Our thoughts and prayers go out to our colleagues in Napa Valley who face the threat of yet another fire this year. COVID already made this a challenging year as wineries across the country had to rapidly readjust their businesses. It is unfortunate that for some their difficulties now include tainted grapes and damaged or destroyed property. If you would like to do something to help, you can contribute to Napa Valley Community Foundation and the Sonoma County Resilience Fund, and to stay up-to-date on the situation in Napa Valley, I recommend following the Napa Valley Vintners Association on Twitter.
In a bit of welcome good news, we’ve just learned that, with the help of WineAmerica, positive progress has been made on an updated version of The HEROES Act. To learn more about how this legislation supports agriculture, restaurants and other small businesses, please click here. To add your voice, please contact your federal representative.
To shine a spotlight on the world of New York wines, we finally launched our inaugural virtual tastings with hosts Paul Grieco, Richard Siddle and Yannick Benjamin. Paul and Yannick were originally scheduled to host in-person tasting seminars at the NY Drinks NY Grand Tasting this past March in the Rainbow Room. We regrouped with them over the summer to reimagine their sessions in a virtual format. We engaged over 20 buyers for each of their sessions, and we sent each buyer a sample pack of the seminar wines. Paul led everyone through a festive, “I pledge allegiance to Riesling.” We also launched our Boldly, NY Virtual Tasting Series as part of our market development work for Western Europe. Richard Siddle of the Buyer Magazine kicked off the first of six sessions that will be held monthly through February. We are excited to get started with this new format and to begin to support more wineries under the Boldly, NY umbrella.
Yannick will be holding our next virtual tasting tonight at 7pm and registration is still open. The tasting is titled, “New York Wines from Corner to Corner,” and it also was originally to be held in-person at the Grand Tasting. Our following seminar will be held on October 21 and it is titled, “New York State of Wine: Boldly, redefined. with Felicity Carter.” Felicity along with three New York wineries will dive into the rich history of grape growing and winemaking in New York State.
Stay safe out there and we are wishing everyone a productive harvest.
