Sent: Monday, August 02,
2004 9:20 AM
Subject: Orangewood Wines News - 8
To
Our Wine Aficionados,
Introduction
The dog days of summer leave our competitors despondent
while we focus on getting new accounts. Being small gives us lots of room
to grow. I also took the opportunity to get over to California. I went to one of our new
wineries and revisited several of our existing ones.
Box
Score
New restaurants: 3
New retail outlets: 1
New sales people: 1
New wineries: 2
Contents
Upcoming Events
August 4th Nello’s, Tempe - THIS WEDNESDAY
August 13th Red Kangaroo, Scottsdale
August 14th AZ Wine, Carefree
August 20th AJ’s tasting at
Arrowhead Country Club
New Sales People
Dria Jewell - Prescott area
New Restaurants and Retail outlets
Radda - Scottsdale
Painted Horse Cafe - Scottsdale
Lon’s at the Hermosa - Paradise Valley
Red Kangaroo - Phoenix
New wineries
Chatom Vineyards
Mt. Vernon Winery
Event Feedback
Nello’s, Tempe
AJ’s, Arrowhead
Cheuvront’s, Phoenix
Epicurean Wine, Scottsdale
Rambling
Upcoming
Events
August 4th - Nello’s, Tempe: 6pm - 9pm - $10 - Southern and McClintock
Last month was a dress rehearsal for this month’s event. Last month
it was a major mob scene, and this month it’s getting better
publicity, Admission is $10 of which $5 goes to charity.
Wines from Orangewood and 3 other distributors will be available to
taste. The featured charity is again for the horse rescue of adopted PMU
mares and foals. This month I will be bringing a couple of Westberg
Cellars wines.
August 13th - Red Kangaroo, Scottsdale: 6pm - 7:30pm - $10
Rob and I will be pouring the 2002
vintage from Young’s Vineyards - Barbera, Zinfandel and
Syrah. As this is one of only 2 places that have the full range of
Young’s wines available, you should be stopping by to get your set.
The Napa Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon is on the “by the glass” list
here, so we will round out the pouring with some of that. There will also
be music from “Michalek and Strone”
to make it difficult to hear what we are saying. Incidentally, Steve Krum
will be playing here on August 27th - but we won’t be pouring!
August 14th - AZ Wine, Carefree: 4:30pm
- 6pm
- Free
We are not sure what the wines will be, but we know we always have fun at these
informal tastings. Dan is great to work with. The store is in the
same building as the Carefree Post Office - Dan has a sign on the door that
advertises “Short Cut to Post Office”.
August 20th - Arrowhead Ranch Country Club, Glendale
Bill and I will be presenting the
several of our wines in the company of 7 other distributors at an event
organized by AJ’s. Stop by AJ’s for information and
reservations.
New
Sales People
Dria Jewell, an ex-Honeywell employee like Laurie and me,
was the star of the public relations department. She and her husband, Craig Harting, another ex-Honeyweller,
are now Prescott residents. She is excited about enhancing her knowledge of
the wines (and the opportunity to drink the high quality of wine from
Orangewood Wines). Dria will be presenting Orangewood Wines to the Prescott area with anticipation of expanding
beyond the two accounts we currently serve.
New
Restaurants and Retail Outlets
Radda - Scottsdale
“Warm
water” - a fine name for a commercial area of shops and restaurants,
especially if it’s translated into Spanish to become Agua
Caliente. There has been much coming and
going within this area NW of Scottsdale Rd and Shea Boulevard. A recent coming is a
restaurant called Radda. The owner is Lori Hassler
who Dick knew when she worked at Classic Italian. This connection has
allowed us to get in on the ground floor with a generous selection of our
wines. I have still to eat there…but it won’t be long.
Painted Horse Cafe - Scottsdale
When I first moved to Phoenix in 1975, the place to take visitors
was Rawhide, a dusty road where actors shot at one
another while you decided whether to eat at the steak house there. Further
out into the desert was Pinnacle Peak Patio where ties were cut off and well
done steaks delivered as an old boot. Beyond that was Riata Pass, but that was way
too far.
Now even beyond Riata Pass is a development with names like Troon. Supporting these developments is a wonderful
little restaurant called the Painted Horse Cafe. Inside are paintings of
horses and yes, a painted horse. It’s open for breakfast, lunch and
dinner and serves drinks until 1:00am. Laurie and I had a late
lunch there last Sunday. The food was excellent and we wolfed it down
with some Napa Cellars Zinfandel. The staff declared us dessert eligible,
so we shared a chocolate mousse and Bailey’s concoction and a glass of
Noceto Frivolo. This was Rob’s first new account – congratulations,
Rob!
Lon’s at the Hermosa - Paradise Valley
In Paradise Valley it seems that some of the street
naming rules have been suspended. Palo Christi should be an East-West
road, but is in fact a North-South one. It is the name of 36th Street for less than a mile heading south
from Lincoln. The Hermosa Inn is a really old and very elegant
resort at 5532 North Palo Christi. Their restaurant is called Lon’s
after Lon Megargee,
an artist who built the original Casa Hermosa as a home and studio. Some
of his work is on display there. The food and wine here is world
class. It’s the kind of place to have a special anniversary or
birthday dinner. Alison has been pursuing this account for a while and
has now placed the Young’s Vineyard Barbera on their list.
Red Kangaroo - Phoenix
The Red Kangaroo stores in Phoenix, Scottsdale and Chandler are franchised from Graham, who
used to own and run the Phoenix store. Graham has now moved
to Australia and sold the Phoenix store to Rick. Rick has been
finding his feet in the wine selling business in the heat of the Phoenix summer. He has made a major
change. He now has a license that allows him to have wine tastings.
Alison has been familiarizing him with our wines. He has taken the plunge
with an initial order of Noceto wines. We also scheduled a wine tasting
in September.
New
Wineries
We don’t go
out of our way looking for new wineries, but sometimes we can’t
resist. These wineries are now signed up and the initial orders are on
their way to Phoenix. We will taste these wines
with our existing clients over the next little while.
Chatom Vineyards
Chatom Vineyards is a beautiful, if
long, drive from Napa. I know, I started at 7 and got there at 10 a
couple of weeks ago. I drove along all of route 12 from south of Napa to somewhat east of Lodi. To get to the winery,
you then have to take route 49 south to route 4. The winery is located in
Calaveras County, which is the county immediately
south of Amador County (where Vino Noceto and Young’s are
located). The drive leads through Angel’s Camp, which includes a
hitching rail and row of store fronts along its main street. The winery and
tasting room is further along CA 4 and nearly at Murphy’s, which is another
town that looks worth exploring. Gay Callan
started this adventure in 1980, working her way from being a grape grower to a
winery owner over 18 years. I met with Gay, her winemaker, Mari, and her marketeer, Joyce, outside the tasting room at a shady table
that would be ideal for a picnic. It was also ideal for tasting their
wines and talking about philosophies and stuff. Their wines were already
available in Arizona until recently, so you may be
familiar with them. They will be arriving shortly.
Mt. Vernon Winery
Mt. Vernon winery is in Auburn, California. It’s a little north of
Interstate 50 on Mt. Vernon Rd. I don’t know if the
road name came from the winery or vice versa. Dick and I had visited the
winery in February and agreed then that we would like to represent their wines
in Arizona. Jim Taylor and his son,
Ryan, have been growing grapes and making wines for only a few years.
They already have a good reputation locally and recently garnered a handful of
medals at their first competition - the California State Fair. We have
ordered their award winning Syrah and a Port, and we expect other great wines
to become available as time goes on.
Event
Feedback
Nello’s, Tempe
This event was, as I mentioned earlier, a mob scene. Three distributors
were pouring wine and lots of people were drinking wine. I arrived late
and stayed for dinner. I recommend it.
AJ’s, Arrowhead
This Saturday
afternoon session is kind of fun. Harassed people looking for a bottle of
wine for dinner stop by, take a quick taste and buy a bottle.
Cheuvront’s, Phoenix
This was our first appearance here. Dick was down with the West Nile
Virus, so Rob and I held down the fort. We poured and talked about the
selected wines for an hour or so and then the customers had the chance to order
wine for pickup in a day or two. So, we got instant feedback on the
quality of the wine and the entertainment value of Rob and me in terms of how
much wine was purchased. We did pretty well.
Epicurean Wine, Scottsdale
Epicurean signed up
for a Ventana introductory tasting, and this Friday event was pretty much
packed. Alison and I were run ragged from 5:30 to 9:00. They have a back room and
tables all along the west window. Every seat was taken.
Vine to Wine Cellar, Prescott
Finally we got to do a tasting at this place. They have been selling our
wine there for two years, and now we got to meet some of the customers.
The Saturday afternoon tasting had a steady business, enhanced towards the end
by people sheltering from the first significant rain in months. Our
tasting was Ventana, scheduled when Terry from Ventana was our “ride
with”. One lady came along because she had been given a tour of the
Ventana Vineyard by the owner, Doug Meador, 20 years ago. Tasting the
wines brought a glazed look to her eyes as she recalled that time.
Rambling
This month I visited a number of wineries in California. There are many things I
could ramble about, but I’ll pick one. It is said that “It
takes a lot of beer to make good wine”. It is also said that
“If you want to find a beer in a winery look for the
winemaker”. With that as a starting point, I began asking the winemakers
what beer they drank and sometimes checked the refrigerator. This was an
informal and unscientific survey which led me to believe that Sierra Nevada is the preferred choice. When
I was at Ventana I got to meet Doug Meador and get his view on the
subject. He said he knew why so much beer is consumed. To explain he
first had to teach me about the cold stabilization process. Without cold
stabilization, a bottled wine will precipitate tartrates
and other insolubles as crystals, leaving an
appearance of ground glass in the bottom of the bottle. These are
harmless but aesthetically unpleasing, so most wineries cool the wine down
below refrigerator temperature for a while before bottling and then filter out
the crystals. Doug explained that for every good thing you do to wine there
is often a bad thing. For cold stabilization the bad thing is the acidity
decreases. Knowing this, winemakers go through the whole winemaking
process with the wine acidity higher than the level intended for the finished
wine. The week to week tasting of the wine has to take this into
account. So, to avoid having too much of an acid stomach, the winemakers
drink beer. Now you know. Another side effect of the high acid
levels in unfinished wine is that when wine makers are judges in competitions,
they tend to select the wines with high acid levels. Check that judges
list.
Cheers!
Richard
and Laurie