Thursday, September 30, 2010
Suzy Q Market and Local Wines
Just a quick note to let everyone know that Suzy Q Market in Cottonwood has a pretty spiffy selection of Arizona Wines. They've recently added a shelf of Verde Valley and other AZ. wines as an experiment. SQ has been my go-to place for it's great beer selection for a long time. I noted Freitas, Javelina Leap, Oak Creek Vineyards, Caduceus, Arizona Stronghold, Kokopelli and maybe one or two others. Great prices too. Suzy-Q's price on Ray's Red, for example, is 4 bucks cheaper than you'll pay at the Pillsbury Tasting Room. Granted, you can't taste it first at Suzy-Q but since I've told you over and over how good Ray's Red is, you don't need to sample it anyhow.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
No news is good news
Nothing to report today. I got sidetracked by one of my pals out in the pasture and have to do some repairs and get a load of hay. Stay tuned, coming is a report on Harry's Hideaway and my research into a mystery "shiner" bottle of wine I brought home from the WineFest. It's either Freitas Merlot or Ray's Red, but with no label, how to tell? I have a labeled bottle of Ray's Red, I'd hate to have to open them both and compare to solve the mystery. Stay tuned...
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Wine Fest Photo Finish
Ok, so I got spanked for downplaying the quality of my pics. I really do wish they were better and more varied, but at least I got a few. My pal Johnny told me how to put up a slide show the other day and of course I promptly forgot and so am having to figure it out my ownself. There wasn't a whole lot of time away from our booth all weekend so most of the shots are taken from there when I had a spare minute to pick up the camera and take a quick snap. It'll give you some sense of the place and the crowd.
I learned more than I expected this past weekend. The Verde Valley wine industry is the real deal. What most impressed me is the way all these winemakers appear to be helping each other out and encouraging each others' successes and commiserating on each others' flops. A rising tide floats all boats I guess, at least for the present. I saw lots of personal trades going on among the various owners. "I love your XXXX, I'll give you a case of my YYYY for one of yours". Deals like that all the time. I wish I'd been able to taste more wine, but we were under essentially bartender's rules as servers. I did get to sample some Caduceus selections, which I found uniformly good. Often in-your-face, ballsy wines that were begging for a salty rare steak, a smoky pork roast or rack of lamb. Wines for carnivores I'd call them. Not for the faint of heart, plenty big enough to wash down tasty hunks of flesh, but with true depth and interest for anyone wanting to drink slowly and explore the levels of flavor and nuance too. Mr. Keenan isn't just copying what he learned at Page Springs, he's really coming into his own and knows what he's after.
As for the show itself, the organizers, at least from my sort of peripheral perspective did a great job and made sure the vendors had what they needed. At the end of the show they settled up with everyone quickly. The show ended Sunday at 5 and we were packed and out of there by 5:15.
As for the food.....I'll admit to somewhat of a prejudice against Dahl and Deluca, one of the show sponsors and one of two food providers. I didn't try their food. I've been to their restaurant, fancy and pretentious Italian fare. I once had the worst plate of linguine and clams anyone has ever eaten there and swore off their food forever. I've had dirty socks that tasted better than the eight clams that came on top of that plate of soggy pasta and insipid, bland cheese. I've mopped my kitchen floor with less ammonia than those nasty bivalves contained. Thank goodness my wife had a gift certificate the last time. So I didn't try her offerings. The Grill At Shadow Rock, where I HAVE had a couple of good meals had the other food booth. Too bad their chef and sous chef spent most of their time, along with a lot of other Hilton Sedona employees all wearing name tags identifying them as Hilton employees, wandering around the wine tables trying to schmooze free wine samples instead of looking after their tired looking and refrigerator flavored offerings. Considering all the outstanding wine at this show, it's too bad the food wasn't a better match. I hope they'll do better next year. Let's cut out the foo-foo and get some good substantial food in there.
The next show I'm going to get to work will be October 16th in Cottonwood. Forgive me if I mentioned that already. What I'm most excited about now is coming up this weekend, a visit to Freitas Vineyard to get a personal glimpse of the place where Ray works her magic.
That's all for now....GH
I learned more than I expected this past weekend. The Verde Valley wine industry is the real deal. What most impressed me is the way all these winemakers appear to be helping each other out and encouraging each others' successes and commiserating on each others' flops. A rising tide floats all boats I guess, at least for the present. I saw lots of personal trades going on among the various owners. "I love your XXXX, I'll give you a case of my YYYY for one of yours". Deals like that all the time. I wish I'd been able to taste more wine, but we were under essentially bartender's rules as servers. I did get to sample some Caduceus selections, which I found uniformly good. Often in-your-face, ballsy wines that were begging for a salty rare steak, a smoky pork roast or rack of lamb. Wines for carnivores I'd call them. Not for the faint of heart, plenty big enough to wash down tasty hunks of flesh, but with true depth and interest for anyone wanting to drink slowly and explore the levels of flavor and nuance too. Mr. Keenan isn't just copying what he learned at Page Springs, he's really coming into his own and knows what he's after.
As for the show itself, the organizers, at least from my sort of peripheral perspective did a great job and made sure the vendors had what they needed. At the end of the show they settled up with everyone quickly. The show ended Sunday at 5 and we were packed and out of there by 5:15.
As for the food.....I'll admit to somewhat of a prejudice against Dahl and Deluca, one of the show sponsors and one of two food providers. I didn't try their food. I've been to their restaurant, fancy and pretentious Italian fare. I once had the worst plate of linguine and clams anyone has ever eaten there and swore off their food forever. I've had dirty socks that tasted better than the eight clams that came on top of that plate of soggy pasta and insipid, bland cheese. I've mopped my kitchen floor with less ammonia than those nasty bivalves contained. Thank goodness my wife had a gift certificate the last time. So I didn't try her offerings. The Grill At Shadow Rock, where I HAVE had a couple of good meals had the other food booth. Too bad their chef and sous chef spent most of their time, along with a lot of other Hilton Sedona employees all wearing name tags identifying them as Hilton employees, wandering around the wine tables trying to schmooze free wine samples instead of looking after their tired looking and refrigerator flavored offerings. Considering all the outstanding wine at this show, it's too bad the food wasn't a better match. I hope they'll do better next year. Let's cut out the foo-foo and get some good substantial food in there.
The next show I'm going to get to work will be October 16th in Cottonwood. Forgive me if I mentioned that already. What I'm most excited about now is coming up this weekend, a visit to Freitas Vineyard to get a personal glimpse of the place where Ray works her magic.
That's all for now....GH
Monday, September 27, 2010
Just a vignette from the WineFest...
So there comes to our tasting table this very handsome pair of ladies. Clearly a mother-daughter duo. Dressed to the nines in "Santa Fe" style. Long flowy dresses, big custom 30's style cowboy hats, seriously valuable concho belts and POUNDS of antique indian jewelry. Shod in custom made multi-colored cowboy boots worth more than any vehicle I own. Mama is shy, I'd guess about 75, long black locks going to grey. Daughter does all the talking. Pays her ticket and discribes Mama's tastes in wine. I suggest Ray's Red. I always suggest Ray's Red, everybody likes it. Hija samples it, pays another ticket and samples in again. Mama does not indulge. Consultations in Spanish ensue and a bottle is to be purchased. I pack the bottle. Thirty dollars and 90 cents I say. Daughter opens her Louis Vuitton wallet and pulls a hundred off a stack of the same that was AT LEAST 2 inches thick and hands it to me. I make her change and we exchange pleasantries and they're off. Two incredibly gracious and friendly women.
Bet you thought I was gonna say they told me to keep the change. Nope, this is better. About an hour later, I took a break and went to use the Port-O-San out in the parking lot. As I was walking back the two ladies came out of the tent heading to their car, which, as I couldn't resist sneaking a peak after them, turned out to be one of these, sure enough with NM plates. They both got in the car and started it, but didn't leave. I got tired of pretending to look for something under my driver's seat and went back inside. About a half hour later, daughter comes back in without Mama. She wants to buy another bottle of Ray's Red. "My Mom LOVES it!!" She says.
The image of a septagenarian doyen of Old Santa Fe swilling Ray's Red in the parking lot in her new Mercedes kept me smiling all afternoon.
Bet you thought I was gonna say they told me to keep the change. Nope, this is better. About an hour later, I took a break and went to use the Port-O-San out in the parking lot. As I was walking back the two ladies came out of the tent heading to their car, which, as I couldn't resist sneaking a peak after them, turned out to be one of these, sure enough with NM plates. They both got in the car and started it, but didn't leave. I got tired of pretending to look for something under my driver's seat and went back inside. About a half hour later, daughter comes back in without Mama. She wants to buy another bottle of Ray's Red. "My Mom LOVES it!!" She says.
The image of a septagenarian doyen of Old Santa Fe swilling Ray's Red in the parking lot in her new Mercedes kept me smiling all afternoon.
What exactly IS a "winery" anyhow?
I guess for most of us, myself formerly included, "winery" means a place where wine is made. Only...ummm...maybe, maybe not. At the Sedona Winefest this past weekend, I learned that "winery" can mean many things. I'm not going to mention any labels here in the interest of remaining as neutral as possible. Verde Valley wines, it turns out, run the gamut from estate bottled wines that are grown and produced completely locally all the way down to at least one so-called winery which is buying what are termed "shiners". Shiners are pre-bottled wines. You want a nice Cabernet? How 'bout a Shiraz? Merlot? Gotcha covered. Wholesale prices by the case, slap your own label on and you're set to go. How does a "winery" go from scratch to over 30 bottled wines in just a few years? Easy. Buy your wine from somebody else who sells in bulk, label it and call it your own. You can tell people anything you want about your grapes and where they come from. Who's gonna go to Wilcox, Elgin, Sonoita or anyplace else and check out your story? Certainly not the casual tourist or even the average serious wine buyer as long as the wine is passably good and comes with a good story. I think if somebody is truly interested in Verde Valley wines, they'd do well to check things out pretty well.
The big hurdle in truly local wines here seems to be the price of land. We've got perfect soil and perfect weather here, but even with the downturn land is still prohibitively expensive for winemakers without extremely deep pockets to go out and buy and put vines on. A vineyard planted today won't make any significant amount of wine for three to five years, meantime, you've got to pay to water, weed, feed, prune, protect and nurture that young stock. There are lots of new grapes in our area, and some winemakers are making a sincere effort to eventually produce all their wines from grapes grown right here. Meantime, like any business, they've gotta have cash flow. So they source their grapes from California, or hopefully, and more often than not, from the Wilcox area of the state. They make their wines here for the most part. This is perfectly understandable in an industry as young as this one. The phonies, on the other hand, can only hope to scam the tourists so long. Eventually, this valley will grow AND produce enough quality wine to make their "shiners" glow-in-the-dark-obvious.
The big hurdle in truly local wines here seems to be the price of land. We've got perfect soil and perfect weather here, but even with the downturn land is still prohibitively expensive for winemakers without extremely deep pockets to go out and buy and put vines on. A vineyard planted today won't make any significant amount of wine for three to five years, meantime, you've got to pay to water, weed, feed, prune, protect and nurture that young stock. There are lots of new grapes in our area, and some winemakers are making a sincere effort to eventually produce all their wines from grapes grown right here. Meantime, like any business, they've gotta have cash flow. So they source their grapes from California, or hopefully, and more often than not, from the Wilcox area of the state. They make their wines here for the most part. This is perfectly understandable in an industry as young as this one. The phonies, on the other hand, can only hope to scam the tourists so long. Eventually, this valley will grow AND produce enough quality wine to make their "shiners" glow-in-the-dark-obvious.
Sedona WineFest Day 2 bits and pieces
I'm going to break this up into shorter posts over the next few days as there's so much to talk about that it's kind of a categorical nightmare. How to organize it all so it doesn't take pages and pages to tell? Sunday was a much more relaxed day all in all. Fewer people than Saturday and a lot more locals, which necessarily meant slower bottle sales. I had the extreme pleasure of spending the day with Ray Freitas, the owner of Freitas Vineyards, whose wine I was selling. I got to be her bottle monkey most of the day, pouring samples while she did the talking.
Most of us have known a person or two in our lives who is a true master at something. These folks, no matter what it is they do, share some characteristics:
Their craft, whatever it is, often borders on obsession.
Their path in pursuing this obsession has often been fraught with serious obstacles.
They're not "dabblers", but are usually single-minded perfectionists
Their path is not monetarily driven, in fact it's often costly; a labor of love.
Ray Freitas is now on my very short list of those people. She and her husband started their vineyard on 5 acres in Cottonwood 12 years ago. This makes her vines the oldest in the valley. She's now a widow, works a full time job in health care in order to continue her real passion, which is making wine. Her wines were arguably the ONLY truly estate wines at this show. Virtually every other winery present was using at least some grapes sourced from someplace else. Not Ray. A question that often came from the samplers who came by the table "where do you source your grapes?" was easily answered by her, "My back yard".
Most of us have known a person or two in our lives who is a true master at something. These folks, no matter what it is they do, share some characteristics:
Their craft, whatever it is, often borders on obsession.
Their path in pursuing this obsession has often been fraught with serious obstacles.
They're not "dabblers", but are usually single-minded perfectionists
Their path is not monetarily driven, in fact it's often costly; a labor of love.
Ray Freitas is now on my very short list of those people. She and her husband started their vineyard on 5 acres in Cottonwood 12 years ago. This makes her vines the oldest in the valley. She's now a widow, works a full time job in health care in order to continue her real passion, which is making wine. Her wines were arguably the ONLY truly estate wines at this show. Virtually every other winery present was using at least some grapes sourced from someplace else. Not Ray. A question that often came from the samplers who came by the table "where do you source your grapes?" was easily answered by her, "My back yard".
Here's a picture of Ray and two tasters from yesterday. Ray's on the left.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Sedona WineFest Day 1
Yesterday was the first day of the much anticipated Sedona WineFest. This post will be fairly short as I'm behind in my chores out in the pasture and gotta get out there pretty soon. I've been to quite a few of these to-do's as a customer but this was my first opportunity to work one. If today's crowd at the 'Fest is HALF what yesterday's was the whole thing is going to be proclaimed an enormous success. It was slated to begin at 11 a.m. I met my boss, Lisa Pender from the Pillsbury Wine Co.'s tasting room at 10 to unload many cases of wine. There were already customers lined up at the ticket desk to get in!! Imagine, grown up, normal, successful looking people who couldn't WAIT to drink wine at 10 in the morning! By the time we got to the last hand truck full of wine cases I looked down the hill and could see what looked like a line of cars backed up half way down Airport Road.
For those who've never been to one of these deals, here's how it works. You pay your entry fee, and you get a spiffy wine glass and usually 6 tickets, which will get you some tastes at the various winemaker's booths. Some winemakers charge a flat rate: one ticket for one one ounce taste, while others tier their charges depending on their per bottle costs. A less expensive wine may be one ticket whereas a 65 dollar bottle may be 3 or 4 tickets. Six tickets won't get you a lot of tastes, and so you can go to the ticket table and buy more for a buck apiece. Individual winemakers get paid back a half dollar for each ticket by the show organizers, which in most cases doesn't even cover the wholesale price of the wines they're sampling.
So the show is really all about selling bottles, cases and the PR that comes with being there.
The crowd was easy to handle. In recent years I've become really wary of crowds and being in places where there are more than a few people I don't know really well. I'm a bit agoraphobic and was concerned about having one of my famous panic attacks and so took an extra pocketfull of Xanax just in case. I'm happy to report I didn't need any. A wine tasting crowd is a HAPPY crowd! I was hoping to meet at least a few snooty snobs who I could goof on and have writing material for this blog, but to my chagrin didn't meet a single one. While about 90 percent white, this was otherwise a crowd of regular folks, regular folks surprisingly knowledgeable about wine. Uniformly inquisitive, polite and happy as can be.
I'll report more tomorrow and post some pics, but now have to get going with chores before getting the "buck perfume" washed off myself and heading out.
One wine I want to mention now before I forget. Javelina Leap Winery in Page Springs has a fortified, Port-like Zinfandel in pretty short supply. If you're a Port or Sherry drinker ( I know, most Port drinkers have long since shed their satin smoking jackets, put out their cigars and quietly crumbled to dust) you really ought to see if you can get ahold of a bottle of this stuff. A bit too much alcohol on the finish but it's very interesting otherwise. 30 bucks for a split sized bottle. Personally, I think it would have been even more successful if they had a brandy to fortify it with rather than the grain alcohol they used, but I guess you can't do that unless you've got your own brandy to use, and distilling is a whole other deal. It went a long way towards getting rid of the made-yesterday-and-stored-in-the-reach-in-uncovered taste of the Three Flatbread offering from the Hilton Sedona that I had for lunch. Awesome wines at this fest. Food? Not so much.
More tomorrow, thanks for reading!
For those who've never been to one of these deals, here's how it works. You pay your entry fee, and you get a spiffy wine glass and usually 6 tickets, which will get you some tastes at the various winemaker's booths. Some winemakers charge a flat rate: one ticket for one one ounce taste, while others tier their charges depending on their per bottle costs. A less expensive wine may be one ticket whereas a 65 dollar bottle may be 3 or 4 tickets. Six tickets won't get you a lot of tastes, and so you can go to the ticket table and buy more for a buck apiece. Individual winemakers get paid back a half dollar for each ticket by the show organizers, which in most cases doesn't even cover the wholesale price of the wines they're sampling.
So the show is really all about selling bottles, cases and the PR that comes with being there.
The crowd was easy to handle. In recent years I've become really wary of crowds and being in places where there are more than a few people I don't know really well. I'm a bit agoraphobic and was concerned about having one of my famous panic attacks and so took an extra pocketfull of Xanax just in case. I'm happy to report I didn't need any. A wine tasting crowd is a HAPPY crowd! I was hoping to meet at least a few snooty snobs who I could goof on and have writing material for this blog, but to my chagrin didn't meet a single one. While about 90 percent white, this was otherwise a crowd of regular folks, regular folks surprisingly knowledgeable about wine. Uniformly inquisitive, polite and happy as can be.
I'll report more tomorrow and post some pics, but now have to get going with chores before getting the "buck perfume" washed off myself and heading out.
One wine I want to mention now before I forget. Javelina Leap Winery in Page Springs has a fortified, Port-like Zinfandel in pretty short supply. If you're a Port or Sherry drinker ( I know, most Port drinkers have long since shed their satin smoking jackets, put out their cigars and quietly crumbled to dust) you really ought to see if you can get ahold of a bottle of this stuff. A bit too much alcohol on the finish but it's very interesting otherwise. 30 bucks for a split sized bottle. Personally, I think it would have been even more successful if they had a brandy to fortify it with rather than the grain alcohol they used, but I guess you can't do that unless you've got your own brandy to use, and distilling is a whole other deal. It went a long way towards getting rid of the made-yesterday-and-stored-in-the-reach-in-uncovered taste of the Three Flatbread offering from the Hilton Sedona that I had for lunch. Awesome wines at this fest. Food? Not so much.
More tomorrow, thanks for reading!
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