On the same new container from Spain as the Munia wines, we brought in some Vacceos from Rueda. The region of Rueda offers some of the best value priced wines from Spain for the money, especially for stuff coming from rather old vineyards. When looking for inexpensive wines, you have to be flexible. It is unlikely to find a small producer who can produce really good, what I would consider cheap wines in any kind of quantity. What’s the alternative? In Spain some of the best value wines come from wineries that are made up of growers who form a co-op or as the Spanish call them Sociedad Cooperativa. Vacceos is a label from Agricola Castellana, Sociedad Cooperativa, which dates back to 1935 and happens to be one of the largest producers from Rueda having access to a wide variety , quality and price level of fruit. Their wines have received great international acclaim and great ratings from Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, Guia Penin and many others.The best quality fruit comes from the best available vineyards and given the size of the organization, the wines are still priced at great price points. The Vacceos wines come from some of the best vineyards, especially so with the Verdejo that comes from 75 year old vines and the Rueda Crianza coming from some of the best available Tempranillo vineyards.
The Vacceos line consists of an old vine 2010 Verdejo which is super crisp, refreshingly clean with a pleasant long aftertaste; 2011 Tempranillo Rose (fresh vintage coming in April), 2010Tempranillo Roble which is a fantastic every day red with fruit, body, spice & style, aged 3 months in French oak and the 2007 Tempranillo Rueda Crianza, which is lush, structured and rather smooth with some cedar, tobacco & leather on the back end. The Verdejo, Rosado and Tempranillo Roble will all be selling for $10 or less retail. Good wine for $10 or less? Really? Heck yeah! How Rad are your Grapes?
At Rad Grapes we pride ourselves in providing great values in the wines we sell, given the fact that we concentrate primarily on the quality of the wine, we have very few wines that fit the $10 per bottle and under category. We have broken that barrier with the Vacceos line up and I see doing very well with these wines given the amazing quality to price ratio. We should be able to sell quite a few cases of these wines once they catch fire. All I have to do is take bottles out, pull some corks and make sure my customers taste the wines. The rest takes car of its self. I’m looking forward to the ride. Salud!
It has literally been years since I have imported new wines from Spain. There have been a number of reasons for that, but what’s important is that after several logistical and shipping delays, our new wines from Spain are finally here. First up are the Munia wines from Bodegas Vinaguarena in Toro. Munia is named after Muniadonna, the beloved mother of King Fernando I. The winery where Munia is vinified is modern, built in 1999, right along the Guarena River, a main tributary to the Duero. The 30 hectares of Tinta de Toro ( It is what locals call Tempranillo) vines are aged anywhere from recent 5 year old plantings to older vines over 30 years in age. Tinta de Toro ripens incredibly well in the region, making what I believe are some of the most structured and complex Tempranillo wines made anywhere in Spain.
The main objective with the Munia wines is to make the highest quality D.O. (Denominacion de Origen) wines possible. In order to achieve that, meticulous sustainable vineyard management techniques are used. In order to concentrate the quality and flavor of the grapes, over 50% of the crop is sacrificing in the thinning of the crop. Vineyard workers drop or cut off half the grapes on the vines in order to achieve the quality of grapes sought. It is a big sacrifice, but once you taste the wines, you will immediately realize why they do what they do at Munia. It is all about what’s inside the bottle and exactly what Rad Grapes is about. Great wines.
In picking wines from specific Spanish D.O. areas for our portfolio, I strive to find rustic, original wines that I feel are truly representative of the terroir of the growing area and the history. The Munia wines fill that roll just beautifully. We have imported 3 different Munia wines – the 2008 Roble, aged 6 months in oak; the Munia Crianza 2006, what the winery refers to as their “Alma de Toro” – Soul of Toro, aged in oak for 14 months and the 2003 Reserva aged for 24 months in oak and extra years in bottle. The Roble is the every day drinking Toro. The 2003 Reserva is by far the best wine out of the bunch, but really needs decanting to release what I call “the Genie from the bottle”, but the 2006 Crianza is absolutely amazing right out of the bottle. No wonder it is called “Alma de Toro”.
The wines literally just arrived last week and even though I just picked up samples a couple of days ago, we have already sold some wine. My friend Eric at Shon 45 on 8th Ave. & 51st bought some of the Munia Roble and Henry at Manhattan Wine Exchange on 3rd Ave. & 63rd absolutely loved the 2006 Munia Crianza and picked some up. I will be out showing the wines over the next few weeks and we’ll see where else we can find them homes. Look for another post soon, regarding some more new Spanish wines from Rueda, that have arrived on the same container as these…
I found this great article published by Decanter Magazine and thought it was important enough to share…
Red wine may have some effect in inhibiting the hormone that causes breast cancer, a study has found.
The study at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles found that chemicals in the skins and seeds of red grapes slightly lowered oestrogen levels among premenopausal women.
The same effect was not seen in white wine.
The study, published online in the Journal of Women’s Health, challenges the widely-held belief that all types of alcohol consumption heighten the risk of developing breast cancer.
Alcohol is known to increase levels of oestrogen, which fosters the growth of cancer cells.
However, the research at Cedars-Sinai suggests red wine acts differently, appearing to block the process that converts hormones such as testosterone – which is present in women’s bodies – into oestrogen.
In the study, 36 women drank either Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay daily for almost a month, then switched to the other type of wine. Blood was collected twice each month to measure hormone levels.
I drove down to the warehouse today to load up on samples, including some new releases. I have enjoyed the Holidays and two long weekends ina row, but it’s time to get back to work. Hopler just released the 2010 Gruner Veltliner and Bergevin Lane released their 2009 “Moonspell” Cabernet Sauvignon. They both arrived into our inventory just before the New Year. One of the favorite things of all that I do is to taste new wines and new releases, especially since both of the wines I am tasting new vintages for today are in our top 10 selling wines. We love ‘em and we sell ‘em. I am tasting both new vintages for the first time…First the Gruner “beste trauben”:
2010 Hopler Gruner Veltliner
The 2010 Gruner from Hopler is just rocking. I’ve sold this wine since the 2005 vintage and this may the epitome of clean, crisp & juicy. The nose has a spicy hay like scent, along with pear, quince and lots of mineral notes. On the palate the wine is super juicy and layered with great acidity and a long finish with more mineral notes. By the way, this wine retails for about $16 per bottle…Why is this Gruner so damn tasty?
“The Pannonian climate bestows the area with the highest amount of sunshine in Central Europe and the highest average temperature in Austria. The regional climate is not only determined by its east-facing position, but also by continental influences. This mixture has a very positive effect on winemaking. In the winter, it is cold and has little snow, in the summer hot and humid – and due to the blazing sun, the evaporation of Lake Neusiedl is extremely high. 2000 hours of sunshine, high humidity and an average of 500ml of rain per year provide climatically unique conditions for the production of premium wines.” – from the Hopler website…(all harvested by hand too).
Next, and while I start prepping dinner it’s time to sip some of the 2009 Bergevin Lane “Moonspell” Cabernet.
2009 Bergevin Lane "Moonspell" Cabernet Sauvignon
This wine is an absolutely fantastic & classic Cabernet with the best of both worlds. This blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec & Petite Verdot may the best effort yet, blending great fruit from Horse Heaven Hills, Wahluke Slpoe & Walla Wall. Bam! Tasting notes from the winery are better than I could ever hope to describe this sublime wine”…MOONSPELL, A luring name and a luring wine. Intricate power and delicious balance. Dark fruits especially black berries and black currant cassis followed by mineral, earth, balanced smoky oak and plenty of spice. Dense and thick the entirety of the mouth is coated with rich concentrated flavors while the tannins, fine and ripe, linger elegantly behind leaving the impression of pure Washington fruit and terroir. The most perfectly balanced Cabernet bottling so far without a doubt… New world marries old world!!!” Retail price is about $30 per bottle. We sold through the 2007 and 2008 vintages pretty quickly. Don’t wait for the press to come out…
Both wines are in stock and available for our NY customers. Cheers!
Some France makers of wine go natural, and fight the system
Olivier Cousin, 51, doesn’t like being boxed in. He calls himself a paysan, or a small farmer, the sort seen before tractors and industrialized farming pushed so many off the fields.
“I’m for freedom,” he says. “We got rid of our kings awhile ago. We cut their heads off.”
Cousin is fighting a raft of battles: Against the system. Against chemicals. Modern technology. Money, as in, the need for it. And against the idea of putting sugar and other additives in wine.
More concretely, he is in a legal battle with the French authorities who regulate winemaking. Although the issue appears to be about wine labeling, it really is about terroir, the land, or the identity it gives to fruit, as well as its people.
In an industry and a country that fears losing itself to the spread of globalized sameness, Cousin is part of an increasingly popular, often rebellious movement of “natural” winemakers.
“Making wine this way is the story of humanity,” Cousin says. “You have to defend it. Otherwise, you might as well make wine on a computer. And in 50 years, if we continue making industrial wine, it won’t interest anybody.
“When you make something naturally, it has a magic to it.”
The phrase “natural wines” is widely criticized as being vague, but it roughly refers to wines that include very low doses, or none, of the hundreds of chemicals and natural additives permitted in conventional French grape-growing and winemaking. The additives correct mistakes and kill bacteria, necessary for mass consumption. (Amen to that!)
This is exactly what we espouse at Rad Grapes – handcrafted, artisanal wines – not manufactured wines…Kudos to Mssr. Cousin. Keep making great natural wines and keep up the good fight.
I read and was enlightened by this column from Don Rainey posted on Venture Beat several months ago and have literally been back to re-read it several times, today inclusive. as a nascent entrepreneur I felt that the advice was too important not to share…a must read for anyone even thinking about starting their own business. Rad Grapes was started almost 7 years ago and it has been a very rough and yet enjoyable ride so far. No one expects to hit the biggest economic downturn in recent memory, a couple of years after starting a new business, but hey, such is life and that’s what happened to me…and I am still paying for it given the mistakes I made. At least Rad Grapes seems to be on the path to recovery over the last few months (I have learned to look at the glass always a s half-full), but it will likely take us another year or two to really get back to par. No matter what, I wish I would had this list handy when I started my company, so I would have known better than to make big, costly mistakes and assumptions.
1. Things take longer than you ever imagine – Everything that involves people, resources, tasks and coordination takes longer than you ever think it should take to get done. It isn’t about developing patience, as patience doesn’t really help you keep driving things forward. It is about being realistic in your planning and management.
2. Items that do succeed tend to do so quickly – I have seen more successes — products, projects, employees, etc. — start strongly than slowly. The great salesperson or employee is great from the first day. The strong employees contribute immediately. The product that is going to be a hit gets strong, initial reactions from customers.
3. People will let you down – This will happen in ways you can’t even imagine when you start out. It can range from inattentiveness and laziness to fraud and theft. You’ll see it all from the people you meet along the way. Your faith in people or belief in them can be a dangerous thing. As Pres. Reagan put it, “Trust, but verify.” Blind faith will get your butt kicked again and again. Love and reward your employees, but don’t have too much confidence in them.
4. Good employees are really hard to find – A solid worker isn’t just difficult to find, he or she is really difficult to find. And they’re the first ones to leave. The truth is that 10 percent of the world is competent – and you’re looking for that 10 percent in every hire.
It’s hard to do consistently. And that’s why organizations that do it with frequency have such strong reputations. If you want to build a business predicated largely on finding, getting and keeping quality employees to succeed, you should understand that premise will be your greatest risk. Finding a market and profitably selling to it (usually the greatest risks) will take a back seat. Better yet, pursue a business that needs some reasonable percentage of employees to be really good.
5. Your bad employees rarely quit – For one thing, poor performers aren’t really all that motivated to look, as that might involve actual performance. For another, no one else is likely to recruit them. Your marginal and weak employees are with you for life unless you move proactively. In many years of running businesses, the only time this wasn’t true was during the dot-com bubble. At that time, every idiot could get a 15 percent to 20 percent raise here in Northern Virginia by changing jobs. And they did. Aside from that blessed time, weak employees are your most “loyal.”
6. You will be lucky and unlucky -In the fullness of time, you will be assuredly lucky and unlucky. And sometimes, things that appear to be bad luck will turn out to be good — the weak salesperson who turned down your job offer — or vice versa. You will have ups and downs, and you will win or lose things that you don’t deserve to win or lose. You will be unlucky and lucky, you just may never know when.
7. Avoid the myth and misery of sunk cost – See the item above about succeeding quickly. Don’t chain yourself to the anchors you lovingly create in pursuit of success. If it isn’t working for you or the business, let it go. Understand that it isn’t good money after bad money, it is all bad money. Fire that salesperson, let that manager go, stop selling that product, get used to moving on. You’ll make a lot of decisions in running a business. Accept that not all of them will be right.
8. Fill the pipe, always fill the pipe – The difference between good times and bad times is often reflected in how many of the opportunities, customers, etc. end up closing successfully. In good times, more deals close from a normal opportunity pipeline. In bad times, less deals close from the pipeline. So, fill the pipeline of opportunities, and always look to add to the pipeline. Deals don’t close for a million reasons. Your only defense is to fill the pipe.
The only other thing I can add is: Watch your cash-flow and profitability. I have learned the hard way how much they both matter.
Natural cork remains the overwhelming choice for U.S. wine drinkers because it conveys higher quality than alternative closures, according to a recent survey by Tragon Corp., the Company announced today…
Only 45 percent of respondents said they would consider purchasing wine with a screw-cap. Seventy-two percent said they would consider wines with a synthetic closure.
For gifts, dinner parties and special occasions, as many as 90 percent of respondents said they would prefer wines sealed with cork. Sixty percent of respondents said wines with synthetic closures were inappropriate for gifts, and 78 percent indicated they would not consider giving screw-capped wines as gifts.
Compared to similar Tragon studies conducted in 2004 and 2007, consumer opinion changed the most for screw-caps, with the closures having reached their peak of popularity in 2007. Compared to four years ago, the closure is now seen as less appropriate for all occasions.
Half of respondents thought that wines with a screw-cap were of low quality. Only 11 percent indicated that screw-caps conveyed high quality.
Synthetic closures have gained acceptance among consumers for everyday use, although respondents showed little preference for one closure over another for this category of use
I am in the same camp. I prefer real, natural cork, except for light whites and early drinking wines, which are best suited for screw caps…but at the same time, I know that a good wine with a screw cap enclosure is going to taste just as good as the same wine with a real cork…that’s just my 2 cents…
Messaging has so much to do with how successful a product, wine or wine company becomes. I am trying to find a simpler phrase to convey what Rad Grapes is about…Almost everyone that knows or hears the name loves it. As a way of explaining as simply as I can to customers what we are about, I’ve coined ‘How Rad are your Grapes?”…sounds great, but what’s the message? What is Rad Grapes about?
Well, it takes me a couple of sentences to express what we are about and that’s too long to directly and easily express what we represent and what sets us apart in Social Media and in every day business…Rad Grapes is about really good, quality, small production, value priced wines (like they won’t break you bank if you drink good wine on a daily basis), made with lots of TLC, that come mostly from family owned operations and tend to be sustainably farmed if not organically or even biodynamically. Everything I do is based on what’s inside the bottle at a great price. I also take the sourced locally thing to another degree. Small producers usually make some of the best wines available, but tend to have a hard time finding someone to represent them in large markets like NY…that’s another reason why we exist. To me value = quality + price. That could be a really good 2010 Viognier from Vina Tabali which is available retail for about $13 per bottle, to wines like the 2008 Bergevin Lane Cabernet Sauvignon that are about $30 – but they only made 768 cases and it gets very good press, like 91 points from the Wine Spectator. How do we convey what we are about in a simple, direct and easy to understand message about what Rad Grapes is about?
How about Low Budget Wines for Real Wine Geeks? Is that direct enough and does it convey an easy to pick up & positive message? Maybe the Kinks can help me get the real message across?
First of all, Thanks to Mark Bittman for sharing this. Why do I find it so important to share? Well, for two very important reasons: Because I care about what I eat and feed my kids and we all should and also because it is exactly what I am trying to do with Rad Grapes – to provide affordable, sustainably farmed small production wines that strive for quality and terroir as an alternative to the mass produced, manufactured wines that constitute a huge percentage of the wines most people seem to be drinking.
My challenge is convince chefs, owners and wine buyers why Rad Grapes wines are different and better – the way the vines are farmed is just the beginning… (tasting our wines will show you for sure). I feel that any chef that cares about the ingredients he puts in his dishes should be spending the same amount of time sourcing the best possible wines that are sourced the same way as the food they care so much about. Our wines will only make your food taste that much better. I have to note that I am also a huge fan of George Faison and D’Artagnan and buy their Andouille sausage, Chorizo, Duck Pate, Wild Boar, Duck and other meats all the time at our local Shoprite in NJ – good food is available, you just need to spend a few sheckles more for the good stuff…and you will be duly rewarded in taste, nutrition and a healthier body.
This is just an excerpt from the full post at www.markbittman.com…you can go the the website and read the whole thing.
“I’ve known George Faison for 25 years or more; he was a co-founder of D’Artagnan and is now a co-owner of Debragga and Spitler, a New York meat wholesaler that’s been doing business since 1924, and a main supplier to many of the city’s best restaurants. This is a letter George sent late last week to a well-known chef, and one he’ll be sending to others. (It’s worth noting, if for no other reason than to answer the inevitable question, which I asked myself, that George doesn’t only sell naturally-raised meats – he sells industrially-produced stuff as well. But he’s on a campaign to persuade the chefs who insist that’s what they want to change their minds, and I know he’d like to supply only the right stuff.)” – Mark Bittman
Hey Chefs:
This note explains my thinking about why I believe that you should be pursuing clean agricultural ingredients as standard practice in your restaurants.
Our food supply system is broken. Badly. 80 percent of the U.S. beef production is controlled by four industrially producing companies. Three of these companies also process 60 percent of the nation’s pork.[1] Too much chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used to produce our crops. The variety of crops produced around the world has diminished dramatically in the last 60 years. There are now nearly 5,000,000 fewer American farmers since the 1930s.
Yes, this industrial structure has significantly lowered the monetary cost of the food we consume. But this is misleading. While the amount of money we spend on food has declined, the quality and nutrition supplied by this food has deteriorated. As a country, about one third of all adults are obese, and since 1980, the incidence of obesity has tripled among children ages 2-19.[2]
In 1960, we spent 18 percent of our take home pay on food and 5 percent on health care. Now we spend 9 percent of our take home pay on food and upwards of 17 percent on health care. According to Michael Pollan, during his Oprah interview in February, “We spend less of our money on food than any other people at any other time on this earth.” What’s wrong with this picture?
People have gotten used to eating cheap food and it is killing them. There is little flavor and little nutrition and we eat more and more, because so much of it has been engineered to trigger consumption (salt and sugar have been proven to be addictive, like nicotine in cigarettes).
Regarding meat and poultry, here is what drives me to promote naturally raised meats….read on…
The wine business is lots of fun, it really is. I enjoy what I am doing the vast majority of the time, but running the business on my own and trying to do 10 different jobs on my own also comes with its own set of perils. Take purchasing wine and make sure it gets shipped and arrives to our warehouse in a timely fashion.That is not always the case. The devil is in the details…so what’s my beef? It’s the fact that the freight forwarder we have been using to bring in the wines we import directly from France, Spain and Portugal is going under and we have wine sitting in Barcelona, that should have been here a month ago. The most frustrating part is that I did not find out what was going on or why my wine shipments kept on getting delayed until last week.
Just as I am trying to right the ship in some of the roughest economic times we have experienced in a long time, due to no fault of my own, I am totally going to miss the season with these new wines. The plan was to get some new Spanish wines from Toro and Rueda and a re-order of the Domaine Lamourette Sauvignon Blanc here in October on the same container to take Advantage of the full fall season, especially so with the brand new wines. Now I have back orders on the Sauvignon I will not be able to fill for weeks and I will not be able to introduce the new Spanish wines until January…At this stage I have found a new freight forwarder that I hope will work out in the long run. It will take them a week or two to pick up our goods and get them on a boat to NY. That means, maybe I see the wines by mid-December, too late to get any new placements. I have known for a while that anything can go wrong, but this is the first time I have seen a shipping problem of this magnitude that I have had to deal with… it’s no fun, on top of the fact that it is costing me sales and real hard dollars at a time I can least afford it.
Frustration can set in when we have to deal with costly and stressful problems that are beyond our control, but I maintain a positive attitude and look at change – voluntary or not – in a positive light. Shit happens for a reason most of the time, but it may take us some time to realize the reason, sometimes not for weeks or months later….we shall see what the current lesson will yield.
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