Date: Wed, 26 May 2010 13:34:53 -0700
Subject: [PV-Friends] Another May newsletter

	Perennial Vintners	In this issue:
		▪ Open this weekend
		▪ Prices reduced!
		▪ Awards
Newsletter -- May-2010		▪ In the vineyard
(Click here to view in HTML on website)		▪ Outlet (where to find) update
http://www.PerennialVintners.com/		▪ New tasting fee

(Click on any image below to go to website with more information/larger image/etc.)

▪ Open this weekend
Our next open-at-the-winery event is this coming weekend, Memorial Day weekend.  We'll be open Sat, Sun, Mon from 10am-5pm.  This is a WABI weekend where all the Bainbridge wineries will be open.  The rain is supposed to stop for a nice Sat. and Sun., so plan on stopping by!

▪ Prices reduced!
Now that Summer is approaching (Memorial Day weekend is the signal for me), it's time to start thinking about sipping a nice cool white wine out on the deck on a warm evening with a wonderful meal.  To help people attain this simple pleasure (for some of us it's now more like a dream), we've dropped the prices on several PV wines.  The Melon de Bourgogne is now $25 (from $28), the Ichigo is now $21 from ($24), and the verjus is now $11 (from $17).  Please take advantage of this - we especially want to sell out of the Ichigo so that people will drink it soon -- before fresh fruit flavors being to fade -- this wine is not intended to be aged.

▪ Awards
We're extremely happy to have received several awards from the Northwest Wine Summit.  If you saw the previous PV newsletter, you saw my article where I described how the tasting is done, and what a wonderful experience it was for me to be one of the judges.  (If you missed it, it's on the PV website.)  I do want to emphasize that at the tasting they are very careful to ensure that no judge ever gets to rate their own wines.  Although I tasted about 250 wines, I know that I did not have the honor of tasting my own -- they're all distinctive enough that I would have recognized them!

We got a bronze medal for the Ichigo dessert wine, a bronze medal for the Melon de Bourgogne dry white wine, and a silver medal for the Frambelle dessert wine.  This is really a huge thrill to get medals at every tasting we've entered.(in this case against over 1,100 wines total).  I guess we'll be entering more competitions in the future...

While writing this it comes to mind that I may not have remembered to write about our previous award...  Our 2007 Müller Thurgau received a bronze medal at the Evergreen State Fair Western WA Wine Competition last Fall.  (This is the key to why I missed writing about it before now; the event was very near harvest.)  See our website Müller Thurgau 2007 for details.

▪ In the vineyard
In the vineyard we're just wrapping up the first major weeding of the year, where we till in the overwintering cover crop.  If we can keep up with it, it's easy from here on out as we just have to scrape the little shoots off before they get big...  Yesterday I got through rototilling everything for PV.  (I'm stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop so I can finish rototilling for my neighbor BIVW, which is why I have the time to be doing this web update/email!)  So anyways, the vineyard looks very nice right now, freshly rototilled and weed-free!  Next task will be bud-thinning -- if interested in learning about this, please join our helpers email list.

▪ Outlet (where to find) update
In the last month I've had the pleasure of delivering wine to our favorite outlets including (on Bainbridge) Harbor Square Wine Shop, Cafe Nola, Town & Country.  I'm especially happy to say that Pike & Western Wine Shop in the Pike Place Market is the first shop to carry our Melon de Bourgogne wine; in addition they have our Frambelle -- they chose these before the NW Wine Summit awards came out -- they must have good taste there!

▪ New Tasting Fee
There's also some less pleasant news...  I've recently hired a new bookkeeper (this is not the bad news <grin!>).  After our last open event we took a hard look at the finances and have determined that we cannot afford to not earn money on wine served in the tasting room.  Our production is so small, that we can't afford to give away wine.  Our last open weekend we opened for pouring well over $300 (three hundred dollars) worth of wine.  So, as of this weekend (Memorial Day) we will be charging a (we think) reasonable $4 to taste our wines.  This fee will cover a 1oz sample of all 5 of our wines.  Even this will not cover the lost income from not having those bottles to sell, but it almost makes up for it.  We will take this fee off any wine purchased.  Thanks for your understanding.