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Blog Saturday September 29, 2007 Harvest 07! Holy cow! Harvest is already back! We kicked off Harvest 07 on the 19th. This is the time of year when we question the sanity of living at the beach. We got up at 4:30 and headed out for the Horse Heaven Hills. I love everything about harvest. It's like getting to participate in the Olympics every year. The excitement is unbelievable. Then you throw in insane amounts of coffee, the kind of shitty snack food you only eat once a year (at harvest), and lots of wine, and it is an all time experience. Note to world: white cheddar cheese-its and Syrah go very well together. It's about a five and a half hour drive out to the vineyard from the coast, and we also had to stop in the Dalles to rent a pallet jack, so we made it out to the vineyard around 10:30. Last year, we had the great pleasure of having one of our good friends Tom volunteer to bring the grapes back on his flatbed. It was great fun. This year though, we were doubling our production and we needed something bigger, so we contracted a refrigerated semi to pick up the grapes and transport them at a perfect 42 degrees. As usual, we were out in the vineyard taking pictures of picking (but not actually picking ourselves-we've done that and we know we don't like it!), and we were able to get the grapes loaded by about 1. By the time we made it back to the winery it was too late to start a 7 hour press regiment, so we chilled the grapes down overnight and pressed on the 20th. As usual, fresh grape juice, especially Chenin Blanc, is truly the nectar of the gods-it makes welch's look like water. At 24% sugar or so (we were at 24.6 brix), grape juice is twice as sweet as what you buy in the store, and a hundred times as tasty. We pressed to tank and chilled the juice down to 36 degrees to clear it up before fermentation. When you chill down juice and wine, solids and other molecules will chill down, become heavy, and fall to the bottom of the tank. It's called cold stabilization. On the 21st we drove down to Sam's Valley, which is outside of Medford. Sam's Valley Vineyard is the source for our reserve Syrah, and the 06 is tasting mighty fine out of barrel. We cruised the vineyard and tasted grapes, which is always a ton of fun. There are lots of analysis that will tell you important things about the chemistry of the grapes, but tasting them makes all the difference. If the taste isn't there, it isn't going to be in the wine either. It's a simple but important point. The seeds were browning up well, a good sign of advancing ripeness, but the skins were still tight and a little green, and the stems were bright green and hadn't started woodening up. We hope to find nice, juicy, sweet grapes, with loads of flavor, dark brown, fully developed seeds, chewy, soft skins, and stems that lignify (turn to wood). Still a week or two away from picking. The Chenin was transferred to fermenting tanks on Monday and the yeast was added. There were still no visible signs of fermentation by the end of the week but we should see them this weekend. See the January 31st blog to see what we did with the Chenin last year. We're continuing our yeast experiences with the addition of Vin 13, which is a South African yeast (anyone drink Steen...?) that highlights higher aromatics. And, we are again fermenting in different size stainless steel tanks as well as some neutral white barrels. Stay tuned, Syrah harvest is on deck! Monday, July 9, 2007 2005 Vintage! Last month we bottled our 2005 vintage wines, and you can expect to see them sometime this fall. We have added a Cabernet Sauvignon to our lineup! Yup, this is the grape that Chenin and I cut our teeth on in the Napa Valley, and we're excited to again be rolling in the love that is Cabernet. It was a tough choice not to make Cabernet in our first vintage, but we felt that with starting a new business it was important to not overwhelm ourselves, and to that end thought that we should focus our production efforts on only one wine. In the end, we decided that our first vintage should be a reflection of our northwest home, and while Syrah is certainly not unique to the northwest, we think Syrah will do for Washington what Pinot Noir did for Oregon. But Cabernet Sauvignon is the stealth wine, and we think that Washington's warm days and cool nights will offer opportunities that California can only wish for. We can't wait for you all to start drinkin em!
Tuesday, May 1, 2007 Shy Chenin Ladies and Gentlemen, wearing blue shorts and weighing in at 10 bucks a bottle, fighting out of the value corner, baaaaaaaaasket caaaaaaaaaaaaaaase! And in this corner, weighing in at $14 per bottle, fighting out of the spare no expense corner...sh-sh-sh-sh-shyyyyyyyyyyyyy cheniiiiiiiiiiiin.... Ok, it's not really a battle. Not at all, actually. As you might expect from a bunch of whack jobs, we're structuring our winery a little different than most. Chenin and I have had two passions over our 11 years together-drink the best $10 bottle of wine we can find most of the time, and drink wines we love, at any price, whenever we can. We've designed our winery to reflect these passions. Most wineries are content with making lots of different wines at lots of different prices, and we're no exception. The difference is that we want to make sure not to confuse our message, so we are bottling different priced wines at different pricepoints. We feel it is confusing to you, the consumer, when a winery makes one wine at $10 a bottle and another at $50 a bottle, and everything in between, all with the same label. We've chosen a different path. With basket case, our winemaking philosophy is to make the best bottle of wine we can and still keep it around 10 bucks. That necessarily involves making production decisions that limit the cost-and within that framework we select processes that allow us to create great, value priced wines that won't break the bank and still deliver a party experience. We also want to make no holds barred wine-wine that is not restricted by cost and reflects everything we believe in in terms of winemaking quality. To that end, we will have two more labels, all under our 'winery'. The first is called 'Shy Chenin'. When Chenin was a kid she and her dad always wanted to make a Chenin Blanc blush wine and put a picture of a pink cheeked (blushing) Chenin on the label. We took that dream and tweaked it a bit to come up with Shy Chenin. From the 06 harvest we made a Chenin Blanc as well as a Rose of Pinot Noir, and these wines are a reflection of our belief that fun, summer wines should be crisp in acid, full on flavor, and free of oak. Ina sense, wines that reflect a 'shy' hand of winemaking. For more information, go check out www.shywines.com. Anyway, we had a blast making the wines and had a bottling date set for early April. Everything was going according to plan until we learned that the labels were being rejected by the BATF. It seems that the files were being corrupted as they travelled across the internet. We tried all sorts of conversions to get the labels into a form that the BATF could use to no avail. It was getting very frustrating until we found buried deep down in their archives a reference that stated that wineries should tell their label designers not to use .tif files in label artwork because they won't work on their electronic submission system. Yeah, I'm going to tell a professional designer not to use the premier file form for photographs just because the government doesn't like them. Very, very frustrating. Of course, by the time we figured all this out, the bottling date was just around the corner. So we bottled into 'clean skins'-bottles without labels. We wouldn't have the opportunity to re-label them until June, and quite frankly, since Summer is the best time for light wines, that didn't work for us. So we went to the hardware store and built us up a labelling jig, and Chenin and I hand labelled 2 pallets of wine to tie us over. CRAZY!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007 Crazy Town!!!
Crazy has a new hometown! We just got back to a trip to New Orleans, and how it didn't to occur to us that 'basket case' is the perfect word for 'Nawlinians' is completely beyond us. This town radiates lunacy! We love it! We had a business meeting during the day, and then hooked up with Dave and Kate for Lunch at Bayona-get this, I had a Duck PB and J! Yup, only in New Orleans would they put Duck in a PB and J, and then of course, fry it! Oh, I can still taste it... then we were off to cocktails! Thanks to Big John, Craig, and Tim for showing us Le Bon Temps Rouler, a great bar out in Uptown, and we finished the night at Tipitina's. Some vandal slapped basket case stickers all over the place... We lucked out and were in town for Krew du Vieux, the first mardi gras parade of the season. It was appropriately titled 'Habitat for Insanity'...perfect! Krewe du Vieux is a satirical, sexual, bodacious parade that winds through Marigny and the French Quarter, with all the floats pulled by donkey as the streets are too narrow for anything else. You definitely need to put this parade on your 'must do before die' list. There was much basket case syrah consumed, even more so 'cause it was freezing ass cold! We finished with a Super Bowl party at Zainy's across the lake-lots of fun was had by all! Me thinks we'll be heading back in the not too distant future...
Wednesday, January 31, 2007 Harvest 2006
Whoa, partners! Lots of love going on, lots of love. We are well on our way to the wines of the 2006 vintage! On September 14 we brought in 5.96 tons of Chenin Blanc from the Horse Heaven Hills in Washington. This was monumentus, as we'd never before had to pick up 11,920 pounds of anything! It really isn't all that simple of a Task. Most U-Haul type trucks max out at about 3-4 tons, so were it not for our good friends Barbara and Tom, we'd have had a logistical nightmare! As it was, Tom spends a good chunk of his time hauling off 10 tons of gourmet hay at a time, so this was an easy load for him. Tom and Sean hit the road about 6am, and by 10:30 they were loading grapes on the back of Tom's old flatbed. We were the first grapes to hit the winery this year, so everyone was in on the action. We pressed the Chenin and sent it to tank to settle overnight. We wanted to experiment both with multiple strains of yeast as well as multiple size vessels so we could start learning a bit about how Washington State Chenin developed. For those of you cork dorks out there, here is what we did: 4 neutral oak barrels fermented with Simi Yeast 2-55 gallon stainless barrels fermented with M2 yeast 2-55 gallon stainless barrels fermented with MO5 yeast 1-350 gallon stainless tank fermented with M2 yeast 1-350 gallon stainless tank fermented with MO5 yeast So, we can look at wood vs. stainless, Simi vs. M2 vs. MO5 yeasts, and M2 vs. MO5 in two different size vessels. We fermented them all separately to dryness, and then combined the stainless wines until the Simi finished fermenting, which took longer than the stainless lots did. I was really sure I'd find a lot I liked best. Early on, MO5 was my favorite. It seemed to show a tropical fruit profile reminiscent of pineapple, and as it developed it began taking on a little bit of a Belgian candi sugar note (I only know that because of our home brewing experience). Towards the end, though, M2 and Simi started shining. I couldn't help but find the Simi full of texture, and the M2 had a really neat lemon zest to it. All in all, the wines blended together beautifully, and I have to say, I like the sum of the parts more than I did each lot. On October 14 5 tons of Sam's Valley Syrah showed up. Sam's Valley is down in the Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. We made a trip down there to check out the vineyard and it is in a beautiful spot. Thankfully, this grower takes care of delivery! We did 3-2 ton tanks of wine: 2 ton with D80 yeast 2 ton with D21 yeast 2 ton native yeast fermented We did 2 pump overs a day during cold soak, 3 pump overs a day during fermentation, and dropped down to two when heat was applied late in fermentation, and then transitioned to one pump over and one punch down. We racked off and pressed with a pneumatic basket press, and the wine has been in barrel for a couple of months now. We've got first, second, and third year oak, and we played around with some of the new oak-we've got Rousseau barrels from Chantillion and Bertranges in 24 month air dried, as well as some house blends at 36 month air dried. This is exciting for us, as we have lots of experience in tasting barrels of cab and Pinot, but much less on Syrah, which is our favorite grape! We expect to keep the Syrah 12-14 months, depending on how things come together. Both the Oregon Syrah and Washington Chenin Blanc are going to be bottled under a different label. Stay tuned for more info on that adventure...
Wednesday, September 6, 2006 How to Start a Winery Part 10
Ha Ha, we are finally legit! At least as far as the government is concerned! But it wasn't without an ordeal or two. When we last comuniblogated, over a month ago, we were trying to get the county to give us our send off. Well they finally did, but boy was it a struggle. When I initially applied, the lady in the commissioners office told me that they would handle all the coordination to get the endorsement completed. Three weeks after the commissioners meeting I called the state liquor agent and he informed me that he hadn't seen anything. When I called the commissioners office, 'Sue' said they'd mailed the signed form to our physical address (and not the OLCC as they'd suggested initially). This was all fine, except that in Pacific City, there is no such thing as residential mail delivery. Every resident of the town has a P.O. Box. You'd think the county commissioners office would know that some of the cities in their jurisdiction don't have mail delivery. Of course, the form we filled out to get our endorsement, which of course was designed and supplied by the county commissioners office, had separate designations for physical and mailing addresses. We filled it out in its entirety, including the section designated by them for 'mailing address'. Curious. I was also informed that they'd misplaced their copies of our application. So, rather than fight this clearly losing battle, we got up early the next morning and drove another copy of their paperwork up to them. The regular staff was out to lunch when we arrived (at 11:30) and we were informed that it would be another week before a commissioner could re sign the document because it was the week of the Tillamook County Fair, and it was the only week of the year that the commissioners were not in the office. Hmmm, how ironic. I called back after lunch and asked to speak with Sue to confirm that the regular staff got our paperwork, and 'Sue' told me that she did, but the other 'Sue' coordinated this kind of thing and she would get it to her when she got back from vacation. I then called when 'Sue' was supposed to be back from vacation, and when I got the other 'Sue' I told her I'd talked to her previously and wondered if the other 'Sue' was in. 'Sue' informed me that it must have been the other 'Sue' I'd talked to (even though the 'other Sue' was on vacation when I'd talked to 'Sue'). I hope no one ever decides to sue the county commissioners! Pretty comical. However, in a dash of good luck, one of the commissioners stopped by the office and 'Sue' got the paperwork signed. I randomly called to check on it and Sue told me it was signed and ready for pick up. We drove up again for the zillionth time, picked it up, and hand delivered it to OLCC headquarters. Have you ever been in a hospital and gotten that creepy feeling? Part sterility, part sickness, part depression, part death, and overall general creepiness? That's what the OLCC is like but magnified 10 times. It was very obvious that liquor licenses were a necessary evil in the state of Oregon. We got the hell out of there as quickly as possible. A week later, we were proud owners of a bona fide Oregon wholesale liquor license (more on that distinction later)! Woooo Hoooo!
Thursday, July 27, 2006 How to Start a Winery Part 9 While all that mumbo jumbo was going on with the county, we were actually moving ahead quite well with our winery plans. I've been hesitant to talk about details thus far, but I think we are close enough that we can let it all out. Our plan is two fold. First, contract with a winery to produce small lots of high end wine according to our specifications. As I've previously mentioned, we feel this 'virtual' winery approach is a very cost effective way of doing business. One of the huge hurdles to start up winery success is the initial outlay of capital. By not having to invest in vineyards and a production facility, we feel that we can delivery a high quality product at prices better that our competitors. We have a Chenin Blanc vineyard lined up, and we are just about ready to finalize a Syrah vineyard. We are not going to do a Pinot Noir in 2006. This may seem like crazy talk, given that we are in Oregon, and of course, Oregon is famous for Pinot. But Oregon is not only famous for Pinot, it is crazy insane for pinot! So much so that fruit is way overpriced. We don't believe we can deliver a good value to the consumer. Value is an interesting word, and I'd like to explain it's context here. Some people, and in some circumstances rightfully so, believe that 'value' equates to 'cheap'. I'd like to float an alternative definition. To me, value is properly defined as price + quality. A $100 wine can be a great value if compared to it's competition at the $100 price point, it delivers a better quality. We want to not only make great wine, but use our expertise to create efficiencies not generally recognized in the industry, work on low margins, and use these two strategies to deliver to the consumer a bottle of wine that contains better quality wine for the same price point as our competitors, thus giving us a competitive advantage. At this point, we don't believe that we can deliver an Oregon Pinot that satisfies this idea of value. The second prong of our plan is to take advantage of our extensive network of contacts to craft wines produced by other people. In Europe, this is known as negociant wine making. Some of the best producers in Burgundy for instance, don't ever produce a single bottle of wine themselves. It's easy to imagine that wineries make, produce, bottle, market, and sell their own wine. But there are a lot of wineries who make wine solely for the purpose of selling it to other wineries. There are also wineries who declassify wine. Let's say that Winery A normally makes a $30 bottle of wine. But for whatever reason, they have some wine that they feel isn't justified by the $30 price. So they have three options: blend it in and risk lowering the quality, sell it, or dump it down the drain. Perhaps this wine is worth $20 per bottle. Winery A decides not to mess with their reputation, and they decide to sell it in bulk for the equivalent of $5-$10 per bottle. Winery B purchases this wine, blends it, perhaps puts it in oak, bottles it, and then sells it to the consumer for $15. Everybody is happy! Winery A doesn't mess with their reputation, and depending on their financial goals, doesn't take it in the shorts by pouring it down the drain. Winery B is happy because they get to create a wine choosing only those wines they like, rather than deal with all of the ups and downs of wine making, and the consumer is happy because they get a $20 bottle of wine for $15! Our goal is to utilize other wineries to make our this wine for us, and then blend them according to our tastes. We initially planned to start this aspect of the business in early 2007, but once the word got out I had left Archery Summit to start my own winery, things started happening. I'm happy to inform you that we have been able to put together a blend of wine that you will be more than happy to drink, and it is going to cost you ten bucks! We just couldn't pass on this opportunity. We'll keep you posted here of course, but plan on having some Sean and Chenin wine in early September!
How to Start a Winery Part 8 First off, sorry everybody. Between vacation, cherry harvest, trying to sell a house, re-model another one, and of course, starting a winery, my time management has gone out the window. I'm hoping that I'm a little caught up now. Well, we've had an interesting time with Tillamook county. We went up to the office of the county commissioners to find out how to go about getting an endorsement front the county. We learned we had to start with the county health department. So we went over to the county health department and they weren't in. This was a Friday about 10 am. Both of the health department employees were out of the office at the same time. Go figure. Wouldn't want anyone with a health emergency to, you know, get treated! We came back on Monday and caught one of the employees just as she was leaving the office. We learned that we had to fill out another application, and turn over a check for a hundred bucks. Now we were a little surprised that we had to start with the health department, as we were only going to be an office. We were even more surprised when she said the form would be approved in the morning. Apparently, the health department had been designated as the 'fee collector'. They didn't want to come check our place out, they didn't care about the sanitary status of our business, they only wanted our hundred bucks. I couldn't help but think this was just legal blackmail, and to be perfectly honest, I question whether it is even legal in the first place. We also learned that the application had to be endorsed by the Tax and Assessors office, to make sure we had no back taxes, the Community Development department, to make sure it fit in the community, the Sheriffs department, to make sure we weren't felons, and then it would go to the Board of Commissioners at a formal meeting to be debated. Crazy! While I was up in the tree picking cherries, I got a call from the Community Development guy, and he was concerned about endorsing an application for a wholesale wine business because it might involve a warehouse of some sort. Never mind that the property we own is actually zoned commercial-we certainly wouldn't want any commercial business going on in a commercial zone! When I explained it was only an office, he agreed to endorse it. Again, he didn't want to leave his office to check it out. Last week, I got a bug to check the tilling county paper, and sure enough, the county had published a notice of our application and indicated a public comment period was open. They didn't notify us of this of course, and they also didn't notify us when our application was scheduled for review at the weekly Board meeting. They apparently feel it is necessary to inform the public that our application was going to the board, but not us-perhaps they don't want us coming to the meeting? But I've been diligently reviewing their agendas, and I noticed that we were on the agenda for the following day. Chenin and I got up early and drove all the way up to the courthouse in case we needed to defend ourselves. Finally, however, we were greeted with a spell of good news. The first words out of the chairman's mouth were that he had a 7 hour drive ahead of him so he wanted this to be quick. He read the agenda item stating that we were seeking an endorsement of our license, and at warp speed he motioned it, seconded it, and unanimously approved it. Brilliant! I'm starting to feel like there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. This was a huge hurdle. Our last step is to get a surety bond naming the state as the beneficiary. They want to make 'sure' we pay our taxes, so we have to get bonded. We are off to the insurance folks tomorrow morning!
How to Start a Winery Part 7 Well, it's been a topsy turvy week! On Monday we got a letter from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission stating that we had neglected to include a copy of our lease or purchase agreement, and we needed to get it to them within 2 weeks or risk losing our application. We didn't include it because in the instructions it says 'Applicants who will purchase or lease the real property must provide a signed and dated purchase or lease agreement for review'. Since we already owned the property, I didn't think it applied. My mistake. Additionally, since technically Basket Case Wines, LLC was applying for the license, then the purchase or lease agreement needed to be in the name of Basket Case Wines, LLC. So even though we already owned the building we were going to use as an office, 'we' weren't actually applying for the license, so Chenin and I had to write up a lease agreement where we are the landlords and BCW, LLC is the tenant. We overnighted this to the OLCC on Tuesday. Their note also said that they were essentially overworked, and it could take 3 weeks to get an agent assigned to our application. Then we'll probably have a 45 day review by Tillamook county, and if the county signs off on it, it goes back to the agent for final review. We could still be a good 10 weeks out from a license. On the plus side, I received a call from the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade Bureau (Federal government), and things were progressing nicely. There was one hiccup-we had applied to get a license as both a wholesaler and an importer, but apparently you are not allowed to be an importer until you have something to import. We were hoping to work with a winery in New Zealand or Australia to make some wine for us, but we can't actually get the license until we have an agreement in place, and the winery sends the feds permission for us to import the wine. So, we decided to drop that application and just move forward on the wholesale permit. The agent I spoke with was great, and was incredibly helpful. She asked a few questions, made some notes, and then said she'd finish it up and mail it to us in the next few weeks. Yahoo! It also looks like we found a Chenin Blanc vineyard in Washington. We're not 100% ready to announce our wine program yet, but you had to know we'd be making a Chenin Blanc, right? We're still desperately trying to source some Oregon Pinot Noir, but if we cross our fingers long enough, I'm hopeful something will pop out! It's coming up on cocktail hour, so I'm off to search for a glass of wine...
Monday, May 08, 2006 How to Start a Winery Part 6 The state of Oregon has a similar process, but of course, since Oregon state government has different interests than the feds, their process is a little bit different. But first, a primer. The nation’s first prohibition law was enacted by the Oregon Territory in 1844. It only lasted a year, but the state of Oregon adopted prohibition four years before the 18th Amendment made it official in all 50. When prohibition was repealed, Oregon was one of 18 states to make alcohol a controlled substance. ‘Control’ refers to the state’s intent to moderate the consumption of alcohol, and simultaneously profit from it. 18 states have chosen this route. In Oregon, producers of distilled spirits must sell their product to the state, which then marks it up for sale to the public and pockets the difference. Beer and wine are exempted from this system, but they must still pass through a wholesaler, and wholesale prices must be posted with the state every month. This posting price must be available for everyone-quantity purchases are not allowed to be discounted. From a licensing perspective, Oregon does offer a Winery License, and our original intent was to get one. But during the process we discovered that one of the many forms we needed to fill out was a sketch layout of the winery showing where our wine was going to be stored. As we don’t actually have a winery, we would need to sketch the facility of our custom crush winery. Unfortunately, the winery buildings are being completely redesigned, so we have no idea where our wine will be. This, of course, means that we couldn’t apply for the license, as we wouldn’t be able to fill out one of the required forms. Furthermore, the agent we were dealing with was concerned that our host wasn’t following the rules, and we had no interest in mucking up anybody else’s license. We made the decision to apply as a wholesaler, which like the federal basic permit would allow us to purchase wine for resale at wholesale. Additionally, in Oregon the wholesaler may sell to the consumer as long as the quantity is four gallons or more. Bizarre! Now as it turns out, we discovered that if the winery does not allow on premise consumption (drinking at the winery), then the layout sketch is not required. But this was getting a little too complicated for our liking, so we decided to stick with the wholesale license for now, and once we understand the whole process a little bit better we’ll apply for the winery license.
How to Start a Winery Part 5 Our intent was to become a bona fide winery in everything but the ‘bricks and mortar’; a true virtual winery! Ha! Alcohol is federally regulated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade Bureau (TTB), which is one half of what used to be the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). Every business that is engaged in the handling of alcohol must have what is called a Basic Permit issued by the TTB. Basic Permits are granted for distilled spirits plants, importers, wholesalers, and bonded wine premises. Government would like you to believe their chief role is that of temperance, that is, the management of alcohol to encourage moderation and prevent the kinds of collusion and racketeering that punctuated the long dark period of prohibition. In reality, they don’t give a rat’s ass about that stuff. It’s all about money. We’ve all been led to believe there are three types of booze out there-Beer, Wine, and Spirits. As far as the feds go, there are only two types of booze-booze in Bond and Tax Paid booze. (Legend has it that the term ‘booze’ was coined by American GI’s drinking Champagne in Bouzy, France). Booze in Bond (heretofore known as Booze and Bondage) is alcohol from which tax has not yet been collected. Tax Paid booze, of course is booze from which tax has been collected. Bonded wine simply refers to the fact that because the government is so paranoid that you might not actually pay your tax, you are required to purchase a bond which covers your potential tax liability, should you decide to Capone it and then take off for Canada. And in another example of our governments infinite wisdom, wine that is under 14% alcohol is taxed at $1.07 per gallon, and wine over 14% is taxed at $1.57 per gallon! Now I have no idea what makes 14 so special, unless it was decided back in the days when that’s how old you had to be to get married… Each bonded winery is required to maintain control over all of it’s ‘premises’, including the equipment that is used to make wine. Because of this, no two bonded wineries are allowed to share equipment. So, on paper anyway, two wineries can’t share the same premise, which makes it a real bitch for the little guy to get a start. Thankfully, somebody over at the then BATF got their wits together and came up with a way to skirt around the rules. If I ever meet that person, drinks are on me! This saint devised a way for bonded wineries to transfer equipment from one winery to another, without actually moving it! It goes like this. Winery A and winery B share the same space and equipment. The equipment must always be on the ‘premise’ of Winery A or winery B. Here’s an example. When winery A is done fermenting wine, and winery B wants to use the fermenter, winery A transfers control of the fermenter to winery B. The fermenter never actually moves, rather, a declaration is made on an official document that states such a transfer of control has taken place. In this fashion, wineries operating shared premises are known as ‘alternating proprietors’. It was a great discover that has made life a lot more light on the pocketbook for young wineries. Unfortunately, this process can be a royal pain in the ass, so for our first year we decided to try something with a little less complication. The basic wholesalers permit allows a permit tee to buy wine for resale at wholesale (i.e. to distributors), but not for resale to retailers or consumers. As most of our sales will be to wholesalers, we have contracted to have a bona fide winery make our wine for us, and ‘sell’ it to us (at the cost of production). This will eliminate a huge headache for us, and when we have our first vintage under our belt and feel more comfortable with the process, we’ll apply for our very own bonded wine premise license.
How to Start a Winery Part 4 OK, I way, way jumped the gun. We are nowhere near being officially in business. I can say this because we just finished filling out all of our forms for the state and federal licenses that will hopefully grant us official, government sanctioned permission to be a winery. Or not, as appears to be the case. You know how I said the whole world is crazy? Well, government is truly whacked! They raise lunacy to a whole new level. Before we go any further I highly encourage you to read the eighteenth and twenty-first amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Better yet, read the entire U.S. Constitution. You should do so as a matter of principle, but as you read it pay particular attention to the interstate commerce clause (Article I, section 9). You can find the U.S. constitution at www.usconstitution.net. When the twenty-first amendment repealed prohibition, it left the regulation of alcohol to the states. There are, of course, 50 states, and all of them have a unique opinion on how to regulate sales of intoxicating beverages. All of these states, at one point, required manufacturers of alcohol products to sell their wares to distributors (wholesalers) within their state. So, if I wanted to sell a case of wine to, say, a restaurant in Manhattan, I actually have to sell it to a New York distributor, who then in turn sells it to a restaurant. This is what is commonly referred to as the three-tier system. The three tiers are: producer, distributor, and retailer (and restaurant). There’s a big hullabaloo over this right now in the wine industry. With some notable exceptions, it is generally against the law or very restrictive for a winery to sell a case of wine to a consumer across state lines. Most wineries believe this to be very unfair, as it limits their ability to sell wine at full retail directly to the consumer. And there is some validity to this claim. Nothing is stopping me from getting on the internet and ordering up a Dell computer from Austin, Texas right? Why should wine be any different? Wineries are trying very hard to get these laws changed. If you are interested in a quick, fascinating study in to these laws, Costco has joined forces with wineries to bring an end to these practices, so Google ‘Costco wine lawsuit’ and start reading! I take a very different view of the situation. While I am somewhat question the ‘requirement’ that wine pass through a wholesaler, I find wholesalers to be an invaluable part of the wine business (emphasis on business). Let’s say I want to have my wine available for purchase in all 50 states. Let’s go back to the New York restaurant example. For fun, we’ll call this restaurant ‘Lunatic Grange’. After considerable effort consisting of numerous sales visits, 3 or 4 expensive dinners, and a couple of strategically placed logo shirts, I finally get my wine on Lunatic’s wine list. And with a couple of trainings for Lunatic’s staff, it gets poured by the glass and is flying off the rack. How do I maintain the infrastructure in New York to keep them well stocked? Do I UPS a case of wine a day to New York? Of course not. Do I create my own local distribution system? Remember, I’ve got 49 other states and maybe 500 other accounts to manage, and Mad House Wine Company is a two trick pony. Distributors play an irreplaceable role in the wine business. Not only do they efficiently provide the logistics of delivery and billing, but in the hands of a skilled tactician (read gutter sleeping drunkard), many distributor sales people love to be what I call ‘brand ambassadors’; they spread their love of your brand to not only the employees and servers of your current accounts, but to all of their other accounts and friends as well. I’m quite ok with the 3 tier system. The actual legalities, on the other hand, can be quite the journey.
How to Start a Winery Part 3 Chenin and I have spent a significant part of our lives trying to not take ourselves too seriously, especially when it comes to wine. Chenin, of course, was born in to wine. Her parents planted the first wine vineyard in Temecula, California, and promptly named their daughter to be after the varietal of grape they planted. Little did she know how much Chenin Blanc would come to mean to her. I first met Chenin at Pine Ridge Winery when we were both working in the tasting room. I did a little fishing off the company pier if you know what I mean. Actually, we had met once before a couple of years earlier at a great party at Domaine Chandon, but she was working and I was drinking, so destiny was protected, if only accidentally. We of course shared a lot of the same interests, and it wasn’t long before we were true partners. We both loved wine, and took it as more than a little chip on our shoulder that young people were avoiding wine as if it were the plague. We tried educating as many of our friends as possible as to all of wine’s great attributes, not the least of which was it’s ‘fun-ness’. But we weren’t winning a bunch of converts. In our home, or on our patio, wine could be simple, fun, and intoxicating. But as soon as our friends would enter a wine shop or go out for dinner, wine became intimidating, elitist, and arrogant. Most of this attitude has been propagated by the wine industry itself. By making wine elitist and exclusive, wineries have been able to successfully define wine as a luxury goods product. Even though 90% of the wine produces is priced below $10 per bottle, wine is distinctly a part of the aristocracy, and has been for hundreds of years. In the old days, the aristocracy was the only ones who could afford it! Until recently, wine making was a laborious and time demanding endeavor, resulting in very high production costs. Beer, on the other hand, could be made relatively quickly with inexpensive ingredients, and was quickly adopted by the proletariat. But the advent of modern technology has made wine very affordable, yet it is still viewed as a noble pursuit. Why? Because that’s where the money is. Our never ending quest for the best of the best has put wine on a pedestal that is well deserved. But who is to say that only the wealthy should be able to reach the pedestal? In our opinion, absolutely no one. It is in this spirit that we have formed Basket Case Wines. There is an old saying in the industry that you have to be more than a little bit crazy to make wine. It’s a lighthearted phrase that is entirely appropriate, but once again, it is singling out a small subset of the population. We say, aren’t we all just a little bit crazy? I mean what is normal anyway? Like to sky dive? CRAZY! Like to run marathons? LUNACY! Raising a child? INSANITY! Like to record your own music? OFF THE CHARTS MY FRIEND! THE WHOLE WORLD IS FRIGGIN CRAZY AND WE WOULDN’T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY! WE LOVE IT! Basket Case Wines. Wine for the crazy in all of us.
How to Start a Winery Part 2 Holy Crap! Things are moving at warp speed! We’ve been talking with a custom crush facility for a couple of weeks and today a contract showed up with a polite note asking if we could sign it by tomorrow! Yikes! I haven’t even officially given my notice yet! There are all sorts of ways to start a winery, but they all generally fall in to two categories: build a bricks and mortar winery or have someone custom crush your wine for you. Our first business plan back in 1999 had us following the bricks and mortar path. To give you a ballpark idea of what this entails, here is a very rough outline of start up costs for an Oregon winery. It generally takes 5-7 years from the time you put your first vine in the ground until you get bottled wine revenue coming back, so we’ll use 5 years for simplicity sake. To build a winery with full retail sales privileges in Yamhill County, you are required to have 15 acres of land planted. Our mock winery will sit on 20 acres of land with 15 acres of vineyard.
20 acres Land $900,000 Vineyard Development/Planting $450,000 Farming Costs (5 years) $375,000 Winery Construction $2,000,000 Salaries/Labor $800,000 Marketing $50,000 Travel $35,000 Overhead/Misc $125,000
Total $4,735,000
How to Start a Winery Part 1 Hi all, Well, we've finally decided to pull the trigger. After 12 great years at Pine Ridge and Archery Summit, Chenin and I have made the commitment to follow a dream that has been on our minds since 1999-starting our own winery! Chenin and I wrote our first winery business plan in 1999, and in December we dusted it off (actually we had to pull it off of a couple of 1.44 MB 3.25" floppy disks, which of course were not floppy at all), and it was still pretty good! We realized that we still hold on to the beliefs we had seven years ago-chiefly, that wine isn't about elitism, exclusivity, or arrogance, it's about fun! We spent most of December and January writing a new business plan, and spent February proofing and adapting it. After three months of hard work, we had what we felt was a solid business plan. Then came the really hard decision. I quite probably have the best job in the country, maybe even the world. My job is to make sure that Archery Summit Pinot Noir is sold to the best accounts in the country, and in the process get to meet some of the most amazing people the world has to offer. I can assure you that I am very well aware that I may be looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nevertheless, circumstances presented themselves that made us think that it was time to go out on our own, and following a dream we've shared almost since we first met in the Pine Ridge tasting room in 1996 was a calling that was difficult to ignore. So, on Friday I will be tendering my resignation, and despite the overwhelming sense of entrepreneurial spirit, I can't get two phrases out of my head: 'Leap of Faith' and 'Jumping off a cliff'. Stay tuned to see which one prevails. Sean
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