Why Friends and Family Are Imperative to Developing Your Wine and Beer Palate

Ryan and I are home from Europe. During our trip I diligently blogged …in my journal. Internet access, while available, was challenging to find among the grapevines and port tastings. So over the next few weeks I will be blogging as if I were in Europe because I did blog in Europe…it just didn’t make it online until now. Believe me. I know the ending. This
is an adventure you’ll not want to miss.

Ryan and I have been in Europe for three glorious days now, and I have discovered what is now rule number one in Ashley’s Palate Development Mantra:

You Develop Your Best Palate When You Drink with Friends and Family

This doesn’t mean that every time you drink with friends you are expanding your understanding of what makes wine unique. I’ve had plenty of nights where the Carlo Rossi went down far too fast to learn anything about good wine. What I am saying is that when you evaluate wine (or beer) in a sterile environment you may learn a lot about its flavors, textures, and smells, but you do not learn about the soul of the wine. You don’t understand its unquantifiable pizzazz until you drink it with a group of your favorite people.

Ryan and I are in Germany now, but we spent the first few days of our trip in Brussels, Belgium. We were met at the airport by my brother, Adrien, who is living in Germany, and our great friend, Hilbren, who is living in Brussels. We walked off the plane, into Hilbren’s car, and directly into a Brussels pub scene. In a jetlegged haze I learned:

• Belgium beer is as complex and interesting as a great wine.
• Somehow the smell of cigarette smoke in a Belgium bar adds to the enjoyment of its beer.
• Belgium beers are strong. After only a few you find yourself seeing the Grand Place through a delirious fog.
• Belgium beer is very happy. Life isn’t so serious after all.
• My understanding of the depths and flavors of this remarkable beverage sky-rocketed that evening -- not just because I drank it, but because I drank too much of it with three of my favorite men in all the world (my Husband, my brother, and my dear friend) in the city where it was made to be drunk.

Am I saying you must dedicate three bottles of an expensive French wine to a night of drunken fun to understand its greatness? No. Not at all. But would you understand the soul of French wine if you got to partake with great friends in Burgundy – and therefore be a better judge of fine French wine? Absolutely.

Why Argentina?

Of all of the wine regions in the world, why on earth did Elemental Importers start in Argentina ? This is a question we were asked a lot at our Arrival Party! (By the way, the event was HOT. See photos and read about it on our website.). Let me answer that question:

Value for money! Up until a few years ago Argentina was one of the most expensive places in South America. But due to some economic troubles it is now a land of incredible values. We are able to find world-class wines that cost a fraction of what other producers are charging. It is a country where we can find wine that will sell for $10 but tastes like a $20 bottle – how can we pass that up?!?

Argentina is full of innovation. I know. What the heck am I talking about? Well, Ryan’s first forays into the world of wine and beer was when he homebrewed beer in his college dorm room. Therefore, it was only natural that our interest was piqued when we heard that a beer homebrew movement was developing Argentina, and we wanted to check it out along with their great wine. Sadly, Argentina needs perhaps 5 more years of beer play before anything is worth exporting. But we did find a lot of GREAT wine. And the rest is history.

Argentineans are Hip. With all the good wine in the world, Ryan and I decided to only represent what is made by cool people. The marketplace is jammed with corporate mega houses that are devoid of personality and spunk. Along with a great glass of wine, we also wanted a great story…and Argentina – the land of the tango, gauchos and a European culture made spicier with its Latin American roots – is as hip as you can get. These people party Americans and Europeans under the table, and they look fabulous doing it. It’s the best of class and sophistication mixed with grit and personality. And only there can you find winemakers who are professional tango dancers, a winery housed in an old mosaic factory, and vineyards watered from canals built by the Incas. What better place to start a business based on the personality and story of the winemakers?

However, Ryan and I are not stopping with Argentina on our quest for wine with personality. This week we’re flying to a kingdom where the alcohol content of regular wine is so weak they insist on fortifying it – Portugal (with a little stop in Germany and Belgium – we told you we like beer). Where port and green wine reign, we hope to find some treasures and meet some cool people. We will be blogging and updating our Facebook regularly. Come join us!

Once a Student - Always a Student

Starting a business with vodka means beginning work with a little hangover. Through a headache and a desire to eat pizza, we confronted an important question: What do we do now?

Being excellent students we did what we were trained to do – research, research, research. Here are some tricks we learned on how to efficiently research a start-up business:

Take Classes at the Nearest University on the Subject…Well Sort Of.
Internet research on shipping, customs, etc. quickly breeds information overload. We needed some direction. The University of Washington offers a certificate program on Global Supply Chain Management. I went to their website, and through a few searches and crafty phone calls, I got the recommended reading list for the classes. I took it to the public library…and bam! A few weeks reading textbooks got us up to date on the latest in supply chain management. Thanks, UW!

The Government Can Actually Be Your Friend.
It is nice to know that the king's ransom we spend in taxes, fees, and licensing can actually trickle down to the small guy. Small business development does get some support– at least for those who look for it. Thanks, Guys! My two favorite programs are:

• Community Capital Development: Provides finances and education to start-ups and small businesses.
• Washington State Small Business Development Centers: This organization hooked us up with Dave Young, a seasoned entrepreneur who is now our mentor. He gives us encouragement, knowledge and contacts. Dave is the man!

Shout Your Intentions Off the Roof Top and Experts Will Come.
Tell everyone about your business. Everyone. And you’ll suddenly realize that your fiancé’s, stepfather and your fiancé’s stepfather’s, brother-in-law worked for one of the largest wine and beer distributors in the country. And they are oh-so willing to introduce you to the current president of that company for an informational interview while spend hours teaching you the industry game. Wow.

Ask Your Friends for Help and They Will Be So Good to You.
Last night we hosted some wine loving friends (and one beer drinker) for a new product tasting party. With a little direction, they showered us with tasting notes, prices, and label ideas. All we had to do was ply them with wine and provide dinner. A great deal!

Off with a Shot and a Business is Born.

This blog started in the middle of our adventure in wine importing. When people hear that we own our own wine importing company, they say, “Cooool! How did you get into that?”. Well, let me tell you the story over the next few blog entries.

Elemental Importers was born during a time of great struggle for the newly engaged Ashley & Ryan. I won’t go into the details, but we came face to face with the evils of the ability of humans to thoughtlessly harm others for personal gain. “The Man” stuck it to us, and while our natural instinct was to turn tail and run we gathered together and resolved to grow stronger. We decided to not stick it back to “The Man” but rather rise above “The Man” and never think of him again.

So, puffed up with optimism and determination, we did a rather stupid (or brilliant depending on your perspective) thing…we pledged with a clink of vodka-filled shot glasses to start our own business. Sometimes God doesn’t allow you to see the whole picture in the beginning, because if he did, you wouldn’t want to be part of the show. Completely unaware of what was to follow, we rolled up our sleeves and dove in.

Looking back, I consider the moment I felt that cold burn of vodka rushing down my throat as the bravest and greatest moment of my life thus far – I guess except for the moment when I married Ryan a number of months later – of course.

Our Honeymoon Love Child

One of the biggest concerns for a wine importer is the condition of their bottles after they make the long journey from winery to warehouse. Of course there are precautions to minimize the risk (proper packaging, thermal wrappers, insurance), but when the wine importers are newlyweds that give as much love and attention to their business as they would a honeymoon love child, they tend to be a bit nervous.

Did many of the bottles break? Did the red wine of broken bottles dribble onto the pristine labels of the other bottles? Did the container sit in the scorching heat for too long? My nightmare was a container full of broken bottles with red wine cooked from the sun flowing out of every crack. For those who don’t know, wine can go bad in the bottle if it sits in too much heat or too much cold. And our baby sat in a Mexican port for two weeks…

Luckily my nightmare did not come true. Our love child was delivered with only three broken bottles out of 12,000 (anyone want to buy some wine?). And last night we tasted our first bottle: Domados (name of the wine) Bonarda (grape type)…and it was perfect. It was an interesting, complex, mineraly, fruity, smokey and downright damn fine wine (that will retail for about $11…a total steal).

The wine is good! Thank the Lord Above! The Wine is Good!

Our Orange Prom Queen Made Its Way From Argentina

Our container came in!

For close to a year we have worked, sacrificed and struggled to get out first container of wine from Argentina to Seattle, and now it is here! Is the wine out of the container and ready for purchase? Well, no. But we are so very close.

This is the journey our wine made:

1. The wine was produced, bottled, and labeled in Mendoza, Argentina.
2. The wine was shipped from the winery to a consolidation warehouse in Mendoza.
3. It was packaged into a shipping container and placed on a truck.
4. An Argentinean driver drove it across the Andean Mountain range to Santiago, Chile.
5. It was loaded onto a ship called the "Hamonium Paladium".
6. Hamonium Paladium cruised slowly up the coast of South and Central America...passing by vacationers on the beach and perhaps a whale or two.
7. Hamonium Paladium dropped our container off in a port in Mexico where it sat for a couple weeks waiting for its connecting ship. (And you think a 3 hour layover is bad...)
8. Our container was then loaded onto a ship called "Gloria 906". Ryan and I believe in omens. The fact our container came to Seattle in "Gloria" is a very good omen.
9. It cruised slowly up the coast of North America waving at the movie stars in Hollywood and the techies of Sil Valley.
10. It was then unloaded at the Port of Seattle where is stayed over the weekend waiting for a truck that finally drove it to our warehouse in Kent, WA.

The epic journey took over two months. Two month!

This afternoon we went to see the container that made this long journey across the world. To our everlasting joy, the container that we have thought about and dreamed about for almost a year was bright orange. No drab grey for this couple. Like a confident high school girl who wants to make a big impression at the prom, our wine was dressed in the loudest color ever...orange. This wine is destined to make a huge splash in Seattle.

P.S. For the enviro-conscious in the group, shipping by boat leaves a very small carbon footprint. It’s slow, but it's better for the environment than flying.

Argentina Really Does Have a lot of Germans

At 9:00am, the alarm came early after our night out, but we had places to go and people to see. With all of us skipping breakfast and me having a fateful glass of water that I was assured was safe, we were out the door by 10:00am. Needless to say, everyone was a little glassy eyed and sleepy. Now, I haven’t stayed up that late since I lived in Brussels in 2003 (I am more of a 10:30pm-6:30am type of guy most nights), but they handled it remarkably well.

Our next stop was a small village of German immigrants called General Belgrano. Last night I mentioned that I would like to try more Argentinean beers, and this particular village is the home of Argentinean brewing. The drive was gorgeous, passing lakes and hills, and true to its description General Belgrano was a Germanic town. Everything was done up in a Bavarian sort of way, and there were definitely more blond people there than in Mendoza.

We each had a beer at the Viejo Munich brewery, where we all had a “negro” beer (meaning a dark beer, generally a bock style) that tasted alright but was not of import caliber. After finishing our beer and splitting a cheese plate we were off. Next stop, Cordoba.

Cordoba is an old colonial city in the middle of the country and is generally considered Argentina’s second city (after Buenos Aires) due to its one million inhabitants and seven universities. Once they dropped me off I immediately fell asleep and woke up only to shower and have some dinner before heading back to bed.

The guys were going out again and hoped that I would join them, but there was just no way. Two hours of sleep is just not enough to keep me going for another long night!

I woke up bright and early and spent the day exploring the city. Among the colonial buildings from the 1600s and the skyscrapers is a city filled with all sorts of people. Young and old, students, professionals, and retirees; I even saw a couple of horse-drawn carts in the traffic. It is a beautiful city, and I always love seeing that little bit of old Europe in the new world with colonial cathedrals and castles. Yes, the new world has castles!

Some of the highlights were the couple church services in the old cathedrals that I was able to attend and the huge open air market in the evening. The market was comprised of artisans and local shoppers. I was able to find a really cool leather shoulder bag that was hand made by the seller, Juan, and it was less than $100 US, not too bad!

Tomorrow will be more exploring and hopefully finding a suit for our wedding. Since the meetings wrapped up I have had some time to play, and it feels good to unwind a bit.