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