Vintners Festival Recap

We made it through the weekend ok and generally had a real good time. This is really the only time the winery is open to the public all year so for many people it seemed an annual event. They'd been coming to Chaine d'Or for years.

We poured wine from the kitchen and set up a table with snacks. Every hour I did a brief over view of the vineyards and then led a barrel tasting in the cellar. People really seemed to enjoy the barrel tasting a great deal and I spent most of the time in the cellar answering questions.

I was sampling the 06 Santa Cruz Mountains Cabernet Sauvignon and the 07 version of the same wine. Both showed really well and there were lots of inquires asking if we would sell futures and when the bottled wine would be available.

The hardest part for me was being 'center stage' the entire weekend. Most of the time winery work is pretty isolated, even lonely. You are by yourself, with your own thoughts, focused on a task at hand. Events like this, I'm talking and answering questions the entire time, meeting and greeting and generally don't get a break. I worked hard to keep water in me to make sure I kept my voice.

I do enjoy that though. I like talking about wine and winemaking with people. I hope I bring some casualness to wine and make people feel more comfortable about asking questions and talking about what they like.

We sold a bit of wine, and had a good time. It was hard to set wine aside for this event. I knew it was on the calender and Anne and Jerry really wanted us to pour Stefania as well as Chaine d'Or, so we set aside 10 cases from the initial release. At first we had planned on setting aside 20 cases, but that proved impossible. Instead we just cancelled a number of other events that were on the calender and got the wine out to our mailing list customers. That's always a hard process to go through.

We had great help over the weekend. Of course Anne and Jerry were wonderful hosts, and Amber and Ingird manned the pouring and sales stations. Sunday Rajiv also came to help and poured as well. It was also nice to meet some of our mailing list customers who had read on here we'd be open. We'll open the winery again in the fall for Pick Up Day and hope to see some friends visiting us then as well.