Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 5:44 PM
Subject: Orangewood Wines News - 2

 

To Our Wine Aficionados,

 

Introduction

Against the hectic background of shipping, selling, delivering and tasting, we have made progress.  We have expanded our portfolio with Frank Family Vineyards and Napa Cellars products; we continued our thrust to the North with a replacement sales guy; and Dick has begun a thrust to the South with a foray into Tucson.  At the same time we are working with our existing accounts to make them aware of the fine wines recently added to our “book”.

On the home front, we are coming to the end of our relocation project.  We hope to have a wine tasting event at the new house in late February or early March.

 

Box Score

New restaurants:      3

New retail outlets:    2

New sales people:    1

New wineries:          2

 

Contents

Event Notices

February 5th       Epicurean Wine - Cabernet Sauvignons

February 27th     Red Kangaroo, Scottsdale

February 29th     Tour De Paso Robles - Westberg Cellars Wines

March 3rd           AZ Wine, Scottsdale - Sierra Foothills Wines

March 26th         Wine Basket in Sedona      

Event Feedback

Red Kangaroo - Chandler

New locations

Arcadia Fine Wine - Scottsdale

Adobe Wine Deli and Ménage à Trois - Tucson

La Cocina - Tucson

The Wine Basket at Hillside - Sedona

New Sales Guy - Jim Blean

New Wineries

Frank Family Vineyard

Napa Cellars

Visit to Frank Family Vineyard

Verrado Grand Opening Event

Feedback     

 

Events

February 5th            Epicurean Wine - Cabernet Sauvignon Tasting

6:00p.m. $15.  With the addition of Frank Family Winery and Napa Cellars to our portfolio, together with the existing RustRidge Winery, we find we have several excellent Cabernet Sauvignons.  Tonight will be the night to try them all.

February 27th          Red Kangaroo, Scottsdale

Diane and Gary will host a wine tasting feature Marinda Park and other Orangewood Wines together with some entertainment.  We’ll provide more details closer to the time.

February 29th          Tour De Paso Robles - Westberg Cellars Wines

I know this seems a long way in the future, but Tom and Peggy Westberg are planning to attend this “First Annual” event featuring Paso Robles wines.  The event is sponsored by AJ’s and another wine distributor and will be held at the Scottsdale Culinary Institute.

March 3rd                 AZ Wine, Scottsdale - Sierra Foothills Wines

Leveraging the fact that half our portfolio is from the Sierra Foothills, Dick will be leading the tasting with samples from Noceto, Young, Hyatt-Baumbach, Granite Springs and Latcham.

March 26th               Wine Basket, Sedona

Every Friday this wine store has a wine dinner.  On this date in March they will feature wines from Orangewood.  They have room for 25 people and sell out a few days beforehand.

 

Event Feedback

Red Kangaroo - Chandler

            I spent an hour and a half driving from Cave Creek to Chandler for this event.  I had to fight my way past the traffic from the Barrett-Jackson car auction and the Sun Country Quarter horse event.  (It took only 40 minutes to get home afterwards.)  Alison was there also.  We helped 4 or 5 groups of people try the Marinda Park and Vino Noceto wines.  On Saturday Dick hosted a veritable multitude including one lady who said she didn’t drink wine but finished up buying two bottles of Noceto Frivolo. 

 

New Locations

Arcadia Fine Wine, 4251 N Brown Ave, Suite 9, Scottsdale

Dan and Joe recently bought this wine store hidden away on the west side of Scottsdale Rd.  They specialize in fine wines from little known vineyards from US and Europe.  Currently they are open by appointment only (call 480-970-0646) but intend to have regular opening hours.  Alison explained to Dan how we specialize in fine wines from little known wineries…he has purchased Young’s, Domaine Coteau and Latcham wines to start with.

Adobe Wine Deli and Ménage à Trois, 4280 N Campbell Ave, Tucson

This wine bar, deli and restaurant is the place that sommeliers hang out after they finish work.  Dick took along 6 of our wines - they bought 6 cases!  Included are Vino Noceto, Latcham and Young’s wines.

La Cocina - 201 N Court Ave, Tucson

This restaurant is located in the historic, adobe Presidio building that dates back to the 1850’s.  It serves Southwestern style food that can now be accompanied by Vino Noceto’s Tutti I Giorni wine.

Wine Basket at Hillside, Sedona

The Wine Basket seems to be a wine store, but they have a few tables at which lunch is served.  Jim and I visited this prospect when Jenna, the owner, was there.  We hung out there for a while.  Business was slow - January is slow in Sedona - so we got to sample the soup of the day as a reciprocal tasting.  A good job too, as I was starving.  While they have none of our wines on their shelves as yet, they have recruited us for one of their weekly wine dinners on March 26.

 

New Sales Guy - Jim Blean

            Jim has agreed to handle sales in the Prescott, Sedona, Jerome and Flagstaff areas, as well as selected other establishments.  I first started trying to convince Jim to sell our wine when I realized that he spent most of the morning drinking coffee at the Cave Creek Coffee Company (C4 as he calls it) and many of his evenings drinking wine and/or beer at the adjacent wine bar.  He had declined the opportunity up until now, but finally recognized that this is just too much fun to pass up any longer.  Jim is a charter member of the Orangewood Newsletter and has followed us around to many of our wine tastings.  He spent many years in the banking industry, some of it as a bond trader (government and corporate, not bail). 

 

New Wineries - Frank Family Vineyard and Napa Cellars

            I have been getting a lot of calls from wineries and importers who would like Orangewood to represent them in Arizona.  I think that we show up well on the search engines when you type “Arizona wine wholesale”.  Anyway, these two vineyards have the same owners and we enjoyed the wines that they sent us.  See also the visit description, below.  Tasting of their Cabernet Sauvignon wines is scheduled for February 5th at Epicurean Wine.

 

Verrado Grand Opening Event

In January a major housing development, Verrado, had their Grand Opening.  This is more a community development than a housing development.  It started with the town center, in a similar manner to DC Ranch in Scottsdale.  This is not surprising, since DMB is the common developer.  DMB chose to give a bottle of Noceto Sangiovese to each of the attendees of its Grand Opening event.  This was a result of one of our wine aficionados (thanks again, Mary) suggesting that Orangewood might have a suitable wine for the upscale event.  Several hundred bottles of suitable wine were delivered by wine retailer, Tom Hamilton, of phoenixwine (602.631.9808) and myself to the Verrado community center.

 

Visit to Frank Family

            Mr. Hertz has provided us with a bright yellow Mustang convertible.  The sky is blue, we have the top down and we are tooling up the Silverado trail looking for Larkmead Lane.  Laurie is driving, our son-in-law, Mike, is sitting in the passenger seat; I am scrunched into what is called the back seat.  It is freezing cold.  We arrive at the tradesman’s entrance of the Frank Family Vineyard where I attempt to do a movie-style leaping exit from the car - perhaps that’s why it’s called the jump seat (or not).  The movie style seemed appropriate because the winery is half owned by Rich Frank, a movie and TV mogul formerly with Disney.  Rich bought the Kornell Winery in 1993.  Kornell was known for its Champagnes.  Since the purchase, however, there has been an emphasis on making red wines, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon.   The other half is owned by Koerner Rombauer, of Rombauer Vineyards fame.  We have an appointment with Scott, their marketing guy, with whom I have been corresponding via email for a couple of months.  He and the winemaker are waiting at the front door to greet us (unfortunately, we arrive at the back door, so there is some scrambling to find each other).  First off, we are shown the winery by the winemaker, Todd Graff.  Todd has been there only a few months, but he has made his mark on the 2003 vintage.  He led us to the Rutherford Hill Cabernet Sauvignon and we tried barrel samples of the 2003, 2002 and 2001 vintages.  The 2003 has been in the barrel only a few weeks.  Fresh from visiting Hyatt-Baumbach we detect a similar tightness in the recent vintage.  We repeat the vertical barrel sampling with their Zinfandel.  We follow Todd through the bottling area that is shared between Frank Family Vineyards, Napa Cellars and Rombauer Cellars.  A fully automated pallet-izer is orienting each case of wine before placing it on the pallet.  Once completed, 14 cases to a layer and 4 layers deep, the pallet is wrapped with clear plastic.  When I left high school I had worked for a few weeks in a Mitchells and Butlers beer bottling plant and had stacked cases of beer on pallets by hand, so this was very cool.  Next comes our visit to the winery’s talking head, Jeff Senelick.  Jeff has answers to all our questions and answers to many questions it hadn’t occurred to us to ask.  On the walls are photos of Marilyn Monroe, but, no, they don’t make Marilyn Merlot here.  Rumor has it that Marilyn would visit here in the Korbell era, hang out with the owner and drink champagne all day.  Jeff is able to give us all kinds of information as well as a bottle of their Winston Hill Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon.  We had been a little worried that this vineyard was too big and might seem too much like a corporation, but Scott, Todd and Jeff were lots of fun and easy to work with, so we signed up and leapt back into the car.

 

Feedback

            Neal Baumbach of Hyatt-Baumbach Winery responded almost instantly to our last newsletter to let me know that the tasty relative of the Primitivo grape is called Aglianico.  Plan on getting to know it better in the 2002 vintages due in May. 

 

Cin-cin, alla salute!

 

 

Richard and Laurie