, still silly season in
New Restaurants: 1
New Retail/Wine Bar
Outlets: 1
New Sales People: 1
New Wineries 1
Satara Thai Cuisine/Boutique
Wine Lounge
(623)
979-9696
(928)
774-8502
Bourassa Vineyards was conceived in
1999 based on Vic Bourassa’s success as an amateur wine maker. The first vintage was a 2001 Cabernet
Sauvignon. With carefully selected Napa
Valley vineyards supplying fruit, Bourassa Vineyards now makes a total of 5,000
cases a year of Cabernet Sauvignon, a Bordeaux blend, Zinfandel, Syrah,
Sauvignon Blanc and Port.
“Petit Verdot – what’s that?” was the question raised by
several participants at a tasting this past week. This was a special tasting in which we were
blending the wine ourselves. Bourassa
Vineyards, the new winery mentioned above, has a wine blending kit and Vic
Bourassa goes around the country using it as a tool for wine education (and
sales of his wine). We held one of these
tastings this week with three varietals: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit
Verdot – which is why the question came up.
Petit Verdot is not a well known varietal, which is why some of you may
not have heard of it. I looked in the
self proclaimed “Most Comprehensive Wine Dictionary” which told me that “Petit
Verdot” is a
There are tons of different types of grape, only some of
which you have heard of. Thompson
Seedless, Merlot, Chardonnay are all single varietals. Petit Verdot is another. It is also classified as one of the six Bordeaux
Varietals along with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and
Carménère. (Carménère, another scarce
Orangewood
represents the following wines that include some Petit Verdot:
Barlow Vineyards, in
Blackjack Ranch in
Frank Family Vineyards, in Napa Valley, includes a skosh
of Petit Verdot in their 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, both the Napa Valley and
Rutherford Reserve.
Recently we passed the 8 year anniversary of selling our
first bottle of wine. Actually it was
two bottles of wine. The wine sat on the
shelf for a long time. We did try to
jump start the sales by inviting some friends, buying some food and buying some
wine. Back then we also asked our
friends what we might do to help with sales.
You should have a newsletter they told us. So it began.
You can view that first newsletter
on our website. With suggestions from
all of you over the years it has evolved to what it is today. Thank you for your help.
In the last eight years technology has also evolved and we
have been encouraged to be on Facebook.
So now from, Richard’s pen, is coming a
Facebook page called “Orangewood Wines”.
You can be a fan! We are figuring
out what to do on this page, so feel free to help us with its evolution. (By the way, Richard can be seen in his pen
most mornings between 8 a.m. – 10 a.m.)
The Rambler
rambles on…
From
all of us at Orangewood Wines,
Richard
(newsletter writer), Laurie (editor) and
Orangewood
Wines