WHAT’S NEW . . . as of 9/5/08
Here is our updated September newsletter
which will cover the following area:
BBC Deliveries
We need your help!
Commitment . . . to you, to us, to each
other
Harvest news
Melons, melons, and more melons
BBC Deliveries
We will be doing a wine-tasting BBC (Bung it
in the Boot of your Car) on September 11 in Bothell and a delivery-only BBC to
West Seattle, also on September 11. If you would like us to bring wine to you,
here is the deal. You order the wine and pay for it (you can do this either
with the form at the end, the Excel spreadsheet or PDF file attached, or just
give us a call . . . we would be more than happy to take your order over the
phone). We will bring your wine to either Bothell or West Seattle (depending on
where you would like it delivered).
Order by midnight on
Wednesday, September 10, for either of Bothell or West Seattle.
If you’d like, please join us for a
wine-tasting the evening of September 11th in Bothell (5:30-8:00
pm), or you can pick it up at your leisure sometime after September 11 from
either Bothell or West Seattle. These wine tastings
are not just for you! Please feel free to invite some friends over or bring
along your family. We love to introduce our wines to new people.
Just a note about September 11, for most
people it denotes a day of sadness. For us, it is a day of joy, it is Kevin’s birthday! Our son will be
twelve this year and has just started sixth grade. The melons that he is
selling (see below) are to help fund his college fund, along with wine charms
that he makes (never too early to start thinking about the holidays – he will
do personalized wine charms for $5, you name the what you want on it – person’s
name, colors, and/or charm – and he will make it for you and mail it to you).
We need your help!
For many years, we have been selling wine
based on the “if you build it they will come” theory, and that has worked for
us in the past. No longer! What with the recession and high gas prices, there
just aren’t as many of you driving over here to visit us. Thank you so much to
those of you that do! We love to see you and talk about our wines. And we
certainly understand why some of you who have chosen to stick closer to home.
Now WE need to start thinking
outside the (wine) box. We have two plans and both depend on you!
First of all, we would like to do more tastings in more places in the Seattle/Tacoma area;
something along the Tupperware model. Are there any of you who would like to
host a wine-tasting BBC for us and invite your friends and family to come taste
our wine? We will bring the wine and the food; you supply the place and the
people. If your guests like our wine, they can order it at the tasting and we
will deliver it to you within a week or so. We are very open regarding dates
and times and will be happy to fit our schedule around yours. Just e-mail or
call us and let’s see what we can come up with!
Our second plan is to dive into selling to
more wine shops and restaurants. Rather than blunder about and hope we are
choosing the right ones, we thought we would ask you what your favorites are.
This would also make it easier for you to buy our wine if you could go to your
favorite wine shop and there it would be!
Restaurants are tough, they get wine
salespeople in about every 20 minutes, so we want to pick and choose and hope
to find ones that love our wine and don’t depend solely on distributors (since
we self distribute) and are willing to communicate with us over the phone or
e-mail. Most restaurants that deal with distributors expect the distributor to
show up every week, look at their wine supply, determine what they need, and
then bring it back the next day. Very time consuming and not what we are best
at (to say nothing of the fact that we would like to continue to live in Zillah
and not spend our life on the road).
So, if you have a favorite wine shop and/or
restaurant and can supply us with the contact information (especially who to
talk to), that would be great and would give us a starting point to get our
wine more out into the market. We know already that our best sales people are
you. Can’t tell you how many times we get guests in our tasting room that are
there solely because a friend or coworker told them about us (dare we say raved
about us?).
Commitment . . . to
you, to us, to each other
It’s all about commitment. Our commitment to you to continue to make great, affordable wine.
Your commitment to us in that you continue to buy wine from us (even in these
hard times – thank you, thank you, thank you) and our commitment to each other.
Labor Day Weekend is when we celebrate our
Wedding Anniversary, with you. In particular those of you who have stood up and
publicly vowed to “make it work.” It was our 8th on the 3rd!
If you came to our tasting room last
weekend, we gave you a discount equal to the years you have been “married.” We
think laws regarding marriage are too restrictive, so to us commitment =
marriage. If you have stood before friends and family and said, “We are a
couple,” it works for us! Living together? Nope, that’s half committed. Lived
together 10 years, married 5? You get 5%. Married 57 years and your mate died?
You get 57%. Divorced? Start over at zero (you don’t get to accumulate
marriages either). Married 27 years and 23 were blissful? You get 27% because
that’s why we make a commitment, to get through the down times!
Our largest discount
this last weekend? 51%!! Our smallest? 1% (you have to
start somewhere). Most people who were married under 10 years opted to buy the
Rattlesnake Hills Wine Trail Passport which gave them their usual 10% discount
on a two-bottle or more purchase.
The cases were flying out of here (well,
maybe not flying, but definitely rolling out here and there). Better than a
bottle or two trudging out the door!
Be sure and put Labor Day weekend on your
calendar for next year and bring your parents.
Harvest news
Rockets Red Glare! Bombs Bursting in Air!
It must be bird-chasing season and time to
use all those bottle rockets we bought the 4th of July. The French
call it Veraision, when the grapes start to soften,
sweeten, and turn color and the robins, finches, and starlings start attacking.
We start harvesting wine grapes in the valley in about a week and go until the
end of October. The birds start sooner!
Melons, melons, and more melons
Melons are ripe now, today Kevin has 23
varieties of very tasty, vine-ripened, organic melons .
Galia, Cantaloupe,
Honeydew, Crenshaw, Asian, and Watermelon, all available from Kevin’s Melon
Patch (a subsidiary of Kevin’s Jellybean Store). Our customers include
the largest commercial melon grower in the valley. He buys to try the unusual
and tells Kevin that he has the Best Melons in the Valley. The most flavorful
melons are September and October varieties – Honeydew, Spanish, Crenshaw . . . splurge and order $5 of melons for the
wine-tasting BBC in Bothell and we will bring two fabulous melons from Kevin’s Melon
Patch.
Come taste the wines of
Paradise!
We would love to have you come out and see
us. The weather during September is wonderful, not too hot, not too cold, and
it cools down wonderfully at night – lots of sun, summer has not ended here!
Ask us about local B&Bs and guest houses.
If you don’t want to
deal with the drive or use more gas, then have us ship wine to you. Our web site has
order forms and a list of the current wines available. If it is over $100 a
case and you are in WA and pay by check, the shipping is for free. Otherwise it
is $20 a case (or the actual cost of shipping which is sometimes less). We are
in the Seattle area frequently and can either deliver wine to you (depending on
your neighborhood), or arrange to leave it with Tom in Bothell or Adina in
Federal Way or Kelle in West Seattle so you can pick it up later.
Thank you for continuing to buy wine from
us, especially right now. If you didn’t keep drinking our wine, we couldn’t
keep doing what we love. So, we raise our glasses to you!
Paul & Barbara
COME TASTE
Paradisos del Sol
www.paradisosdelsol.com
509.829.9000
509.829.5590
Updated 9/5/08