The Yak 2 Five – Our Top Wines from 2010

by Chris on Dec 21, 2010

I am biased. I am biased by my new home region, by how people treat me that are selling me wine, and by the overall experience when drinking a wine, the atmosphere, the food, the event. Many times the actual quality of the wine is secondary to these other things; sometimes the quality of the wine overcomes some shortcoming in these other things.

With that said, here are Barb and my top Twenty Five wines for 2010 and a brief explanation of what made them memorable or special for us. We drank plenty of other wines this year but these are the best of the best from Yakima Valley and her neighbors.  My definition of The Yak is any wine grown here or sold through a tasting room here…stretched a bit in a case or two.

Yak Yak Wine of the Year

Ernest & Jennifer 2009 Riesling – July 17, 2010 -

A lovely wine for a beautiful bride and groom. We were so glad to share your guys’ special day. This wine was secondary that day but was a special memory all along the way as it matured getting ready for your big day. A nod too goes to Patricia and George at Vineheart for growing and tending these special grapes for us.

______________________

2. Steppe Cellars 2007 Tempranillo Grenache Mourvedre – Power and elegance and a long name from our favorite winery. They are slowly being discovered outside The Yak but we’re confident the quonset hut on the knob north of Sunnyside will never lose its charm.

3. Cooper 2007 L’inizio – A beginning for a new friend who has persevered and succeeded yet remains a True Gentleman. Well done, Coop.

4. Maison Bleue 2008 Liberté Syrah Boushey Vineyard – Great wine maker, great grower, great story.  Dr. Martinez barters dental services for wine and Dick Boushey is the real deal.

5. Hightower 2008 Out of Line – Murray was the most famous member of this wine family until we got to know Kelly and Tim. First class all the way and a pretty good cinematographer to boot.

6. Alexandria Nicole 2008 Member’s Only – Great parties (including the blending party where this wine was born), great tasting room experiences, very nice cork outlined chalkboard at the Behind the Bookcase Room in Prosser.

7. Upland Estates 2007 Old Vine Cabernet – Old is grand, and so is our mom. (Honorable mention here to Geppetto’s in Yakima for great meals that happened to go with this wine.)

8. Cote Bonneville 2005 Carriage House – I only drank a sip of this wine, but gifted it a couple of times, in a fun way once, and in a very meaningful way another.

9. Olsen Estates 2007 Merlot – Twitter events are still a bit of a mystery to me, but this wine reminds us why you should never skip the Merlot.

10. Owen Roe 2008 Ex Umbrus Syrah – The girls made scrunchy faces when sipping this wine in April, but the whole bachelorette weekend could not have been more wonderful.

11. Gilbert Cellars 2006 Allobroges – Downtown Yakima’s most stylish tasting room with an elegant Rhone blend made for drinking.

12. Milbrandt 2007 Chenin Blanc – White wine has its place. And this wine disappeared fastest on a hot, humid day in Central Illinois.

13. Pontin del Roza 2007 Angelo Pontin Sangiovese – Pizza wine that I saw develop over the year into more than that and also my first confirmed corked wine experience. All ends of the spectrum with this guy. I love the bottle and label too.

14. Two Mountain 2009 Chalk Art Rosé – Label art by the head Yak. Nice refreshing wine in the bottle. I’ll be back on the concrete in 2011 to try to retake the title.

15. Severino 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon – A cool cellar on a scorching summer day in July I met Severino the person (finally), and learned some tips on barrel management and wine evolution as we went through his Cab vertical.

16. Bunchgrass 2006 Lewis Syrah – The wine that sparked my label investigation (and diatribes), and a fantastic wine deserving of a Yak label.

17. Masset 2006 Petite Sirah – An old friend gave me this old favorite, reminding us of our first loop around the Yak and first taste of this varietal.

18. BonAir 2006 Reserve Merlot – Grumpy or not, Gail makes good wine and serves as a definite touchstone for thousands of tourists hitting the Rattlesnake Trail where he hangs his (funky) cap.

19. Whisper Ridge 2004 A Voix Basse – A garagiste winery with no tasting room flying below the radar. Good wine and good music that reminds that 2004 wasn’t such a bad year after all.

20. Fielding Hills 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon – Densest wine I’ve ever tasted but full of vibrant fruit and balance. Slightly outside the Yak boundary, but a conversation with Karen Wade found that she has roots in the Upper Valley. That’s Naches for the uninitiated.

21. Sineann and Chateau St. Michelle 2006 Cold Creek Cabernet Sauvignon – A study in contrast of two wines from the same grapes. Winemakers can make different styles from the same grapes, but the grapes must be good to make good wine. Cold Creek grows good grapes. [Technically outside The Yak, but a magpie or a wildfire can carry the seeds into the Yak in about 10 minutes.]

22. Columbia Winery 2004 David Lake Otis Cabernet Sauvignon and 2002 Red Willow Syrah. History lessons in a bottle and I’m happy to have shared in these legacies.

23. McCrea 2004 Grenache – My tasting note on this one recalls licking the rim of the bottle to get the last drop. Great wine from Washington’s original Rhone ranger who stalks the Yak for most of his fruit.

24. Knight Hill 2008 Mourvedre – Fruit from Wahluke, winemaker from Germany, owner from New York via San Francisco. A melting pot wine sold at the Yakima Visitor’s Center (as well as the tasting room on the Lombardy Fruit Loop outside Zillah).

25. Mark Ross Ryan Andrew 2008 Lost Boushey Soul Syrah – This is really two wines from two winemakers in Woodinville that might be joined at the hip. We celebrated Festivus instead of St. Nick’s there and again the best wines we sampled were from the Yak. Not that we’re biased or anything.

Big Grandma Goes to Boot Camp

by Chris on Dec 9, 2010

Wine Boot Camp, that is.

Big Grandma is my mother-in-law, Beth, and though I wasn’t around when she acquired the title “Big”, it’s quite a testament to this woman that she would allow her grandchildren to bestow her this name when she’s not particularly big, only a little taller than the other “Little Grandma”.  She even took it in stride when her grandchildren began having babies and she became Great Big Grandma.

We had the pleasure recently of a nice visit from Big Grandma, and even though it was two weeks, it seemed much shorter, and we look forward to her coming back, maybe eventually on a more full time basis.  We have plans for a basement apartment, and have even designated an area to be called a Great Room, a Great Great Big Grandma Room as it were.

Big Grandma had known of Barb and my wine habits and adventures in wine country, and though it wasn’t her primary purpose for visiting, it wasn’t long after the plane touched down that BG wanted to know where the tasting rooms were.  ”Everywhere, Mom.”  She visited her very first wine tasting room at Cascade Cliffs in the Columbia Gorge and immediately understood why Barb and I state, quite often in fact, that we’re never going “back east”.  We picked up our Cliff Club shipment that day too, and after getting home, began in earnest the daily lessons that Big Grandma would have to endure if she were to survive life in the Yak.

“Temprannnnillo; Roll the N, Big Grandma”.   “Let it Breath, Big Grandma”.  ”Swirl, Swirl,  look at the Color, take in the aromas, Big Grandma”  ”Small sip, Big Grandma”  ”Mouth Closed, Big Grandma!”

Big Grandma is an excellent student.  Though, ironically, a bit of a lightweight. I guess maybe Barb and I  had to build up our wine stamina too at first, but I had kinda been looking forward to two-bottle nights with BG around.  It was hard to justify though when she usually stopped after one small glass.

But as the days went by, each night with dinner we introduced Big Grandma to a different type of wine.  Sometimes based on the menu, pasta with red sauce meant Sangiovese, chicken meant Semillon; sometimes on a quasi-logical progression from previous nights.  The first week, we spent a lot of time exploring Rhone style wines.  A Rousanne, then a Grenache driven blend, then Syrah, then single variety Grenache.

We kinda knew this was Big Grandma’s wheelhouse anyway since we had shared with her a 2008 Owen Roe Sinister Hand during a trip to Chicago earlier this year.  Big Grandma inquired about finding more of the 2008 Sinister Hand in Washington, and though we had a bottle or two in our cellar, we might need more and BG said the stores in Chi-town were out of the ’08.   Despite Barb and my self-imposed wine buying moratorium, this was obviously a legitimate excuse; who wants to disappoint their mother?   I was sent on a mission to find Sinister Hand with strict instructions to only buy two bottles.  I hit pay dirt at Wray’s on 56th in Yakima who still had some ’08 Sinister Hand.  They were expecting the ’09 any day, but BG knew she liked the ’08.  The problem, or bonus depending on your point of view, Wray’s only had magnums left.  So I did what any sensible son-in-law would do, I bought two Big bottles and lied about the price.

One of those magnums disappeared quickly over the weekend with a visit from the part of BG’s family that had already escaped to the PacNW.

By Week Two of Yak Yak Boot Camp, Big Grandma was ready for more advanced topics, the finer points of Bordeaux style blends and the varietals from that part of the world, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec.  We participated in Sean Sullivan’s monthly Virtual Tasting where the wine of the night was Alexandria Nicole 2008 Quarry Butte, and since we had some on hand we went vertical with the virtual, opening both an ’07 and ’08 Quarry Butte.  In fact, for nostalgia purposes, the ’07 Quarry Butte was the first wine reviewed on this blog.  Anyway, for the VVT, wine charms on glass stems helped the tasters in our house distinguish and the first few sips were blind to the vintage.

Big Grandma tweeted vicariously through Barb and myself her impressions of both wines.  She picked out the plum and depth of the one Butte, and noted bright red fruit in the other.  She preferred the ’07, the deeper wine, and made a batch of heavenly brownies that almost made the wine irrelevant.  Almost.

After the leisure dinners, visits to tasting rooms, and classroom lessons, finally we had Big Grandma endure a Hell Night of sorts as a final practicum.  I had picked up 150 pounds of Tempranillo, grapes not the wine, at our friends’ vineyard, Patricia and George of Vineheart.  Grape harvest was late this year as has been reported everywhere, but for Big Grandma the timing was perfect.  BG lugged the totes, tested the Brix, turned the hand crank crusher, ”Just like an old fashioned Ice Cream Machine, Grandma”, and de-stemmed by hand the crushed grapes.  Good stuff in the fermenter tub, trash to the compost pile.  Measuring out the sulfites and inoculating the yeast remained the realm of the Head Yak, but Big Grandma survived her first late night of Crush and went to bed exhausted.  But with the satisfaction of knowing she had made her first wine and had the purple fingernails and sticky elbows to prove it.

Our last night in Yakima with Big Grandma we went to Geppetto’s, one of our new favorite restaurants in town.  Spirits were high, though melancholy lurked.  A delicious meal of pastas, anti-pastas and gellato.  Our wine for the night was another favorite, Upland Estates 2007 Old Vine Cabernet Sauvignon.  Big Grandma breezed through the part about old vines and offered a sly smile when I had the waitress bring a few extra bottles to the table for us to take home.  Moratorium be damned.

Tears flowed at the airport as freely as wine had flowed the nights before, but when Big Grandma deplaned in Chicago and went home to be greeted by Debbie, Danali, and her cats Boobs and Sarge, it was Sarge who was undoubtedly the happiest and the proudest.

Because Big Grandma had earned her stripes too.

How to Lose Clients and Influence People

by Chris on Oct 25, 2010

So far I’ve written about our good experiences, good wines, and many friendly people we’ve met over the past couple of years touring wine country in Washington, into Oregon, California and even a junket north of the border to British Columbia (that’s in Canada). This post will be a little different than those.

I recounted this story to a friend this week in thinking about our winery club experiences and Barb and I discussed it again and I need to get it out of my system. It’s not all that tragic, this is wine after all, but it’s an example of how not to treat customers if you’re in the hospitality business. I’m not going to call out the winery by name and I’ve changed the names of the people that we dealt with.

On one of our first trips through this area we tasted wines at this place and instantly loved them and signed up for their wine club. We went back periodically for tastings and club shipments and enjoyed the experiences each time chatting with the tasting room staff, who were all very professional and friendly. The wines were all very good and we bought quite a few bottles.

We’d seen the owner and winemaker, who I’ll call Jack, a couple of times; he’s always busy so had never met him. No biggie. But it’s easy to figure out who he is if he’s in the room.

Last spring we got an e-mail from the winery “signed” by Jack, inviting club members to bring a picnic and have some wine with other club members. It ended up being a beautiful evening so we decided to drive over, about 45 minutes for us, and check it out. We arrive, buy a bottle of wine from Trish, a nice lady we’ve met before, and find a picnic table. We’re about the second couple to arrive. Jack is scurrying about talking on his phone.

Over the next little while a grand total of about 12 people, including us, Trish, and Jack show up, have picnics and drink wine. We drank our whole bottle and chilled out since it was lovely place to be and chatted with a few other people. We were there for at least 90 minutes.

After getting off the phone, Jack joins two couples at the table immediately next to us and they enjoy a bottle of wine (not yet released!) that Jack brings to their table and they chat for the next hour. The main topic we overhear are Jack’s plans for finding the right Ivy League school for his son. Little Jack has potential and the Pac-10 pretty much sucks. After carousing with his friends, Jack gets up, looks at his watch, says his goodbyes (to his friends), then leaves without speaking a word to any of the other few of us there.

We don’t care to know Jack particularly, but didn’t he invite us to his business for an event? Wasn’t his smiling face on the e-mail invitation? We were one of 2-3 other couples who bothered to show up and buy his wine that day, and but since we don’t know Jack he never deigned to acknowledge our existence. We were mainly shocked that anyone in this business would be so rude and we’d never seen that before or since at the other 200+ tasting rooms we’ve visited in the Pac NW. We never count on meeting the owner or winemaker at a winery but it’s not uncommon, particularly at the smaller places, and whenever we have met someone they’ve been universally cordial. They are normal people running a business and they appreciate their customers. Jack is the lone exception.

It didn’t really matter to us then and doesn’t matter now. In fact, we stayed in the club for a while until discovering that their wines are available cheaper elsewhere. If we ever want to buy again we can. But there are plenty of other wineries here that make very good wines, and even some that make not so great wines, who we’d much rather spend our time at and reward with our financial support.

Jack’s place isn’t one of them.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty – Syncline 2007 Cuvee Elena – Columbia Valley

by Chris on Oct 20, 2010

It may seem like I’ve been laying low lately, but in reality things have just been a little hectic around the Yak Yak household. Why just this past weekend we became so distracted with the various house projects, unpacking, and running back and forth to Wally World, that we didn’t even drink any wine. FOR TWO WHOLE DAYS. But we solved that Monday night with a nice bottle of Malbec from Mibrandt Vineyards and the earth again resumed spinning on its axis.

The other reason you might suspect I have been laying low is the recent reports of thefts from vineyards, both near and far, where vineyard terrorists have descended under cover of night to steal the fruits of someone else’s labor.

Besides, the other victim of the Raid on Red Mountain was one of the touchstones of our Washington wine evolution, Syncline Wine Cellars. Syncline was originally recommended to us by wine trail mates Rob and Beth during a tour of the Gorge Area about this time a year ago. When we visited the tasting room, it had a distinct homey feel, combination wine production room, barrel room, and dog haven nestled among the tall pine trees at the edge of the rain shadow that characterizes this section of the Columbia Gorge. I don’t know the specific rainfall at the particular spot of Syncline in Lyle, but locals told us the area from Hood River to The Dalles has the a distinction of losing about an inch of rainfall per year for every mile or so, going west to east. Meaning at the west side of Hood River, it rains a bunch, by Maryhill, thirty miles to the east you are in desert.

Syncline also had the distinction of being the first place we’d ever seen concrete storage tanks used in wine production, and one of the first we’d seen using glass stoppers on some of its wine bottles. We’ve had several wines by now with the glass stopper, but every time I still have our bunny-eared corkscrew almost in place before I realize that’s not going to work. I don’t mind the glass corks necessarily, but I’m not a huge fan either.

The touchstone part of Syncline for us was our first introduction (in my rather foggy memory) to Rhone style blends, and the one wine in particular that stood apart during our first tasting at Syncline was their flagship Rhone blend, Cuvee Elena. That was 2007 vintage. Forget the Gruner Veltliner, Pinot Noir, and Syrahs, all good wines made at Syncline by James and Poppy Mantone, the Elena was my St. Pauli’s Girl of this style of wine.

At the time we bought couple of bottles, brought them home and squirrelled them away. Since then, Elena was the first wine I bought from Full Pull wines and I’ve also been able to find it locally at Cascade Wine Company and at Wray’s on 56th. Wray’s even had a few bottles of 2006, that I added to begin a mini-vertical of Elena’s (Eleni?).

My first tasting note on the 2007 Elena went like this. Very elegant, well balanced wine. Color is bright bing cherry. Nose is red raspberry and cherry blossoms with other florals. Midpalate is more red fruit with nice acidity. Finish is chalky dry. Not a huge wine, but very good. Would stand up well to pork, seafood or pasta.

That note repeated itself with a bottle of Cuvee Elena we opened last week in memory of the stolen Mourvedre.  I even looked on the bottle, 17% Mourvedre.  When we read that the Mourvedre stolen from Grand Reve was destined for Syncline, I wondered if it would have been a stand alone single varietal wine, or might have been meant to be blended into a 2010 vintage of Cuvee Elena. I may never know, but I’ll hope to be around to continue buying every future release of this scrumptious wine.

If you find out someone has stolen some Grenache, Syrah, Counoise, and Cinsault from other vineyards in eastern Washington, France, or Timbuktu…

That wasn’t me either.

Join the Club (Part 2)

by Chris on Oct 20, 2010

Winery clubs that we currently belong to are Alexandria Nicole, Cascade Cliffs, Cave Ridge, Cooper, Maison Bleue, Milbrandt, Severino, Steppe, Tres Sabores, and Two Mountain.   There, that’s out of the way.  I debated whether to list some of these, or rank them, or just talk about some of the highlights, but it’s kind of like picking your favorite daughter (don’t worry honey, you know which one you are), each has pluses and minuses, perks of membership, and they know we belong to their club.  Now, they also know who we cheat with when we’re not at their event.

Some of these winery clubs were love at first sight, some took a while for us to realize they were right for us, and a couple we found the wines before the club existed, watched until a club was announced, then joined.  This group is the current list and we’ve belonged to a few others that we’ve either dropped or they dropped us (long story), and I’m sure there will be others we will eventually join and we may gracefully bow out of some of the existing clubs.  We do agree though that breaking up is the hardest thing to do.

Most of these winery clubs have a hip, unique name to set them apart from their peers: Founders Club, Cliff Club, Club 1000, Charter Club, Family Club, Premiere Club… but really they are all pretty much the same concept.  There may be a sign or pamphlet in the tasting room advertising the club, and if asked, the tasting room host or hostess will be happy to explain the club and its benefits.  Like I said before, some wineries push their clubs more than others, but where I’m most interested is when there is no high pressure sales pitch, it’s just another tasting room option.  If a winery is pushing their club before I’ve tasted the wines, no thanks.  Typically there is no fee to join, just fill out a simple form with name, mailing or shipping address, e-mail address, and, most important of all, a credit card number with billing address and signature.

Club memberships lots of times have different levels, with the main distinction being how much wine the member is obligated to buy at each release period, 3 bottles, 6 bottles, etc… The benefits of club membership include a discount off of retail tasting room pricing, free tasting room tastings for members and usually their guests, invitations to club events, and the allure of “member’s only” wines or other goodies.  Some of this is hype, some of it real, and that depends a lot on the winery and the member’s perception of what is really a benefit vs. what is an obligation.  I’ll explain.

Winery clubs discounts, at least where we belong, range from none to 20-30%, with probably an average of 15%.  This is a good thing, but the discount from tasting room prices at 10-15% is not really much different than retail if the wines are available that way.  The club discounts that we’ve seen that really matter and create an incentive are where membership discount escalates either with level of commitment or with longevity in the club.  Two Mountain seems to have the best model of this of the ones we belong to.  A long time member, over 5-6 years, can eventually get 40% off all wines.  Case discounts are also typically better for club members, and Milbrandt’s club has at times run up to 50% discounts on cases, even mixed cases, at their club events. 

Wine club releases can happen annually up to four times a year.  I’ve found that the winery clubs we belong to are very inconsistent in when they actually have club releases and many of them don’t actually release as often as advertised.  With as many clubs as we belong to though, this is a good thing.  One problem with that is not being able to budget and schedule very accurately when the wine will be coming (and billed to the credit card).  Nonetheless, there are usually a flurry of club shipments to be picked up a few times a year.  Right now fall releases are happening, and we’ve picked up a couple and have 3 or 4 more ready for pick-up.

The wines from the club releases can range from new releases to library wines, and anything in between.  Many clubs offer the option to get “reds only” or “whites only” and we have a mix of  “reds only” memberships and “whatever you got” memberships.  I understand they cannot please every member with every release, but I typically prefer getting new releases in the club shipments.  And depending on my mood, I may request to swap out a particular wine for two of something else.  Sometimes this works, sometimes not allowed (messes up the inventory and billing).  I don’t mind “library” wines in the release package, but too often I wonder if it’s really a dump of wines the winery couldn’t otherwise move, and only a couple of times have these wines actually been more than 3-4 years old. 

I’ve referred to shipments and pick-ups and this is the area where we’ve had probably the most angst with our winery clubs.  For those clubs outside the Yak, Cave Ridge in Virginia and Tres Sabores in California, we have the wines shipped since it’s the only option.  This typically negates any discount we might get and with the signature required feature of wine shipments in the U.S. is a royal pain in the butt.  After many games of sticky note tag with the UPS and Fed Ex guys, we’ve solved that by changing our shipping address to a work address where there’s always someone to sign.  These costs and annoyance actually make these clubs hardly worth belonging to, but for now we’re hanging on.

For those clubs IN the Yak, we pick up our shipments at the tasting rooms.  We drive past these rooms several times a month during the course of life anyway, and it’s always fun to have the human connection with the winery when picking up a shipment.  One of my greatest sources of annoyance, and this has happened a time or three, is when the Yak winery club ships the wines to us via UPS.  AAARRGG! We think we’ve gotten this straightened out everywhere by now, but for any Yak wineries out there, be warned if you ship my wine to my house or place of work and bill me $20 plus dollars to do so, you’ll get a nasty phone call from me and a (mainly idle) threat that I’m going to drop your club.

To end on a happy note, I’ll mention the club events.  These parties are for member’s only, though that rule is smartly loose most places, meaning guests of members or others are welcome if there is room.  Release parties, winemakers dinners, special tastings, grand openings, educational events, blending parties, bottling line parties, fall harvest, spring barrel, movie night, patio night, walk the vineyard night…  All of these things are available to winery club members, usually at an extra fee but less than the general public, and sometimes these events do fill up entirely with wine club members.   These parties are where we’ve made lots of friends, drank lots of wine, danced to good music, and eaten lots of food.  This is where lasting connections to wineries are secured and those wineries that throw a good party can count on many loyal club members year after year after year.

I’ll certainly refer more to specific winery clubs and their events as they happen, but these couple of posts give my best take on what happens after you…

Join the Club.

Join the Club (Part 1)

by Chris on Sep 18, 2010

Wine clubs is a topic I’ve intended to write about since I started this blog.  I don’t know why I haven’t before, and even though I read a lot of wine blogs, I don’t recall ever reading a post devoted entirely to the subject of wine clubbing.  So, here goes.

There are all types of wine clubs, and I’m sure there are some I don’t even have an awareness of, but the ones I’m familiar with probably fall into three (maybe four) main categories, what I’ll call “post card” wine clubs,  then there are social wine clubs, and the last one (or two) winery clubs.

Post card wine clubs are what we knew about when we lived in the large, unwashed region of the country known as Not Wine Country.   This type of club posts ads in magazines, or send alluring mailers to prospective winos (I’m not sure how we got on their mailing list), and there are pictures of far away places (California or even France!) draped in luxurious grape wines with shiny glasses of wine, beautiful people, and constant sunshine. The offer is typically 6-12 bottles of wine for a low, low introductory cost.  We’ve bit on a couple of these and I’ll say that for the uninitiated who wants to try some wine types or wine regions for the first time, this a fairly inexpensive way to get in on the ground floor.  The problem with this type of club is that it’s pretty much a crap shoot on quality and preference. You are very likely to get some wines you don’t particularly care for either because they are not your style, or they are simply plonk.  And that’s because there is obviously no way to taste the wine before the box arrives at your door.  The pictures on the post card ad don’t really tell you much and they don’t even have a scratch and sniff section for the wines on the menu.  We dropped the post card clubs when we moved to nirvana, aka, wine country.

The second type of club are the geographically based social clubs that cater to winos in a particular area.  These clubs are likely to exist anywhere I guess, but they appeared on our radar when we moved to wine country and in the Yak the ones I know of are the Tri-Cities Wine Society and the Yakima Enological Society.  We joined the TCWS at their annual Tri-Cities Wine Festival competition last fall and have been to several of their monthly get togethers where folks typically pay a fee which covers food and wine for the event, and the group meets for a themed wine tasting: Champagne style wines, Rhone style wines, wines of the Columbia Gorge, etc…  These events are very educational and it’s been fun to meet and get to know some fellow wine geeks through the TCWS.  Since our move, the YES is much closer to us and I’m guessing we’ll switch social wine clubs for the monthly events, but still trek down to Kennewick for the annual TC Wine Festival.

The last type(s) of wine clubs, that I’m familiar with at least, are clubs associated with specific wineries, or winery clubs.   These clubs are more or less a marketing tool for most wineries, where individuals are invited to join the winery club in exchange for certain benefits of membership, discounts, private event invitations, special tastings, and the priviledge (and obligation) to buy the winery’s wines at some frequency and quantity.  These winery clubs come in all shapes, sizes, and forms, and some wineries are more agressive than others in soliciting membership.   Barb and I belong to 10, 11,  er, a lot of winery clubs and since we have so much experience, mostly good, some not-so-good, with these winery clubs I think I’ll do a “part 2″ to describe in more detail the joys, advantages, and occasional tribulations of winery club membership.

I’ve alluded to a fourth type of club, which, as you can see, I consider a subset of the winery clubs.   These last winery clubs are more or less the pinnacle of wine clubbing. This is because the wineries involved have been so successful in alluring buyers that they have (mostly) been able to sell out their entire inventory through a wine club or mailing list system, and the membership is a closed club.  These winery mailing lists belong to those wineries that have reached “cult” status such that there are waiting lists to be on the list.  And there may even be waiting lists to get on the waiting list.  I kind of think of this like season tickets to the Green Bay Packers; the folks on these lists treat membership like a family heirloom and write it into their will who will inherit it when they die.  I can’t really fault this type of winery club since it makes most business sense for the wineries involved if they can reach this level; they are able to sell out without going through distributors or really marketing very hard, their wine is obviously very good, and they have a captive buying base that they can count on every quarter, year, or however often the list goes out.    Buyers on these lists typically love the wines so much they’re willing to forego food and shelter to buy the wines (hence the cult comparison), and for the most part all those inside the club are pretty happy about the situation.  At least it appears that way to those of us on the outside.

 So far, Barb and I don’t belong to any of these mailing list clubs, we’re on a waiting list or two, and I don’t know what we’d do if our number came up on one of those waiting lists.  The other possiblity is that one or more of the winery clubs we already belong to will reach the point that they will convert to a mailing list only winery.  If that were to happen, we’d be initiated with the true crown of winery club achievement, if there is such a thing, a charter/founding/legacy/grandfathered member.

I’ve sort of layed this wine club discussion out without a whole lot of critical commentary on the pluses and minuses of wine club membership.   Next time around I’ll go more in depth into the type of clubs we’ve become most familiar with, winery clubs, and I’ll share what we see as the things that make a winery club a good thing and worth belonging to, and those those things that sometimes make you go “hmmm??? ” when you…

Join the Club.