53rd Annual Wine & Food Tasting

We hope you are having a great summer!

Just wanted to let you know that our next public tasting event will be the 53rd Annual Wine & Food Tasting in San Benito County, California. Its taking place on September 12th at the historic Paicines Ranch.

This is a great event that draws more than 1,000 people. It benefits the Kinship Center, a California nonprofit agency dedicated to the creation, preservation and support of foster, adoptive and relative families for children who need them.

For more information, please check out the Events page on our website.

Thanks for supporting our efforts. We appreciate it.

GRC

Six Strings Winery Wins Silver and Bronze at the Largest Competition of American Wines in the World

We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a silver medal in the 2009 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition for our 2006 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon in the $25.00 to $34.99 category and a bronze medal in the same competition for our 2006 Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir in the $25.00 to $34.99 category. We also also took home two medals last year, winning a gold medal for our 2005 Pinot Noir and a bronze medal for our 2006 Chardonnay.

We are very pleased to have our wines recognized by the judges at this prestigious wine competition. This is the second year in a row that all of the wines we entered won awards. We are especially excited about winning a silver medal for our Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon as this was our first vintage of this wine and it has been a great success. The fruit for this wine comes from a vineyard in Sonoma that is farmed using sustainable practices and will be certified Biodynamic later this year.

Thanks to the judges and to all the fans of Six Strings!

GRC

Six Strings and the economy

2009 has officially begun and I feel some obligation to write a blog entry since it has been a few weeks since we did one. In a few weeks Gary and I will get together for our annual ‘State of the Six Strings’ meeting. For anyone that has not been keeping up on the news about the wine industry there are some significant trends going one. First and most obvious is that restaurant sales are down in some areas as much as 30%. People are just not eating out as much and when they do many are skipping the bottle of wine although in some cases they are ordering wine by the glass(BTG). Since releasing our first commercial wine Six Strings has embraced BTG sales because it is a great way to introduce our wines to new fans. The other notable trend is that consumers are shying away from the pricier bottles for two reasons, one is sheer frugality and the other is to give the impression of being more frugal. A recent article in the New York Times showed some data that the price per bottle being spent has slid while overall spending on wine has stayed flat or even risen somewhat. It is true that sales of alcohol goes up when the economy is bad. For Six Strings this has not resulted in a big shift since our wines are already reasonably priced for their quality, varietal, appellation and scarcity. It does mean that the big guys are getting very aggressive with their prices and in some cases pushing us off of a wine list.
So far our winemaking plan for 2009 is largely unchanged. Our philosophy is “if you make it, they will drink!” So despite the economic uncertainty we’ll keep on chugging. It would not make sense to react too much to what is going on because it takes one to two years for a product to get to market.
By the time the 2009 wines are released the country will be in a whole different frame of mind...we hope.
IDC