My company hosted a panel zoom discussion this week with some customers and Erin Di Costanzo was gracious enough to work with us to coordinate a tasting of the 2018 Di Costanzo Cabernet Sauvignon DI CO following the business discussion. The format worked great with about 2/3 of the folks staying around for the tasting and participating in the wine and discussion.
For those who have the 18 DI CO tuck this baby away for a few years. This wine has serious stuffing and has deep flavors of dark and black fruit notes, savory sage earth notes and some fine but grippy tannins. It’s terrific with food now but I think it has some serious upside. My wife and I finished our bottle with some left over beef bourguignon. It was a terrific match.
One other note we had some customers in Canada who we could not get the DI CO to in time. Our local teams sourced the Chappellet Cuvee for the event and Erin included a discussion and tasting on the Chappellet as well. Really cool of her to accommodate and handle so seemlessly.
I’m sure many of you are working via Zoom, Teams or another unified communications tool. If you have the opportunity connect with a favorite winery and see if they can help your marketing efforts with a wine tasting.
I’ve been doing quite a few of these for different size companies and I agree that it’s a great way to help with team building, a wonderful ‘treat’ for a new or existing clients, or just a fun way to ‘blow off steam’. I’ve really enjoyed the interactive aspect of these and learning about how and why people perceive what they do in wines.
And I will definitely continue to offer these for the foreseeable future, even after folks have gone back to the ‘new normal’ post COVID - many companies will opt to do these rather than getting together in person, and it’s an awesome way for friends and family to be able to ‘get together’ from different locations throughout the US.
Hi Larry- there’s no doubt there are some transformative positives from the pandemic and how we interact and engage with each other is one of them. We’ll definitely be doing some things differently going forward.
Fred, thank you so much for the opportunity!
The collective comfort level of the video meeting medium means that small wine producers (or… mixologists… or cheesemongers, or what have you) can have an audience that never would have been possible 18 months ago. With a cheerleader like Fred on the call to make us seem cooler than we are, hah hah, it made for a sweet, easy and very fun way to connect with nice people, and share some wine. Thanks for sharing the inspiration.
I think this new normal will be around well after we’re all vaccinated and back to some level of regular routine. The reach and access it will provide a variety of industries will be a transformation that continues.
@Fred, 2019 DI CO! Bottling in July… I am too superstitious to talk about things before they are bottled, but, here goes: same site, same winemaking, superb vintage. I can’t wait to dig into it, as this 2018 disappeared too quickly. Across the board, to have a vintage as good as '19 right after the terrific '18s, it’ll be a really fun season. @Doug, too kind. Insert self-deprecating comment about how I embarrass my kids daily here.
