Month: January 2011

Our friend Noelle posted pictures from our trip on her Facebook page and I stole my favorites.

Our Group.

Our fearless leader being a dork.

Fresh shrimp in cream sauce. We cooked every night except for the night of the football game. I think we went through just under 30 bottles of wine.

View from the deck of the Space Needle. Noelle took a great video of the fireworks show on New Years Eve.

We had sunny blue skies every day.

The view over Lake Union from the balcony. Watching seaplanes was a major distraction for everyone.

We did lots of shopping in Pike’s Place Market. Lots of fresh seafood, cheese, a great duck and veggies.

It was cold for us Californians though with highs in the low 40’s. We bundled up all the time.

We also spent a day in Woodinville tasting wine.

A great trip with great friends and Stefania had another fun birthday!

Stefania and I have both had a cold since we got back from Seattle but Saturday morning we still decided to get out and prune the little church vineyard.

Santa Teresa Catholic church is around the corner from us in San Jose along Calero Avenue. We’re not sure who put the vineyard in but it’s now about 5 years old. The church is on our regular route to the Post Office, gas station and local independent coffee shop. A few years ago we notice that the vines were in terrible shape so I stopped by one day and told Father Chris I’d volunteer to take care of them.

There are just 20 plants and it’s only 20-30 hours a year we have to put in, so it’s not much of a burden to help keep the neighborhood looking nice.

Here you can see that it is a suburban vineyard, right along the street and next to the fire station. The trunks on the plants are a little funky from the first couple of years of neglect before we took over.

We have been able though to get the cordons and spurs trained properly as you can see below.

The plants are very low to the ground so it’s a little hard to work, but not impossible. We’ve had to replace a few of the plants that died as well and the little ones are doing good. The little spot actually produces about 250 pounds of grapes. We’ll continue to keep up on it all through the year.

In the trade magazines we get there have been lots of articles about direct marketing to your customers via the phone. It’s the latest greatest craze. All the articles say that bigger wineries should even have a full time person who calls customers to make special offers, tell them about new releases and offer wine at discounts. These articles say smaller wineries should call as well and dedicate time to the effort.

Many of the wine boards have had discussions about wineries that have called them. Usually the call is about some sort of discount or special offer. Normally the tone of these discussions is that the wineries must be desperate to make a sale. From what I’ve read though it’s just the start of a new trend of direct marketing.

We’re not going to participate in this trend. We promise.

We do ask for a phone number when people sign up. We do that because UPS and GSO ask for a phone number when we ship. In case someone has forgotten to include it on their order form we can fill the info in without bothering them.

We have also used that sign up number a couple of times to call people when we had a question about an order they’ve placed. Usually we will try email first, but once or twice we’ve had to call. The only other time I can recall us using a phone number is when we’ve been going out to dinner with someone, either them visiting San Jose, or us visiting them and we’ve needed to call to coordinate plans.

That’s it, that’s the only time we’ll use your phone number.

We also will never sell any information, emails, phone numbers, nothing to third parties. We have been contacted in the past with interest in buying our mailing list, and I’ve flat out refused to consider it. That also will never change.

We do love it though if you email us, or call, and especially when you come visit. Don’t stop that please!

Every other year Paul takes me on a trip for New Years and my birthday. This past weekend was our year away and we spent it in Seattle with 6 of our friends. What a blast!

The condo we rented on Lake Union had a gorgeous view of the Olympic mountains, overlooked the lake and had an unobstructed view of the Space Needle. At 11:59 New Years Eve they light up the Space Needle with an eight minute long fireworks display, it was fantastic!! We popped a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon to toast the new year and promptly fell asleep at 12:12 a.m.

On Sunday we attended the Seattle Seahawks vs. St. Louis Rams game. After watching the Rams stomp, squish and otherwise annihilate the 49rs just the week before I thought for sure they would win and take the championship title. What a surprise!

Not knowing that the Seahawks are hosting the Saints this coming Saturday, I wore my Saints T-Shirt underneath a newly acquired Seahawks sweatshirt to the airport on our way home. I mention this only because I told the TSA agent that no, I was not going to remove my sweatshirt, and claimed I was shirtless underneath…”you want me to pass security in my bra? I don’t think so”. I got the full female pat down, which, for the record, is faster than taking the shirt off and on and less hassle with hair, glasses, earrings getting caught, etc. I figure he must have been a Rams fan…

At the market after we got home I couldn’t help myself with a bag of fresh cranberries…with no plan on what to do with them I bought them anyway, and a fresh pineapple. After unpacking and settling in a bit, I got online and found a recipe for fresh made cranberry juice. It’s amazingly easy.

http://www.ehow.com/how_5036084_make-cranberry-juice-fresh-cranberries.html

I like that on the weblink there is a Top Five Things to Try list and 3 contain alcohol, woohooo!

Cheers and Happy New Year everyone!