Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 7:31
AM
Subject: Wine at Orangewood Consulting - 30
To our Wine Aficionados,
Introduction
It has been a hectic holiday season. Laurie’s father
had some serious surgery that, thankfully, has been unbelievably
successful. My sister, Margaret, came to stay for two weeks – her first
visit to the United States – and is now safely back home in chilly old
England. We also had visits from friends from Buffalo (hi, Beth) and
Massachusetts (hi, Diane and Nancy). Finally a visit from Norm and Fanny
Winton, part owners of the Marinda Park winery - see below.
Summary (Box Score)
·
Jim Gullett from Vino Noceto slated for Trick’s event
·
Nello’s in Scottsdale (8658 East Shea Road) now has Vino Noceto
·
Tarbell’s now has Marinda Park Pinot Noir
·
Duck & Decanter now has Marinda Park Chardonnay and Pinot Noir
·
Bar Bianco now has Marinda Park Chardonnay
·
2002 Sales more than 6 times those of 2001
Content
Outline for the remainder of this
newsletter
Event Update and Reminder – House
of Trick’s, February 4, 2003
Event Feedback – Newsletter wine
tasting, December 16th
Visit from Marinda Park owners
New winery – Chateau Benoit
Sales
Rambling Delivery guy
Website
Event Update and Reminder – House of Trick’s - February 4,
2003
In the last newsletter we mentioned the Trick’s event from
5:30 – 7:00 on the evening of February 4. What’s new is that Jim Gullett
will be there. Jim and his wife, Suzy, are the owners and spiritual leaders of
the Vino Noceto winery. Who better for a wine tasting with the title of
“Sangiovesi di Vino Noceto”. Trick’s provides nuts and cheese for the
event. Cost is $15 and you will need to call for a reservation.
(House of Tricks - 480-968-1114). It would be a good idea to reserve your
place soon – they sold out 3 weeks ahead of time for the charity tasting in
December.
Event Feedback – December 16th, 2002
The event went well. I got the hunks of cheese and
loves of bread. I over did it again. I keep worrying that everyone
who receives the newsletter will show up. We did taste a significant
portion of the portfolio including the new release of the Noceto Sangiovese
Riserva. We also tasted the Marinda Park Merlot. This is still
pretty tannic. The bottle had actually been opened at Epicurean Wine 3
days earlier. It’s not clear when Marinda Park will recommend releasing
it. One of the hits from the evening were specially prepared
pecans. I promised to include the recipe. Here it is - thanks Pat!
Sugar & Spice Pecans
From Pat
Nonstick cooking spray
2 1/2 c. pecans (or other nuts)
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 350. Line a shallow baking pan with foil and lightly coat with cooking spray. Set aside.
Combine all ingredients in a heavy skillet or saucepan. Bring mixture just to boiling over medium-high heat. Reduce heat; boil gently, uncovered, for at least two minutes. (I think I did about 5 minutes for the doubled recipe size I used. That was maximum volume for the size baking pan that will fit in the oven.)
Spread nut mixture evenly in a single layer in the prepared baking pan. Bake 5 to 10 minutes and remove from oven. Before transferring mixture to another piece of foil coated with cooking spray to cool, stir the mixture around on the pan thoroughly, to evenly coat all the nuts with the glaze. It will still be somewhat gooey when it comes out of the oven. This also allows the nuts to begin cooling just enough to retain nearly all the glaze once transferred to the new sheet of foil.
As the nuts cool, I move them around from time to time, to separate them. Once totally cool, store covered at room temperature up to two weeks. I opted for a foil pan covered with foil to allow a little air circulation and discourage any condensation, rather than take a chance by using a covered plastic container. Also, the nuts got eaten before we could test that two-week freshness limit.
Another part of the evening was identification of the “Pour
me a Cuban Breeze, Gretchen” lyric. It comes from the pen of Donald Fagen
(half of Steely Dan) and appears on his “Night Fly” album. The song is
“The Goodbye Look” and has lots of cool marimba playing in it. Bill was
the only person who took a moment on the internet to figure this out.
Glad you enjoyed the Pinot Noir.
Visit from Marinda Park owners
Norm and Fanny Winton and their daughter Sammi had a
whirlwind visit the weekend before Christmas. Norm and Fanny are part
owners of the Marinda Park Winery and are responsible for worldwide
marketing. Their toddler, Sammi, showed an aptitude on the snare
drum. Norm and I checked out how frantic things were at Epicurean –
everyone was preparing Christmas baskets. Then Norm got to meet Dick at
the House of Tricks. (We were trying to close the sale on the Chardonnay,
but instead found that Norm and Dick had many football colleagues in common.
Norm played at Oregon State and played in a Rose Bowl a few years ago.
Dick played high school football in Auburn, California, with many of the Oregon
State team.) Next stop for Norm was Tarbell’s. We met up with the
ladies there for dinner, which included the Marinda Park Pinot Noir – it was
great. The next day Norm bought a car, loaded it up with wine and family
and headed for the west coast to find distributors there.
New winery – Chateau Benoit
One of the services we are trying to provide is to listen to
our customers who ask for specific wines to be brought into Arizona. In
that vein, the Barmouche folks told me they were interested in the wines from
Chateau Benoit in Oregon. So, after a significant number of phone calls
the winery sent us some wine for evaluation. Suffice it to say, they are
now working on getting a license to import to Arizona and we are working on
what to order. Chateau Benoit has an interesting white wine – Muller-Thurgau.
It is going to take some time just practicing how to say it. We will let
you know more about this and other Chateau Benoit wines once they are available
in Arizona.
Sales
I have carefully avoided talking about specific sales
figures, however, six times is a big deal for year over year. Granted,
last year’s first sale was in June – for 3 bottles. And sales through November
last year totaled only 7 cases! This year we have exceeded 150
cases. This is not earth shattering, but it is more than we could drink
in an afternoon unless we had a lot of help. For 2003 we are planning for
continued growth. We will probably need to find additional sales
associates to achieve that growth, if you have any suggestions…
Rambling Delivery Guy
Laurie helped out on a delivery run the other day. We
started with AJ’s on Central. What with waiting for a check, sticking
price stickers on the bottles and stocking the shelves, this took half an
hour. Next was a quick social stop to see Liz and schedule an overdue
sushi outing on the way to AZ Wine in Scottsdale. They finally needed
another case of RustRidge Zinfandel. If they don’t hurry up and sell it
we may have to execute the business strategy of drinking it ourselves.
Next was a family brunch event – we were only a little late. The Noceto
Frivolo, which I normally push as a summer wine, also goes down well at festive
events. We reconfirmed this once again. At 3:30 we managed to
arrive at Nello’s on schedule for delivery and a beer with Dick. This was
our final delivery of the trip, but I mentioned my plan to make a sales call at
Bar Bianco on the way home. Perhaps it was the second beer, but the sales
call became a phone call (successful) and we were sucked into an evening event
that included watching the ASU vs. Kansas State game. We were heading for
home after 9:00 pm. I have to say that 3:30 – 9:00 sets the record for
the slowest delivery so far! Thanks a lot for your help, Laurie.
Website
Google allows you to install a toolbar from which search
requests can be launched with a minimum of effort. Many people use Google
as a way to skip keeping favorites or guessing URLs (the things that start
http://www...). So it was a relief to find that the Orangewood Consulting
website now shows up in response to typing “orangewood wine” or “corles wine”.
This second search also listed the Marinda Park website. Try it; it
will work for you, too.
Feedback
I had been hoping that I would get lots of email with
excuses for your non-attendance of our wine event and be able to ramble on for
pages. But no, only a few responded. I did get some meager excuses
like – it’s a long way from Austin, Texas. Still, thanks to those of you
for the excuses I did get. Laurie suggests that I should ask
everyone to RSVP – but then I wouldn’t have an excuse to buy too much cheese.
Cin-cin, alla salute!
Richard and Laurie