American Winery Blog

Dave Larsen of Soos Creek

In light of the fantastic reviews that Soos Creek has received for its 2005 Artist Series, I got together with Dave Larsen to learn a bit more about this up-and-coming winery in Washington. I met Dave at Taste Washington, where I had the opportunity to taste a delicious Bordeaux blend. With juicy complexity and a death defying finish it’s no wonder that Wine Enthusiast gave it 93 points, and we have it available at a special price here on AmericanWinery.com!

As for our interview, catch Dave’s responses below.

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I recently returned from a trip to Sydney, Australia and the North Island of New Zealand. But I won’t bore you with the details of my trip nor will I regale you with my experiences tasting the local wines (cheap AND tasty!). Instead I will tell you what I learned - people have no clue who/what/where Walla Walla is or was (but they think it might be a town in the Australian Outback).

Via Ugly Cat

I bring this up because after living, schooling, and now working here in Walla Walla for five years I’ve been exposed to some great wines, world class, even. When I told wine loving relatives about the juice we had back home they not only knew nothing about Walla Walla, they didn’t particularly care! Perhaps they had too much great, local stuff to concern themselves with, or maybe I’m not charismatic enough (unlikely). On to the point.

Wouldn’t it be great to find out who is interested in what wines based on where they live? Do New Yorkers search for cult Napa cabs more than Floridians?  What websites are searched for (and presumably used) primarily by Silicon Valley nerds? Andrew Chen answers the latter using Google Insights for Search in a great post on his blog.

This is a great tool that anyone can use (and not just the web analysts). Go check it out! It will allow you to support your claim that “People in Vermont do not like cute kittens.”

This is one of my favorite recipes, at any time of year, but at summer it’s extra special because you can pair it with a crisp white and it becomes a more ethereal experience.  I really enjoy these tacos with the Yorkville Cellars Sauvignon Blanc.  The flavors meld beautifully, and I like the way the crispness of Sauv Blanc cuts through the garlicky aioli.  YUM

The two keys to making this recipe work are using a fruity yet mouth warming salsa, and of course the aioli.  The great thing is that it’s really not that invasive.  Once you’ve mixed up the Aioli, and chopped up your veggies, all you have to do is put the tacos together.  

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Our “101 Wines” in 101 Days contest started on August 1, 2008. Every day until November 9, 2008 (that’s 101 days later), we are giving away a copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to your World!

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “How can I enter to win this contest? I want a copy of Gary V’s book!”

I know you do.

All you have to do to enter this contest is create your free AW Membership, and we’ll enter you in that day’s drawing!

Already a member? Well, you can still enter our promotion by giving us some feedback about our site! Be sure to enter your email address at the end of the survey to ensure we get your entry.

Without further ado – here are the confirmed* winners of the “101 Wines” in 101 Days contest… so far. Could you be a winner?!

August Winners
1 – Alex Prichard
2 – Julie Gallagher
3 - Rafael Montarossa
4 - Eva Pepitone
5 - Becky Brown
6 - Kristi Gilleland
7 - Penny Reynolds
8 – Jen Westra
9 – Shirley Hardy
10 – Cathy Tingle
11 – Dee Cusick
12 – Ryan Montague
13 – Bill Anderson
14 – Tiffany Hulbert

*confirmed winners have been notified that they are a winner and have claimed their prize by letting us know where to send it.

The standards for growing and selling organic foods are determined and regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). I will delve into these standards and the issues surrounding them in my next post. For now, we must understand the technical framework for the four different classifications using the Organic title on alcohol beverage containers. 100% Organic. Organic. Made with Organic Grapes. Made with Organic Ingredients.

The skeptic in me immediately cringes. Apparently, we need to differentiate between “100% Organic” and “Organic.” Shouldn’t the latter be the former? If you did not know that “100% Organic” existed, wouldn’t you assume that “Organic” meant what it says? But no - living in a culture where “new and improved!” pretty much means same as before but with a new label - “Organic” is only so when it is 100% (Now! More Organic than before!). But no matter, that is neither here nor there. “100% Organic” is at the top of the “O” tOtem pole, and “Made with Organic Ingredients” is at the bottom.

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Stacy and Chico

When it came time to decide what the AW team wanted to do for community service, it didn’t take long for us to agree on animals. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the Humane Society can always use more volunteers. So I dragged Zeb out of bed and to the Walla Walla Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning, where we were set to help man the Blue Mountain Humane Society’s booth and walk adoptable dogs to encourage interest and hopefully, adoptions.

I put dibs on walking Bunny, a Chihuahua-pug mix with the energy of Kelly Ripa after 3 cups of coffee. Zeb got the “wallflower” Sophie, a 6-year old beagle who was rather indiscriminate about where she went to the bathroom. Stacy got to walk the coolest dog, Chico, who was quite evidently ALL man. Read the rest of this entry »

Why? That is my question. Why use styrofoam (expanded polystyrene foam) packaging? Granted, not everybody cares about the environment. Some say that styrofoam takes 900 years to decompose. Others say 2,000. What do I think? WE DON’T KNOW! This material was developed in the 1940’s. Maybe if Jesus had thought of it and started a landfill, we would know. But in truth, maybe it doesn’t decompose. It is completely resistant to oxidation and is artificial. No known organisms can or will eat it.

via flickr.com

Back in the Golden Age of the oil industry, when oil fields seemed bottomless and locations for landfills boundless, we thought,”sure, why not?” It’s cheap to make, light, and even has great insulating properties. What better than this to keep your coffee warm an extra 30 minutes? But these same qualities which had once put styrofoam on a pedestal soon created a problem. These were not really economic problems, mind you, but logistical ones. And those most effected were not the producer nor the consumer (which is one of the reasons that we still produce and use this material at a staggering rate).

The problem: what to do with all this crap? It is extremely costly to recycle, cheap to produce (so why go the extra step to reuse, right?), and even when thrown away it is problematic because it takes up so much space (after all, it is 98% air).

But even though I wish I had a solution for the many tons and acres of styrofoam landfills, this is not the purpose of my post. I am here to ask why it is still used for wine shipments, and if I am not proven wrong in the comments of this post, to tell you to stop.

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Yesterday I drove from Seattle to Mission, British Columbia, a town north of Sumas, WA - only about fifteen minutes from the U.S. border. Meeting up with my Canadian father who “immigrated” to Canada about ten years ago, it has been a few years since I have been up there and I thought it prudent to find out what our neighbors to the north are up to in the wine trade.

Dinner was prepared…a penne pasta with vodka sauce was the main course, and my uncle presented a few “Canadian” wines. During the casual chatter, hysterical laughter and other ramblings, I found myself compelled to investigate the wine a little further.

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There are a few things we love at AmericanWinery.com: Wine (of course), our customers, free stuff, and Gary Vaynerchuk. In an exciting new promotion we’ve managed to combine all of these together for a fun giveaway that is free to enter.

For starters, if you have yet to sign-up at AmericanWinery.com, there’s never been a better time! By signing up now, you’ll receive all the benefits AmericanWinery.com has to offer AND your name will automatically be entered to win a copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book, 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspired, Delight, and Bring Thunder to your World. We’ll be giving away a copy of his book every day for 101 days, so sign-up now!

If you’ve already signed-up, purchased wine or are a winery partner with AmericanWinery.com, you can still enter this contest for FREE by filling out a quick survey about your experience on our site. Your input and feedback helps us constantly improve the quality of our service.

User Experience Survey
Customer Purchase Survey
Winery Survey

Be sure to tell your family and friends to visit AmericanWinery.com to enter our “101 Wines in 101 Days” contest! Winners of the contest will be notified via email. Check out two of our previous posts for more information about the book and Gary Vaynerchuk.

I recently attended WITS and had a lot of fun. I met a lot of really cool people (big ups to Jeff/Jason of ShipCompliant, Bart from O’Brien Estate, WITS organizers Smoke and Lesley, and many others…), got to connect with several of our winery partners there such as Jonathan from Francis Ford Coppola Presents, Patrick from Iridesse Wines, Laura from Zahtila Vineyards, and Kaz from Kaz Vineyards and Winery (more on him later), Bob from Chateau Leidigh and had a lot of fun and learning in the process. What more could you ask for?

This symposium has been running for four years now, and continues to grow each year with great speakers, sponsors and other beneficial offerings to wineries and vineyards. Definitely mark your calendar for it next year!

I could go on and on about the symposium and my experience there, the AmericanWinery.com found/CEO, Lloyd Benedict, has talked about it in a previous post, so I wanted to focus on a great, humorous, and table-turning encounter I had: being interviewed for Wine Biz Radio.

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