Friday, May 18, 2007

Memorial Day Weekend: A Great American Picnic

Every year we at LaVelle Vineyards join the rest of the nation in Memorial Day Weekend celebration. We think that the best way to recognize this holiday and bring in the Summer of 2007 is by having a big BBQ, live Dixieland Jazz music with Calamity Jazz (Sun & Mon Only), games, and invite everyone in the Eugene area to join us in what's become known around here as A Great American Picnic!

This event marks the beginning of the summer season for the whole crew here at LaVelle Vineyards. We'll be releasing our new summer menu down at the bistro in the coming weeks so be watching for that.

Also, the construction project out here at the winery is making lots of progress and I should have some new photos up here shortly with another post.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

West Coast Wine Competition results

There are a number of wine competitions that we enter into for a variety of reasons. Winning medals, especially the shiny gold one's allow us to promote our brand. Brand identity is a mixture of things and in this case by winning awards we increase our sales in certain markets that our wine is sold in and, more importantly, increase awareness of our label and the LaVelle Vineyards name.

The West Coast Wine Competition, brought to us by the Vineyard & Winery Management Magazine, is one of the larger events that we enter three of our wines into every year. It's a well known competition in it's 25th year and...well, here's what the website says about it:
The 25th West Coast Wine Competition concluded on April 20, 2007 in Santa Rosa, CA, with a field of over 1,700 entries spanning from wineries located in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Baja California, British Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand.
So, anyway, we did very well this year as all three wines that we entered received medals:
  • Gold medal - LaVelle 2006 Estate Bottled Riesling
  • Silver Medal - LaVelle 2005 Vintage Select Pinot Gris
  • Bronze Medal - LaVelle 2005 Vintage Select Pinot Noir

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Spotlight: Marathon Runners

Sunday, April 29th marked the inaugural running of the Eugene Marathon. This was the first marathon held in track town since 1982, when Nike last held it's annual OTC marathon. There were 1,500 runners in the event and two of them work at the LaVelle Wine Bar & Bistro. Dawn Merrill, finishing 1,199 overall with a time of 5:03:10 was running in her first marathon ever! Rosemarie Downey-McCarthy, who fills in for us at the bistro from time to time, finished 693 overall with a time of 4:03:20. Also in the race was our chef's wife Catherine Ely who finished 1,065 overall with a time of 4:42:04. Congratulations to you all!