Since our last post, the mustard has calmed down and the vines have burst into green, and while we’re not quite out of this year’s very wet Spring, those green vineyards are a good sign. Right around now is when wine competitions and big events start to pick up steam, and Don & Sons is participating in quite a few this year!

How about that good-looking table?

Sean Riebli (in the suit) and I poured wine last Thursday night at the Wine Enthusiast’s Toast of the Town event in San Francisco, held at the War Memorial Opera House. It was a great event–tons of fantastic wineries were there pouring, along with local restaurants like Girl & the Fig (Sonoma), Mustard’s Grill (Yountville), and Bistro Jeanty (San Francisco) serving appetizers. This was the second of five Toast of the Town nights around the country this year: TOTT Atlanta was April 8th, TOTT Chicago is on May 6th, TOTT New York is on May 24th, and TOTT Washington DC is on June 11th. If you’re in these areas, come out and see us! You can get tickets for the remaining three events at http://www.wineenthusiast.com/toast/

I helped pour our Don & Sons wines at last year’s Toast of the Town event as well, and while there was plenty of great food and good wine this year, it did seem like there were a few more high end restaurants and hard to find wineries at least year’s event. Could the recovering economy be to blame? Regardless, you would be hard pressed to find someone at that event who wasn’t having a great time. If you saw us last week in San Francisco, write a comment below and let us know what you think.

If you’re not near a Toast of the Town city… well, then you may need to book a quick trip to Vegas. Coming up next week, Sean and I will be pouring at the Vegas Uncork’d Grand Tasting, on Friday the 7th at Caesar’s Palace. The weekend of foodie and wine connoisseur events is hosted by Bon Appetit Magazine–check out http://www.vegasuncorked.com/. Other events include special chef demonstrations by Bobby Flay and Charlie Palmer, as well as a panel discussion of wine ratings and scores with several experienced wine industry veterans. We look forward to seeing you there! Remember to check out our Don Sebastiani & Sons Facebook page for more updates on upcoming events, tastings, and developments!

Now that springtime is official on all our calendars, DS&S winemaking has a number of projects that we are accomplishing.   We are changing vintage on a number of our white wines which creates a lot of blending trials.   So our team spends countless hours setting up trials and deciding what is best for our wines.

Wild mustard growing between the vines

In our two largest programs, Smoking Loon and Pepperwood Grove, we have been doing some trials on new oak products and some fining agents in order to to increase the mouthfeel, depth, and flavor profile of our Chardonnays.   We want our consumers to see an increased value in these wines by creating blends that are true to our DSS roots but have more stuffing.   Keep your eyes open with our 2008 vintage blends that will hit your store shelves this spring and summer.  And let us know what you think.

Another fun project, we made two Rose wines this year.  These are the first Rose wines that I have ever made and it is very exciting to see how our efforts during the harvest are panning out.   We have a 2009 SKN Napa Rose and a 2009 Crusher Clarksburg Rose wines.   We are currently completing our fining in order to get them bottle ready later this month.   The concept of California Rose is an interesting one.   New World Rose wines are generally deeper in fruit flavor and less acidic than our Old World counterparts.   We feel that our Rose needs to be a combination of Old World and New World.  We want fresh vibrant fruit flavors balanced by integrated acids.   None the less, these wines have been a lot of fun to make and I am sure we will be looking at more Rose options in the future.

Grapevines just starting to bud

So that is your springtime winemaking update.   And it just dawned on me the other day, we are only 4 and half months away from the harvest of 2010.   So get out there and enjoy the sunshine with a bottle of DS&S wine.   We will make more!!

This last weekend in Sonoma was one of the first really nice weekends of Spring, a welcome relief from all the rain (and a touch of hail!) that we’ve been getting. While Sonoma is frankly pretty dead in the winter (sorry Aug), a bit of sun and warm weather makes the town come alive, and it gives us in the Marketing office a little boost!

As always, we’ve got a bunch going on… We recently tasted a lineup of rosés from California and beyond in preparation for releasing our own rosé! Two in fact — we’ll be releasing both a Crusher Rosé and a Screw Kappa Nappa Rosé, both made from Pinot Noir. We only made a little bit of each one this year, but I’m sure we’ll be making more next year! I’m personally pretty excited about this project, as I’ve been a fan of rosé since I was a fan of wine at all.

We’ve also got a few new promotions in the works — look out for our Time With Dad displays in stores around Father’s Day (the necktie coupons are going to look great!). We’re also planning some really classy Harvest time promotions that focus on all our different Pinots. Other than that, it’s back to the usual flow… cooking up some new brands, hiring a new PR firm, helping out our sales guys… all part of a day’s work :)

Hope everyone’s looking forward to St. Patrick’s Day!! Winemaking tells me that they’ve blended up some special Pinot Greengio for a company-wide meeting on Wednesday — should be a trip!

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.

Very excited to kick off an action-packed week of educational meetings, show-and-tell, Q&A, and eating and drinking! We have 40 people from around the US and another 30 or so from our operations in Napa and Sonoma visiting the Sonoma Mission Inn for early morning Jeopardy on Tuesday, Ice Luge on Wednesday, and a culinary extravaganza Thursday…Good times…

Sorry for the hiatus, but we’ve got a lot going on these days. Since I last contributed to the D&S blog, so much has happened. Principally, The Other Guys (TOG), formerly a sales division of Don & Sons, has become a completely separate, freestanding entity.
Straying from my typical Sonoma-centric scheduling practices, I find myself traveling quite a bit to kick off 2010. First, I enjoyed snowy Tahoe for Super Bowl weekend with friends. (Still can’t believe that onside kick…) At present, I’m somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico heading home from my first ever trip to the beautiful state of Florida, where I spent the last week selling wine.
It was a remarkable trip, with TOG Southeast Regional Manager, Gene Zimmerman. Gene and I covered the state touting the wines of TOG. For those interested, we’ve got a production contract with Don & Sons, which means we’ve got the pleasure of selling wines made my Greg Kitchens. It makes selling pretty easy.
Over the years, we’ve gotten a lot of credit for packaging and label design. And while it’s clear that we try to have fun with our brands, it’s pointless if the wine isn’t of great quality. Fortunately, we never have to worry about that with superior wines coming from Greg’s kitchen… (See what I did there?)
The trip to Florida could have only been surpassed if the Sunshine State had stayed true to its moniker. Orlando was in the midst of a rainstorm that would make a Seattleite run for an umbrella… Earlier in the week, however, we were in Miami and there wasn’t a cloud to be found.
Next week: Hawaii with my sis. We’ll be kicking off Mia’s Kitchen and Hey Mambo at Foodland Markets.
You can find us at www.togwines.com .

It seems like things never slow down here in Sonoma! For companies around the country, this is National Sales Meeting season. Our “Looniversity” sales meeting is coming up at the last week in February, where we get all 40 of our rowdy sales guys (and gals) together here in Sonoma and we all get on the same page. We have a new corporate logo (which means slick new business cards–score), a few new packages coming out, new gear and chotchkies for our sales folks, and as always, we’re brewing up a few new wine brands. All while we’re planning out how to manage our sales folks and make sure they get the most out of their few days here in town, which makes for an extremely busy marketing department.

But at the same time, the Marketing office has been a pretty fun place recently. It’s filling up with fun stuff for our sales gift bags (heads up if any of the sales force reads this: you’re getting some delicious TCHO chocolate, which is appellation-driven just like our wines, a very cool concept), our Creative Director just celebrated a big birthday last week and we all went out to The Girl & The Fig to celebrate with her, and we’ve managed to stay pretty relaxed, joking about the Superbowl ads and looking forward to seeing everyone later this month. It’s not exactly the Virgin Islands (where a previous national sales meeting was held), but this will be my first ever national sales meeting, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Now that we’re all updated on the goings-on in the Marketing office, how’s everyone looking forward to Valentine’s Day? Anyone picking up a bottle of SKN and making some romantic plans? Write a comment below, I’d love to hear what everyone’s up to! As for me, I’ll be moonlighting as a beer judge at a few major competitions in San Francisco, but I’ll be sure to have some wine this weekend as well.

Have a great week everyone, and if you’re getting hit by midwest/mid-atlantic blizzards, stay warm and good luck!

Having returned from a sales blitz in Louisiana, I was thinking about what to blog about regarding winemaking.  But it didn’t seem right to ignore the great people and great environment that New Orleans has to offer.

New Orleans is located on the large Mississippi Delta.  The only other Delta in the US is just south of Sacramento which holds the growing district of Clarksburg.  So naturally, I was focusing on our Crusher Clarksburg appellation brand given this similarity.  Our brands on this sales trip were widely accepted in a number of venues.  Regardless of our success, I was most impressed with the people.  What a friendly city.  There must be something in the water that makes those folk so happy and polite.  That was true Southern hospitality.

And then it comes to the food, you won’t find regional cuisine in the US that is as distinct to one location like in Louisiana.  I ate as much gumbo, etouffee, jambalaya, and creole/cajun cuisine as possible (all paired with our wines of course).  I was a big fan of the crawfish stuffed quail over andouille sausage and wilted greens paired with our 2008 Crusher Clarksburg Pinot Noir.

So if you haven’t been to New Orleans or haven’t been in a while, make plans to visit this city for the wonderful people, great cuisine, and positive vibe of this historic city.  And please buy a bottle of your favorite Don and Sons wine while you are there.  This way I can afford to go back and visit on vacation rather than business.   I had fun and I was working.  I can’t wait to go back just for fun.  And to our friends in New Orleans, thanks for the great sales trip and your warm hospitality.

Over and out, your winemaker, Greg.

Back to blogging…After a case of New Year “blogger’s block” I have been inspired to share some interesting findings…

First came an article featuring a study done that shows people – tasting the same wines – liked the wines “better” when they tasted in red and blue rooms, compared to wines tasted in white and green rooms. What?!

Link to article: http://www.myfoxspokane.com/dpp/news/dpgo-study-wine-tastes-better-in-red-blue-rooms-lwf-200912141260821805316

Then this past weekend, August and I hosted a party at which we blind tasted Bud, Miller, and Coors and also a $10 wine, a $20 wine, and a $70 bottle wine. I didn’t ask “best” or “worst”, but I did ask people to guess which was which. There was no clear pattern with people confusing Bud and Coors, the $10 and the $70 wine equally. This was a group of wine aficionados and even wine industry insiders!

Pretty amazing how subjective wines can be. Sometimes those of us in the wine business “bubble” forget about that.

I have also heard of, though I have not experienced, red vs white tastings – and that many people are often confused…Taste them blindfolded at the same tempareature. Try it out and let us know how it goes!

When Im not working, my passions are riding my horse or taking photographs.

I just turned 21 recently. A relief more than anything, because I work at a wine company and all my friends are over 21. I can finally start to really explore this business! I work in the Don & Sons marketing office as the webmaster. I keep the website updated, the blog moderated, the facebook account fresh, and the internal web portal up to date and running smoothly. I also work with the graphic designers, occasionally direct photography shoots, and even designed the new label for Mia’s Kitchen.

I grew up here in Sonoma County, Napa’s little sister, but still great wine country. Driving past acres and acres of vineyards is as normal as seeing a sky scraper to a city person; you don’t even notice. But I recently had the opportunity to see the vineyards a little differently. Well, for one, they were in Paso Robles, a AVA with a rich history of grape growing dating back to the late 1700′s, and located approximately halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Donny Sebastiani and Greg Kitchens (winemaker) invited a few of us from Marketing to go on a little field trip to SVP Winery, one of our suppliers for Smoking Loon, Pepperwood Grove, Flock and others. A brand new experience for me, we got to tour the facility and taste new wines, fresh from the tanks. We tried a couple whites (cloudy still, and green tasting – in the most raw form I could imagine) and a handful of reds (thick and juicy and nicely acidic) with both Kitchens and SVP’s winemaker, Jason Bushang, commenting and discussing the wines in very serious wine geek talk — its like a different language. Sam Balakian, owner of SVP, has been a supplier to the Sebastiani’s for many many years — he remembers selling wine to August Sebastiani, Donny’s grandfather.

After returning to town, we all met up at the hotel bar for drinks with some of our distributors from Young’s Market Company. The night continued at Villa Creek, where we dined for a good four hours on amazing food, fantastic wine, and enjoyed some really awesome conversation and company.

Below you can see some photos from the trip. Happy holidays everyone!