Wine Futures Prove Popular

We recently participated in the McMinnville Wine and Food Classic, and Portland’s Spring Beer and Wine Festival.

We only have one wine in the bottle right now, and that makes for a shallow product offering at festivals. So I took barrel samples of our 2006 Pinot Noir’s to these festivals. We have 5 different single vineyard designated Pinot’s in 2006. Each one of these is distinctly different. The source vineyards are located in different appellations (AVA’s), and each one has a unique story.

I put the wine in unlabeled bottles, and placed them on our festival booth table in front of descriptive placards. We offered a tasting sized flight of all five wines accompanied by our descriptions. The guests loved this. Some would work through the wines relatively quickly, while others lingered and learned. Every now and then someone would spend an hour with us –getting into detailed discussions about each wine.

We had a corner booth at the Portland event which was great because during the busiest times Delaney and I had up to 8 groups tasting barrel samples at the same time. Our voices were shot, but it was fun. Plus, we sold a fair number of wine futures. One aspect of this that works really well for festivals is that people don’t have to carry their purchase around the event.