Springalingadingdong!

Everyone has been super sweet and supportive – thank you! We’re all doing better; as many of you have said, only time can help you heal. On the positive note, Will and Joyce Stowe are coming into town today! We’ll probably put them to work right away, hand labelling the rest of the Syringa, prepruning the rest of the vineyard and pounding posts. JUST KIDDING GUYS!! 🙂

Nah, we’ll probably kick back a bit and catch up. They’ve been on a marathon road trip – squeezing as much family time into their week off as they can. They hit San Fran visiting Joyce’s very smart brother and swung over to Henderson, NV to say hi and eat lots of delicious food with Joyce’s parents, aunts and uncles and the past two days they made it up to Utah to do some bonding with my nieces and nephew and now they are headed here.

So what have we been up to you ask? Mike’s been burying himself (figuratively speaking) out in the Riesling vineyard fixing some loose posts, wires and prepruning and suckering. His brother Shane who is a student up at the fine establishment of the U of I is on spring break (ah, don’t you miss spring break??) and has been out a few times to help Mike in the vineyard and earn his fair share of wine to take back with him to Moscow. Mike has also been working on wine sales reports over that past few years, converting my dad’s handwritten reports into Excel. It’s interesting to see the sales trends. Merlot is on the rebound!

I have been doing a slew of tasks. We might be having some mystery-death wine dinners out here this summer…tba, as well as getting our Chardonnay and Pinot into the Utah State liquor stores. Cross your fingers Utahites! We just received word that our new 2006 Ruby Dahlia Dessert Wine (ruby port) will be specially released to the Idaho Liquor Dispensory…one of the few places you’ll be able to get it, besides here at the winery of course. My custom labelling program has been kicked back into full gear with lots of new business and it was great to hear that one of my labels brought tears (happy ones) to the eyes of the gift-receivers when they first saw the wine. I’ve been working on some freelance graphic design on the side too and helping Gina Davis, proprietor of the up and coming Davis Creek Cellars with her logo and labels design. (They’re going to be gorgeous!) We’re almost fully booked for weddings this summer. Jeepers, spring is fully in season with the busy season of summer creeping up on us. The first crockus’ have bloomed – beautiful yellow and purple flowers and the rain is helping the grass turn green…

Our March wine specials are: 2005 Pinot Noir Rose – 25% off case sales (regular $9/bottle)
2006 Malbec – 20% off case sales (regular $21/bottle)