Today, December 18th, 2008 the New Casavides Wine Labels Arrived!!!

Labeling a wine is part of my job as an export director of a small family winery. And what I think we have here is a very interesting label in that it expresses the winery for what it truly is: modern, colorful and historical, in that it reflects the family’s Mediterranean and agricultural roots.

After three very long months of anxious waiting, the labels finally arrived. Next month, we will bottle the new Casavides range of our 3 young wines of 2008: white, rosé and red. Each style is highlighted with its own unique color; however, the entire range shows continuity through the design of the label and shape of the bottle, and more importantly, uniform in price as well.

The bottle will have a white synthetic cork with “casavides.com” stamped on it. For now, a screwcap is not possible, although in the near future, I would like to start with that as well. We might have to change the bottle however.

Please tell me how much you like it :-)…or dislike it We’re open to all suggestions here!

We might start using a QR code on the back label as well, but that’s still a secret, so don’t tell anyone!

Look here at the casavides wines for all the other new labels that belong to the same range!

I can’t wait to start sending the new wines to the importers. They still have to wait a bit until January.

Thanks again for your comments!

November INTERWINE and Wine bloggers tasting in China, Guangzhou

It started as something unexpected. I was exploring the Chinese wine websites and blogs, as a part of my market study for my upcoming trip to Guangzhou, where la casa de las vides will participate at the INTERWINE wine fair. As I asked around on twitter about a wine bloggers in China, weiguokong, a Chinese wine blogger offered me his help to set up a tasting.

I am writing this at the airport of Charles de Gaulle where waiting for 4 hours in terminal 2E is not my favourite way to spend my time. I was glad to find a good internet connection here, although the French keyboard is difficult to zrite on, you see, I cqn0t find the q, the , qnd the w and the z are qlzays turned qround, but qpqrt fro, thqt it)s ok, i guess:

So back to typing with two fingers and some extra attention to my keyboard, tomorrow 26 November I will arrive in Guangzhou, where on 27 to 29 November the INTERWINE Canton wine fair takes place.

I know it will be very difficult to enter the Chinese market, and this fair will be tough one for our wines. Nevertheless it is important, especially now, to keep on investigating and trying to make new contacts.

As an extra event Casavides will organise an extra tasting on Friday evening especially for wine bloggers in China as a way to get new and above all different contacts. Last month in Boston a similar tasting resulted in has some great contacts, and in the end it doesn`t really cost me a lot of extra effort to open a few bottles and taste the wines in a downtown restaurant. Actually I love opening our wines, the more the better, especially for those who never before tasted our wines before.

I was told that there would be somebody to translate for me from english to chinese, because I have not been able to find the pomegranatephone yet in the stores here in Paris

The tasting has been prepared by CHINEWINELOVER. To know is behind this carefully selected name: check chinewinelover on twitter on 29 November (chinese time), and his blog http://blog.sina.com.cn/tigerlikewine to find out who Weiguokong, the most active Chinese wine blogger is.

I will publish some INTERWINE AND BLOGGERS TASTING photos soon on this blog!

Twitter for Wine Producers

Twitter is becoming more and more accepted. I saw that even BBC and CNN uses Twitter for the comments from voters to back up the election news. So it most likely won’t take long before Twitter will show up for other mass media activities.

Maybe twittertastelive.com is not a mass media thing, but it certainly will an important role in the wine sector. And the good thing is that the traditional printed media starts to admit it as well. See photo from article in Wine Enthusiast. So I guess twitter and internet marketing are becoming a part of today’s reality.

I just hope it helps to break down the wall between producers and consumers, as I experienced it during a blogger’s tasting at Melissa’s Main street Bistro, a nice little restaurant in Stoneham.

Yesterday’s tasting of Casa Vides wines was a great way to get some honest feedback from my Boston blogger friends.  11 bloggers participated together with several other bloggers in the world from the US,  China, Spain, the Netherlands to name just a few countries, who watched the livestream set up by binendswine.

We tasted four wines. The white Vallblanca 2007 with Verdil, Macabeo and Gewürztraminer. This wine was a surprise for most of the bloggers.  Verdil is a grape that is produced by only a handful of producers in Southern Valencia. And the Gewürztraminer certainly gives the Verdil what it needs to become extra attractive. The blue bottle conversation was a definite NO ,in favor of a white or green bottle. The shape (Rhine style) was perceived as attractive.

The rosé Rosa Rosae 2007, a combination of Garnacha and…no not syrah, but Cabernet Sauvignon to give it structure. I really have high hopes for this wine, as I am a big rosé lover.

Both the white and the rose will be priced around 10 to 11 dollars in the US

Third wine is the CVP (Roman/Latin way) or CUP 2007 red. Here Syrah does play an important role as part of a  50/50 blend of Syrah and Tempranillo and is doing very well in Valencia. With 6 months of oak, it is still a fruit driven wine.  At the tasting, this red was a bit too young to drink, but it certainly showed a lot of potential. This wine will sell for around 15 dollars.

The Aculius was the best wine of the evening, according to most bloggers. Although I personally think this wine still needs some time to develop, it is a great blend of Tempranillo, Syrah and Merlot with an expected price level of around 18 to 20 dollars.

It was great to get all the feedback on the wines. As a export director of a fairly new winery (2008 is the 4th harvest), Casavides is eager to get as much feedback as possible from wine professionals and wine lovers around the world. As their Export Director, I have to transmit this feedback to Ana Martin, our wine maker, and Fran, the owner of the winery, currently studying wine at the University of Orihuela (Alicante).

I was very pleased to receive some great comments, and it confirmed my trust and belief that the wines of Casavides have some good possibilities in the export market. Maybe the presentation doesn’t convince all bloggers at the tasting and wine professionals I talked to at the Miami Wine Fair, which is why I decided to show the latest design. Some OOOHs and AAAHs again confirmed that Casavides certainly is going into the right direction.  See photo new wine labels white-rose-red above.

Thanks Craig of Binendswine for the effort to organize this TTL in just a few days,

Thanks Leslie for initiating this tasting in Boston. If it wasn’t for your first reaction, this tasting could have taken place somewhere else.

Thanks Richard for bringing me back to the hotel!

Thanks all other bloggers for your great comments!

Thanks to all watchers for staying up that late, if you were in Europe, for waking up early in China.

And last but not least A Big thanks for Ryan and Gabriella, who are guiding me and protect me from doing anything stupid on the web.

Oh yes, if you are a wine importer and you stumble across this post, even if this post is already some months old, feel free to contact me. Casavides is still looking for importers and distributors. ( What do you expect, we started just 2 months ago to export our wines!)

Hasta luego

Emilio

New Spanish Bodegas at Megavino in Brussels

This week, from the 17th to the 20th of October, Brussels will be the center of Spanish Wines in Europe. Megavino an expansive wine fair will be hosting hundreds of Spanish wineries, including Casa Vides. Actually, my idea was to create a small video for the wine importers in Belgium saying something like:

“Hi, I am Emilio Saez van Eerd, export director for the La Casa de las Vides winery in the DO Valencia. All Belgium wine importers, and other visitors of the fair, are welcome to visit me at stand number 3508-11, etc etc.”

I could then add who we are, what wines we make, and that Ana Martin Onzain is the winemaker, but who has the time to read it. I know that I DON’T have time, so why should a wine importer in Belgium have time? Shooting a video is nice if you have a beak in your day to set it up the camera and bottles, while finding a nice angle, good light etc etc.  Unfortunately, in 3,5 hours, I have to be packed and leaving the winery for my trip.

Wait a minute. I can use 12secondsTV!

See if I can set up something, hang on…

12 seconds later: Ok done!

I promise I will dedicate some more time to it next time, but in the meantime, enjoy the 12 seconds video.

Saludos,

Emilio Saez van Eerd

Coming Up: Miami & Boston Blogger Wine Tastings

In a previous post, I mentioned the possibility of hosting some blogger wine tastings on my trips abroad. Here is the follow up:

Next week, I will fly to Miami. The Miami WIne Fair has collaborated with IBERWINE, which has attracted quite a few Spanish wineries that will be present in Miami from 25 to 27 October. It will be Casa Vides first trip to the US with our wines. Our aim is clear: to find serious wine importers who want to import our wines. OK, so the wine fair is nice to meet importers, but why should you care? What’s important for you to know as a blogger is what I am doing when I am NOT at the wine fair.

I think it would be great to do some bloggers tastings like the one I did three weeks ago on my trip to Cork (Ireland) or in Valencia at Enopata.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have at least one in Miami on the 25 or 27 October?

IMPORTANT: If you are a blogger and like to taste some Spanish wines from Valencia in Miami, please contact me, I am still open to any suggestion for the Miami Tasting.

The second blogger wine tasting will be held in Boston, although preparations are still in progress. Why Boston?

Thanks to Twitter some bloggers (note: not only wine bloggers) have showed interest to meet up in an informal way to taste our wines and have fun talking about wine and drinking it. The place and the hour will soon be announced, and I’ll be sure to bring along at least a Valencian rosé and a red wine to taste.

If you read this and you are interested in meeting with me, please do contact me with a comment below.

My only concern is that the laws in the US will make it too difficult for me to ship the wines to Boston. I can use some help from somebody in Boston to guide me how to get my wines there, because it is incredible how many rules each US  state invents to make things more difficult for wine exporters to get their wine samples into the US. Maybe I will have to share my experience with you after my US trip, and dedicate a post to “how you get your wines to the US”.

Follow casavides on twitter and stay tuned. Maybe the next bloggers tasting will be held in your town.

Saludos

Emilio Saez van Eerd

Vote for the new Casavides label

Casa Vides would like to receive your comments and suggestions on our new label for our new range of young Mediterranean wines. Positive and negative comments are welcome, as long as you can explain your reasoning behind them so that we can follow your logic. We still have a little time to make these labels better, so please chime in with your thoughts!

Here are the details. We will use a light purple to indicate a young red wine against the trencadis background. The trencadis is used to indicate a classical Mediterranean image.

The white wine will be turquoise, and the rose will have the exact same design but in light green (Pistacho). Evidently, it is very difficult to imitate the color of our rosé, so Juan Carlos, our designer, told me yesterday that green was our best option. Finally, instead of the green bottle for the white and rose, we will use a white bottle, but the shape will be identical for all three wines.

So, let us know what you think.

Do you think the label is eye-catching?

Do you like the color?

Do you like the shape of the bottle?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Saludos

Emilio Saez van Eerd

Spanish Fashion Designer Creates New Casa Vides Wine Labels

This is Juan Carlos. He prefers to stay away from the camera, but I managed to take a shot of him when he wasn’t looking. Fortunately, he’s working, despite his broken arm, on a new range of wines that will be introduced by the end of the year.

I asked Juan Carlos to publish some posts on label design, as well as some other topics he’s excellent at. And to be honest, I am looking forward to his posts, as he knows A LOT not only about design, but about the history of the region as a whole.

As you can see here he’s still in a very early stage of the designing process. But he’s promised to have a prototype ready for the next wine fair in Belgium. He still has two weeks. So I guess I shouldn’t worry too much.

By the way, all the labels of our existing wines were designed by Juan Carlos as well.

Cheers,

Emilio