Organizing a "trade tasting"

Wine Pimps
1

Hi,
So I have three winemakers coming to visit from Piemonte. We’re pretty much set with public tastings and winemaker dinners in LA/OC, but we are also heading up to SF. Other than a couple of retailers (public tasting sched at K&L) and a handful of restaurants in SF, not a lot of market coverage. One of my customers in North Beach is opening his doors for me and cooking up some pizza, antipasti, etc so that I can invite buyers from the area to come by and sample the new 2007 Barolo, Barbaresco, and other Piemonte standbys such as gringolino, dolcetto and barbera.

Ok, so here’s my question for all your winebuyers in the rest/retail world:

What do you find is the most convenient time to attend these things. I was thinking 1-4pm. Start earlier, finish sooner?

My only two choices are Thursday or Friday. Are Fridays out for you, generally speaking? Or is it better than Thursday?

How far would are you generally willing to travel?

Any other issues I’m overlooking?

Thank you so very much, and for all you in SF, consider this your early-bird invite!! :wink:

George
Tanaro River Imports, LLC

2

Thursdays are much better than Fridays - Friday is one of the biggest business days of the week - for restauranteurs and retailers -

And you may want to think about spreading out the time a bit - most retailers don’t get off work until 5:00 - especially the smaller staffed shops - so doing a 2-7 tasting would get the restauranteurs going to work and the retailers after they get off work -

and -

You may want to do a “traveling road show” on Friday if you still have the winemakers in town. Grab some wines, set up some appointments with some choice retailers and restauranteurs that might not be able to make the Thursday tasting and bring the guys and the wines to them -

Good luck -

3

Thanks, Thomas! I’m slowly moving forward with this at Ideale in SF on March 17th and figure we’ll run from 1:30 - 5:30… I’ll pull the plug if I don’t get enough RSVPs.

Best,

George