Life of a romantic wine maker

Spring in Napa Valley

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 01:06:00 +0000

The rate that the grapevines grow in the spring is truly amazing. The grapevines, like rosebushes, are pruned back in February so that the only about 2” of vertical shoot comes off the horizontal canes. In March, we can see the first sign of bud break starting as the young bud areas start swelling in preparation for bud break. Around St. Patrick’s Day, fittingly for an Irish winery, bud break, meaning the first green, almost micro-leaves, make their appearance in the Chardonnay. The Sauvignon Blanc follows next, then Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and finally Cabernet Sauvignon in early April.

Then the race is on. By mid-June, they will have grown approximately 6 feet long, an average of 2/3” per day. You can see the change in the vineyard on a day by day basis.

Then in late April, tiny little miniature grape clusters appear. Only about ½” long, these tiny clusters will put out a bunch of tiny flowers. The grapes fertilize themselves with these tiny flowers. The grapes are hermaphrodites (excusing me for talking dirty like a high school biology teacher) meaning that both male and female sex organs are on the same plant, so no bees are required, but good weather is required. Otherwise the grapes are not in the mood to reproduce.

We call this “set” – this is a critical event each year. One year our crop was off 40% because of rainy weather resulting in a poor set. The wine turned out great – this was our 2008 Seduction and 2008 Merlot – but we just didn’t have too much of it (those of you who have been members with us for a while will remember how fast it went).

Check out the sunlight in the above picture!
Mystical force of nature caught by the camera!

So we are off to another vintage, holding our breath, hoping for the best, drinking a glass of wine, marveling at Mother Nature once more.

Now its time to blog again

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:31:00 +0000

After a long hiatus away from blogger, I thought it high time I start once more.

One interesting thought I have had lately - which might be useful to you - is that I started defining myself as a "professional athlete in the sport of marketing". I find this to be a most useful concept. For one, a professional athlete trains for his sport. For me, that means I read or listen to, books on marketing. Lots of books. I try to listen to at least 1 book a month. The constant flow of ideas both teaches you new concepts, but also forces you to spend time thinking about your own business and how to apply ideas.

Favorite books? The Purple Cow - Seth Godin, Made to Stick - Heath brothers, Marketing in the Age of Google - Vanessa Fox, Delivering Happiness - Tony Hsieh, - these are a good start.

Treating your work as sport brings a sense of competitive energy and fires up the spirit. Its no longer work - it is a game you play to win. Fun!

Merry Christmas

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:23:00 +0000

This is a quick video I took while vacationing with my family in St. Petersburg, FL where I grew up. We came back to visit my parents and see my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband and children. This was the first time in five years we had all been together.

We had a wonderful time! We visited Busch Gardens, went to the beach, I saw a few old friends, and spent some precious time with my parents. Fortunately, they are both in excellent health, but given they are in their mid-80s, it was nice to spend this family time with them.

I hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends during this holiday season. No matter what you have going on in your life, good or bad, it is always nice to step back for a moment and realize how lucky you are to be alive and having the good fortune to be born in a great nation compared to the rest of the world.

The Perfect Proposal

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:54:00 +0000

Christmas is one of the most popular times of the year for engagements. When you are in love, the romance of the holidays and thinking about your future life together proves irresistable for many husbands to be.

Here is some advice for those of your planning a perfect proposal this holiday season:

1) Pick a place outside where you can return in 20 years. When you come back for your 20th year anniversary to this particular spot, you can re-live this moment. If you propose in a restaurant, it will be gone in 20 years most likely and so will a bit of your memories.

2) Propose where you have some privacy. Crowded restaurants, crowded hot air balloon baskets, and other places with an audience make this private act way too public.

3) Remember this is the moment she has waited her entire life for. Make it special. Write a few lines about what she means to you and how you want to spend your life with her. You can even go so far as quoting a short poem. At the moment of proposal, go down on bended knee (no one will be watching if you heed #2 above).

4) After putting the ring on her finger, bring out the bottle of champagne you cleverly hid for this moment.

5) Take a few photos and a short video of both of you proclaiming how happy you are at this moment in time. You won't believe how young and good looking you both are when you get around to watching it 20 years later.

6) Give her the opportunity to call her friends and her parents. Its natural. Suggest that she texts them first and calls them later after you finish the champagne.

Life is an adventure. You will be nervous. That's OK.

Good luck!

Happy holidays,

Bart

A Day in My Life Series

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 05:36:00 +0000

As I was out running last week, it occurred to me that now I had an iPhone 3GS with video capability I could start making short videos to show brief glimpses into my daily life.

This thought occurred to me while I was out jogging so I stopped, pulled out the trusty iPhone, and recorded my first "Day in My Life" video to give you a sense of where I run and what it looks like.

I will be posting more of these series over time - I hope you enjoy these glimpses.

Great people from Houston!

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:41:00 +0000

I love Texans! Are they fun!

Dawn Leatherwood brought Johnanna, Regina, and Debbie for a formal blending seminar. Each woman experimented with different blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot to create a custom blend to suit their palate. Then they made up a bottle of their custom blend and we bottled it right in front of them on our bottling line.
(note - other wineries have blending seminars in which they promise to send you at a (much) later date bottles of your custom blend. Do you think they go through the trouble of re-creating your blend at that later date when the bottling truck is bottling all of their wine for the year?)

This was a great group of Texas women!

Then I had a great time with some wonderful people from Houston! Brad and Nikki Ross, Amy and Gary Gross, and Curt and Sherri Ross stopped by to visit last Sunday. Both the Ross' are Steady Club members so the party got the VIP treatment with drinking some library and reserve wines. Fun, fun, fun! They then stayed for the Oak Knoll District tasting that was also held at our winery.

Texans are by far and away the most fun of anyone who visits. I can't wait until my next group shows up!

Balloon Crash Landing

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 06:09:00 +0000

Waking up in the morning to the sound of balloons' gas flames in the morning is a great experience. I often go out to greet them and wave at them as they pass overhead, sometimes barely over the vineyards or our roof as they pass by. I have gotten to know some of the pilots quite well and may learn how to pilot a balloon myself once our tour season slows down.

I was surprised on Saturday morning to find that two balloons had landed in our vineyard. Both had planned to land to drop off and pick up a second load of passengers; however, one had problems with the landing. The basket had gotten caught on a vineyard end post and had started to tip over, then the balloon had caught it and swung it into our seasonal creek (dry this time of year). The pilot had lost one of his lines to control the balloon inflation and so had no control at the critical moment. Fortunately, no one was hurt and had a great story to tell about their Napa Valley ballooning experience.

Treat Your Sweetie to the 'Best Gifts Ever' | Extra

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:59:00 +0000

This is an old clip from Extra TV from Valentine's Day 2007. Just came across it and thought I would post it for fun. We are only briefly mentioned - still working on that 15 minutes of fame.

Treat Your Sweetie to the 'Best Gifts Ever' | Extra

Shared via AddThis

Harvest Starts at O'Brien Estate

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:14:00 +0000

We started harvesting Chardonnay on September 8, 2009. Here is a selection of 3 short videos showing the harvesting process, a closeup of the workers picking the grapes, and pressing the juice from the grapes inside the winery.

Leading the Glamorous Life in Las Vegas

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:22:00 +0000

A group of old friends of mine from my Silicon Valley days and I get together a few times a year for "Boy's Night Out" get togethers in San Francisco. Lots of great fun just hanging out with other guys talking about families, work, and life in general.

Two of the gang own private jets. So our last "Boy's Night" was in Las Vegas two weeks ago. Wow! What a great way to travel - particularly to Las Vegas. Reminded me of the days when I had a 48' foot yacht (yes - that is the correct description - now all that money is in French oak barrels) and used to dock at Sam's Cafe in front of a crowd. Heady days.

The jet is very elegant on the inside like a multi-milion dollar luxury car. Very quiet flying it. My friend Dave Rome pilots it himself which adds to the fun.

Once in Las Vegas, I worked with the local distributor sales rep until 8 pm at night, so it wasn't all glamour. But it is fun to see the inside of lots of casinos and elegant restaurants, particularly when they sell our wine.

These two days made my heart sing - really uplifting to take just a bit of time away once in a while, particularly with very good friends.

Pictures from our Paella party and after party

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:57:00 +0000

Our Memorial Day Paella Party was a blast! We had it catered by Gerard's Paella, who competed against Bobby Flay on the Food Network (and won).

Gerard is a great guy and fixes some wonderful paella in huge paella pans. We had a "boy band" from the neighbors provide entertainment and they were amazingly good. We also showed "A Good Life" with Russell Crowe on the side of the winery and did our trademark candlelighting of the vineyards for romantic strolls.

After most everyone went home, our hardcore crowd of old and new friends carried on until 2 in the morning. One of our newest friends is Scott and Kristina Iverson, who were visiting Napa on their honeymoon. They had toured our winery 3 days before and came back for the party. Great to see a young couple in love at the start of their journey through life together.

Come see us next year - the Paella Party is now an official annual O'Brien Estate event.

Almost too good to be true

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 02:08:00 +0000

I received a notice from Facebook today that I had been tagged in a photo. Always curious as to what embarrassing position I have been caught in - and how much it will cost to have the photo suppressed - I logged on.

To my surprise, it appeared to be a photo of Emily Wahlman getting engaged with bottles of O'Brien Estate Romantic Portfolio wines in the foreground. I was truly touched. To think that her boyfriend (now fiancee) valued my poetry upon the labels to the extent of including it in his proposal (I assume from the photo) means that he understands exactly what I try to communicate about the nature of relationships and the search for true love.

Here is the link to the photo: Emily Wahlman Engagement

What an honor...

A Strange but True Tale

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:27:00 +0000

On the right of the picnic table is Jim Barber and his wife Kim. Jim and I were in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity together at the University of Florida; we graduated 30 years ago together and only saw each other last year for the first time since graduation.

One of my favorite sayings is to ask people what the best thing is about turning 40 or 50 or 60. They usually look puzzled; I tell them that the best thing about turning 60 is that you did not die at 59.

So it is amazing to still be alive and see friends from so long ago - which, of course, sometimes seems like yesterday and sometimes like eternity.

It is so interesting to be in the middle part of life. You remember your young romances, and, if you are lucky, you married the best of them. You look toward the future, hoping that everything will work out all right, and that life will continually get easier.

You look at your children, and wonder how their lives will turn out. You even wonder how long you will live and how you will die.

But then I am struck with a profound sense of gratitude that I am still alive, still in good health, and can spend time with someone I knew from 30 years ago and want to start my wind machines to impress him with the noise coming from the straight pipes of the 440 ci V8 engine driving them.

I deeply enjoy life and the 24/7 challenge of running a winery. It is intense but then life should have an element of intensity - I think this makes it seem longer.

But sometimes I wish it were easier.

A great engagement in Napa

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:24:00 +0000

It is always a great thing to see a young couple in love start their journey together through life. We are fortunate to have the unique experience of meeting many couples (over 30 so far) as single people and saying goodbye to them as engaged couples. The nervousness in the groom-to-be's eyes, the perhaps unsuspecting bride-to-be, and the beauty of Napa Valley makes for a wonderful scene.

Mike and Michelle came to us from New York City. He had called me on the phone earlier and told me that he was planning to get engaged at our vineyard so I could help orchestrate the proposal timing. I met them in the room inside our winery where our bottling line is and where we start our tours and tastings. We pride ourselves on delivering an authentic Napa Valley experience where you get to see all aspects of how wine is made in a small family owned winery.

This is also where we have our Romantic Portfolio and Romantic Trio wine wedding gifts on display. After showing them the winemaking equipment there, I then took them into the main part of the winery where we have our fermentation tanks and 175 French oak barrels of wine. After explaining how we crushed grapes, pumped tons of them into a fermentation tank, then into French oak barrels, I let them outside to the vineyard.

There I had them sit at our backyard table overlooking our vineyards and about 500 acres of our neighbors and left them alone with a bottle of Seduction. Now the moment was up to Mike to "pop the question".

Afterwards, I congratulated them on their new life together. They joined our Wine Lovers Club, so they will have reminders of their time in Napa Valley delivered to their door step every three months. They also are going to register for a Romantic Portfolio as a wedding present and plan to use the box as a bridal keepsake chest after the wine is drunk.

What a great celebration of the continuation of life!

A Day in My Life

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:44:00 +0000

One of the greatest pleasures of the wine business is the number of people you get to meet. We had the pleasure last week of having Gretchen and Shepard from Houston stay with us last week. Gretchen is the manager of Cellar 17, a popular wine bar in Houston and Shepard is the managing partner of Glass Wall restaurant, also a Houston hot spot.

This visit was arranged by Cal Remsburg, our distributor in Houston who is single-handedly responsible for our success there.

Gretchen and Shepard are delightful, so we had an impromptu party for them, inviting over Dave Cofran, former General Manager of Silver Oak, Gary and Ellen Luchtel of Suhr-Luchtel and Fortunati Vineyards, plus Charles and Teresa Kamins, our neighbors.

Gretchen had read my previous blog post on the way to Napa and told me how valuable she thought that advice was to young women, particularly those working in the wine industry. This was one of the nicest compliments I had had for quite a while. This gave me the idea of writing more on this topic - so you will see more of my thoughts on relationships mixed with my thoughts on romantic wedding wine gifts and everything else I muse about.

The forgotten role of courtship

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:51:00 +0000

One of the things that I have been thinking about recently is the forgotten role of courtship in society today. My understanding of the current social norm among young people is that the old fashioned concept of dating and courtship is not seen as relevant anymore. Instead there are more group activities and casual "hooking up" and then a relationship may grow from that shaky basis.

This is a shame. And women are the big losers in this new game. Under the guise of being liberated, they are expected to be as carefree as men as to who they sleep with. Unfortunately, men tend to only value that which they have to work for; an easy conquest, whether on the sports court or in the bedroom tends to have less meaning. I am also curious about the concept of reputation in the world of Facebook, etc. where what people may write about you on the internet will live forever - you can't move to a new town to escape your past.

So I am thinking about how to incorporate this old fashioned idea of courtship into the Romantic Portfolio wine gift set, particularly as a wedding present, where the concept of courtship is front and center. My hope is that is a message that some young woman may find valuable - that a man should have to work hard to gain her trust and the hope of intimacy with her. And that this effort is what will create the basis of a lasting relationship, rather than a one night stand.

Punishing the Mistletoe

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Someone mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that one method of removing Mistletoe from trees was to blast it out with a shotgun.

Absolutely an irresistable idea once heard. I confirmed this concept with another random guest; armed with this information I went to arm myself against the mistletoe threat.

If you are not aware of this, mistletoe only pretends to be an innocent Christmas decoration to provoke kissing. It really is a tree parasite that kills trees by sucking the life out of them. You could call it a tree terrorist. Therefore, it needs to be punished.

My neighbor Robert Jordan offered his shotgun as a mistletoe removing device. Better yet, he had the good suggestion of calling the neighbors to inform them that multiple shotgun blasts would be going off next to the homes (they are a 1/4 mile away, but still nice to know).

I must say, this was some of the most fun I have had in my backyard for a while. I hadn't shot a shotgun for at least 10 years - pretty fun boy stuff.

I had a chance to teach my son Mason how to shoot the one remaining shell (he was late on the scene but very enthusiastic to punish the mistletoe also. After 12 shots, it appeared all the mistletoe had been removed and we celebrated with a glass of wine. I'm trying to tie this all into romantic wine gifts, but having figured out how...

92 Points for our 2007 Chardonnay!

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:37:00 +0000

92 Points!

We received some great news last Thursday - we got several emails from friend congratulating us on our 92 point score in the Wine Spectator Insider for our 2007 Chardonnay. Wow!

Of course, this gave us excuse for multiple days of drunken celebration as you can see in the accompanying photos. In the picture above is Robert Jordan, a new friend of ours and a neighbor. Robert is quite accomplished at providing extra life to parties, so he has become a frequent guest anytime we have an excuse for a celebration. He is also a vineyard manager extraordinaire, providing vineyard management for Opus One, Cakebread, Duckhorn, and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars.

The Attraction Chardonnay in our Romantic Portfolio and Romantic Trio is a barrel select version of the 2007 Chardonnay - only 50 cases made. So we can now brag that in our wedding gift wine sets we have 2 90 point Wine Spectator wines and a 92 point wine.

We are still waiting for scores on the 2006 Merlot and 2006 Seduction - hopefully we will even top the 2007 Chardonnay 92 point score. BTW, we are almost sold out of the 2007 Chardonnay for anyone interested.

Bud Break in Napa Valley

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:40:00 +0000

We don't realize that we have been anxiously awaiting the birth of spring until it happens. Then we awaken - we are longing for the future, to quit marking time during winter, and want the new season to get started. Yes, we hate getting old, but we want time to move on, so we can turn the oncoming future into today.

Here is a slide show of some photos we took today when some friends from our old neighborhood in Los Altos Hills came to visit us. I am going to refrain from talking about unique wine wedding gifts - here's to the future!

Presenting Wedding Gift Wine Sets on Video

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:47:00 +0000

One of my goals is to learn how to sell our romantic wine gift sets via the internet. Both the Romantic Portfolio and Romantic Trio make wonderful wedding gifts, particularly for those people who are wine lovers.

The feedback we get on them from people visiting the winery is phenomenal. We also received a great online review on a site called Gabe's View which described the gift set and wine in great detail.

But it is hard to communicate just how nice the wood box is over the internet with just photographs, so I decided to hire a videographer to film me presenting the box as I would to a visitor to the winery. I posted an ad on a new service called Kijiji which is a free version of Craig's List (costs $75 for job postings) for a "low-cost videographer". One of the responses I received was from Greg Twirbutt (gtwirbutt@hotmail.com) who came out with his wife and equipment and spent about 3 hours filming my presentation and cameo appearances by Barb.

I was amazed at the quality of the work particularly for the money I spent (I promised Greg I wouldn't tell, but it was an incredible deal!).

So I am hoping that these videos will help communicate the essence of our wedding gift wine set all over the country, so that people who are looking for a wedding gift will come across what we have to offer as as a thoughtful and romantic wedding present. We have come up with a new idea also - upon request, we will send the bride who receives the present a satin liner for the case so that it can become a wedding keepsake chest after the wine is drunk. This allows it to become a permanent reminder of the people who gave the gift to her and her new husband.

I put these videos on our site as well as on YouTube

St. Patrick's Day at O'Brien Estate

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:36:00 +0000

We have an annual St. Patrick's Day party at O'Brien Estate each year the weekend before St. Patrick's Day.

No - no green beer or green wine.

But lots of delicious O'Brien wine paired with corned beef and cabbage and shepherd's pie. And lots of fun.

It seemed like Ireland - a cloudy day with intermittent rain - then the sun came out and we frolicked outside.

There we had our annual Irish joke telling contest for bottles of wine. We always have a contingent of O'Briens come - Bob O'Brien and his family from the SF East Bay. They had a new generation this year - a new baby girl was born named Hunter O'Brien. They originally came to O'Brien Estate for a wedding shower 2 years ago - now a baby! Who says that Seduction wine doesn't work?

I had just returned that afternoon from Cincinnati so I immediately was swept into the party and did my best to be amusing and funny, fueled by wine.

I think I succeeded.

First Day of Cincinnati Wine Festival

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 15:27:00 +0000

I had only been to the Cincinnati Wine Festival once before - I think it was either 3 or 4 years ago. I had a bad experience with booth location and had one of the festival committee members take my O'Brien Estate tablecloth because she decided that it wasn't allowed. She didn't leave me a note - just took it during a pouring break - and didn't tell anyone else she had taken it.

It took me a about an hour to finally track it down and get it returned to me - very frustrating. So I swore I would never come back.

But here I am again at the Cincinnati Wine Festival, which is the biggest festival in the state of Ohio. People come from all over and surrounding states to attend.

I got off to a good start on Thursday night with a winemaker dinner at Morton's Steakhouse. About 40 people came and we had a great time. I give very entertaining wine dinners involving toasts, telling funny stories about Barb and I buying the winery, reciting poetry, and talking about how lucky we are to be alive right here and now.

The wine festival itself started on Friday and it was a pretty marked contrast to the Dallas Savor festival I went to last week. The Cincinnati wine festival is in a convention center ballroom - pretty much like a tradeshow with each winery having its own booth. It has a very mid-Western feel to it with booths offering Velveeta like cheese on crackers intermingled with the winery booths. The Dallas festival was set in both a spectacular sculpture garden and in an atrium lobby next to the Westin hotel. Quite a contrast in environments.

But the good news is that the Ohio economy seems relatively strong even in this economic environment. I am hoping we are going to have another record breaking year for wine sales, particularly with our romantic wine gift sets for weddings and anniversaries.

Now in Kentucky

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Now I have been staying in Cincinnati the last few night and traveling to Kentucky during the day for sales calls. Fortunately, I was able to get a room in the Hyatt downtown for $60 per night courtesy of Priceline. For those who haven't used Priceline, I highly recommend it for hotels, not for rental cars, no opinion on flights (never tried). I save tons of money and/or stay in nicer hotels than I would normally get for $60 per night (you can imagine what type of hotels I have stayed in).

Well maybe you can't imagine, so let me be more specific. I used to go to NYC for sales calls and always stayed at the YMCA for $89/night, tax included. Small clean room (monastic), shared bathrooms (only one person at a time however), and inexpensive food at the cafeteria downstairs. Picture of Times Square above from my last trip to NYC for the Neil Cavuto interview on Fox News (http://www.obrienestate.com/Television).

This was pretty cool for 2 reasons: 1) the hotel was full of Russians, etc. and other interesting people you don't meet every day - similar to a youth hostel. This can make you feel young as you are having an interesting cultural adventure. 2) The location is absolutely killer - 1/2 block from Central Park, 1 block from Trump Tower on West 62nd Street near Columbus Circle. I used to run in Central Park and even take walks at midnight (I was told it was safe and I am very gullible). For those who have not seen Central Park, it is a huge, marvelous, and endlessly fascinating place, especially at midnight.

Back to reality. So far, I have not seen much sign of recession in either Cincinnati, Louisville, or Lexington. Neither did I find much in Cleveland, Toledo, and Columbus a month ago. I ask the wine retailers and restaurants I visit how their business is holding; some say "a little soft" at worst or sometimes "up over the previous year". Our wine distributor in Kentucky has grown over last year. So the news from my travel is pretty positive on the economic front - much to my surprise.

I also get a very favorable response to our Romantic Trio gift set - which I carry a sample wherever I go - as a unique and romantic wedding gift. Anyone who sees it who will be going to wedding soon buys it.

Now I am debating whether we should bottle an extra 50 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon as Cabernet Sauvignon in our O'Brien Estate package or whether it should be bottled as Passion of the Soul. More about this in the next blog post.

The Less Glamorous Side of the Business

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:22:00 +0000

Got your attention huh? I know, you are thinking that maybe breaking a cork in the bottle is the unglamorous side.

Let me tell you about my trip to Dallas last week. Always the one to save money, I booked my airfare and hotel together on Expedia. I usually use Priceline for hotels, but I could see that I would get a nice looking Holiday Inn for about $50 per night close to where I needed to be for the Savor Wine Festival.

What the hotel was also close to was a set of freight train tracks - about 100 yards away. The trains had a party every night between 3 and 5 am - about 5-8 of them would go by. Of course, because there was an intersection there, they legally had to blow their big airhorns before, during, and after they went through the intersection.

I didn't know I could remember the phrase "Doppler effect" until I heard it in action again.

But I then had a series of wine dinners and private events that were, actually, quite glamorous and fun. Then the Savor Wine Festival was great. Set in a beautiful sculpture garden, it was great to be there, meet lots of people, and have them go nuts over the wine. They waited in line for 15 minutes to get a sip of Seduction, Merlot, and Chardonnay. Cal Remsburg, my friend in the picture, met me in Dallas to help pour for the main tasting so I wouldn't be overwhelmed.

Also got news that the 2006 Seduction won a gold medal at the Dallas Morning News Wine Competition.

I was showing the Romantic Trio wine gift set as a wedding wine gift during all of the events and got lots of interest in it. I was on a panel with 3 other wineries on Saturday morning and used teh Romantic Trio as a show and tell item and read the romantic poetry from the wine labels. I was told it was quite memorable - but plane crashes are also memorable.

So after a day back in Napa, I left again the next morning to fly to Cincinnati - more glamour.

More to come.

A romantic couple from Chicago

bart@obrienestate.com (Bart O'Brien) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:59:00 +0000

We were invited to pour our wines at Napa Valley Premiere last weekend. This is a trade-only event where 200 Napa Valley wineries pour barrel samples of a special blend created only for this event. This custom blend - typically 5 cases worth - is then auctioned off to raise money to support the Napa Vintners organization. We received $3,000 for our 5 case lot or $50 per bottle as a wholesale price. This wine is then resold by the buyer in their retail shop or to collectors.

I got tired of waiting for people to stop at our barrel so I decided to wander into the crowd, catch people, and bring them back to the barrel. Never the shy one here when it comes to customer acquisition!

I met Elaine Varvatos and Brian from the Chicago Tribune this way. They were great sports and came by the winery to visit on Monday after the event. Great couple - we had a great discussion of romantic wine and how the Romantic Portfolio made a wonderfully unique wedding gift, particularly for people on their second marriage who already had everything they needed.