Last night, our Mercer Island wine group got together at Bob’s house and eight of us tasted a variety of Bordeaux wines from ’86, ’88′ and ’89. The wines were all from Bob’s cellar and from various appellations in the Bordeaux region so it didn’t really concentrate on a particular appellation. These were mostly wines that sold for under $20, but today would be worth $40 to $85 or more.
Unfortunately, with any wine—but especially wine of this age—there will be some occasional corked bottles. This batch of wine was no exception with two of the 7 bottles being corked. One worse than the other because even by the end of the evening, the TCA didn’t blow off. Surprisingly, for their age and price, several of the wines still had some good tannins present, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they would have improved with any more age. Aside from the tainted bottles, the rankings were extremely close for the others.
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This past weekend offered a rare opportunity to taste a vertical of one of the two class A Premier Grande Cru producers from St. Émilion: Château Cheval Blanc. There were, in fact, 34 bottles from 22 vintages including a 6 liter bottle of the 1988 vintage. According to Nicole Kosta, one of the sexy sommeliers in attendance that evening, and Aaron Pott, winemaker and host, the idea came from the movie, Sideways.
Sexy Sommeliers, Deanna & Nicole
Paul Giamatti’s character, Miles, was saving a prized bottle of 1961 Cheval Blanc to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary, even though he was divorced. However, during his friend’s wedding, he is introduced to his wife’s new husband and finds out she is pregnant. Realizing he will never reunite with his former wife, Miles takes the bottle to an In-n-Out restaurant and, alone, drinks it from a styrofoam cup. Sadly, no one brought a bottle of 1961 to re-enact that scene, but Aaron provided the 6 liter 1988, a hundred In-n-Out burgers and glass stemware to help celebrate the occasion properly.
“I thought it would be fun to have a less serious tasting of a serious wine,” said Aaron. “It is a wine that we can often afford a little of, but we don’t often get to taste it along with many other vintages.”
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I’ve been to quite a few meetups lately. They are fun affairs and most have been great opportunities to meet new people, see old friends and promote my brands. From my experience at these events, I’ve come up with a list of 10 things someone hosting one of these events should and shouldn’t do. See if you agree with some of these suggestions.
1. Do get the word out, but don’t count on RSVPs
Make sure you tell people well ahead of time about your event. Don’t wait until a week before the event to start posting it on Facebook or putting it on Twtvite or Evite. People often make plans months in advance and your best chance of people attending your event happens when you announce it early. 4 to 6 weeks in advance will give people plenty of time to put your event on their calendar before it gets booked up.
Post the event to multiple sites, but if you are requiring prepayment or RSVP, be sure all your postings link back to the payment/response site. Better yet, offer discounted prepayment as well as payment at the door in case people don’t see the link.
Even if you do get a lot of people indicating they are attending, unless they’ve prepaid, you can count on nearly half those people not showing up and about 30% of the people who said, maybe, to show up. It seems that’s just the nature of online responses and the topic of a future post.
2. Do explicitly tell people the cost of admission
If you are charging for your event, make sure that is shown on the invitation and S-P-E-L-L-E-D out. If admission consists of bringing a bottle of wine, a dish of food, or anything other than cash, make sure that is explicitly understood. Don’t assume everyone just knows that’s the deal. And if people show up empty-handed, offer an alternative such as paying cash or pointing them to where they can get wine, food or whatever is required. If all else fails, just let them in. NEVER turn people away. It’s better to make an exception than to lose a potential customer or online friend.
3. Don’t forget your full address (or date, time, etc)
It’s amazing how many invites forget to specify the city and state, as if everyone being invited lives in the same town. Be sure to include the city and state so that people from other areas can quickly see where the event is happening and know how to respond. It’s really frustrating to read about an event I get an invitation to, only see a street address and become disappointed when I find that it’s in another state or country. Same goes for date and time.
