At least they have a positive attitude about it…so positive that the Sundance committee is threatening them with a cease-and-desist
“The Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery does not have an official affiliation with the Sundance Film Festival so the headline in the article and much of the information is inaccurate,” said Elizabeth Latenser, the Media Relations Manager for Sundance Institute, on Thursday. “They apparently served wine for parties that do not have an official affiliation with us and in order to protect our official sponsor community we are asking for your help correcting the information online.”
Chris—I can see that you also live in Rochester, MN. With this information, I’m going to assume that you are not currently running a large scale winery. We get thousands of requests a year to pour our wine at events, parties, shows, exhibitions. We’re not oblivious to what’s going on in the wine industry. We certainly do not ‘fall victim’ to fake offers.
We were asked to come to Park City and serve our wine at several large world premieres for films being shown at the festival. Our wine was the only wine showcased at these parties, which included a Ron Howard film and Rashida Jones documentary, among many others. This is a big deal for MN wines and University of Minnesota grapes, which I can assure do not receive this kind of attention often.
We talked to KTTC in early January and provided them with information. Later that week, we talked to Sundance and they let us know that unless we were an official paying sponsor, we could not use their name in any way. We no longer used their name anywhere and it was no big deal at all. They were friendly and so were we. KTTC then sat on this story for a month. When they visited us several weeks after the original information, we discussed what we were doing in Park City very clearly. We told them we could not use the name Sundance and that we were pouring at premiere parties for production companies who were showing their movies at the festival. We did not mince words and we were extremely upfront.
Sundance then contacted them with a very nice note and asked them to change their verbiage. At that point, KTTC gave me a few hours to respond (I was out of the country and they had sat on the story for a month at that point) and when they didn’t hear back from me, ran an extremely negative article about us. It was embarrassing and untrue. The ‘positivity’ that you’re picking up from me is because we did nothing wrong. We were very upfront with the news station.
I can answer any other questions you might have. If you’re curious to how ‘out of control’ we are, I can let you decide. Among the four of us, there is a Harvard educated attorney, a doctor, two professionals and 11 children. On top of this, we created this business from nothing and turned it into the largest winery in the state in three years. Does it sound like we have much time or interest in being ‘out of control?’
I apologize if I sound frustrated with your comments. I am working with the news station to clear up the misinformation, but until that happens, it makes me sick to see our name drug through the mud. We’re working so hard to bring something great to the community, use local agricultural products and employ local people.
I assume this isn’t just a drive by so let me say “Welcome to the board.” You are correct I don’t run a large scale winery. Congratulations on the thousands of requests that you get for free wine. That is quite a coup for a such new winemakers. Good luck spreading the gospel of Minnesota grape varieties to a national audience.
I do believe your explanation of how things went down. I’m glad you had a good time at Sundance. I see you got to meet some movie stars. That must have been fun.
I was confused about your references to being “out of control” and then I realized you were responding to something not written or commented on by me. I don’t think you are out of control.
I do have a winemaking question for either you or your husband…how do you get so much from just 6 acres of grapes? Do you buy grapes or juice to augment your production?