Chronicle Event Recap

We arrived early for the event yesterday. There's not much to our set up, especially compared to some of the elaborate displays some people put on. Stefania got us all ready to go, and our award was waiting for us on our table.

The hall was large and the event well run. We had been to other events at Fort Mason that we're overcrowded and under spaced, so it was nice to see we would be in the big hall. We spent the time before the show started playing gin and catching up with friends and other winemakers.

One of the strange things about making wine in the Santa Cruz Mountains is that events like these are the only time we really get to see other winemakers. The mountains are so rugged and the drives between wineries so long that we rarely get to visit. We talked with Ted Mederios from Uvas Creek, Therese Martin from Martin Ranch and met the winemaker for La Honda for the first time.



Stef and I took turns doing the pouring and had help from Alice. One thing we wanted to try was putting one of us in front of the table to talk with people. We know one of our frustrating things when we go to these events on the other side of the table is that people can crowd around the winemaker and it makes it impossible to get to the table to get a pour. We thought if one of us was in front of the table it would encourage people to step away to talk with us and let other people come up for a pour. That actually seemed to work.

The crowd came early and the hall filled up. We had a good time and enjoyed talking with people. I still don't think events like this do much to sell any wine, but it was still enjoyable for us. We will probably do one more event like this in San Francisco this year - the Family Winemaker's this summer.