This past week was great.  The National Sales Meeting is like a family reunion.  We spend a week swapping stories and listening to seminars put on by our co-workers on new exciting ventures for our company.  We spend a good amount of time tasting our wines and talking about what we can do to continue to challenge ourselves to become better and more efficient.  At the end of the week, we leave exhausted but energized for the coming 2010 sales year for Don and Sons.  It was an absolute blast thanks to the hard work by our team here in Sonoma.

But then Saturday morning comes around and the news hits of a terrible set of earthquakes to hit near Valparaiso in Chile.  The news shows all the damage and stories roll in of all the tragedy in that country.  Over the course of the past few years, DSS has been developing relationships with wineries, winemakers, and their families in Chile.  We make a number of our Pepperwood Grove wines sourced from Chilean fruit.  So needless to say, I immediately sent emails and placed phone calls to our friends down there.  I have only heard back from one individual down there and he and his family is safe but his house is pretty much wrecked.  And he informed us that most of the freeways are destroyed, so getting the help they need is almost impossible by ground.   Complete insanity.

As you can see, this week had its ups, but ended on the downs.  I hope and pray that all our friends down in Chile are OK.  We wish the best to the survivors of the earthquakes and for a speedy recovery.