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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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Newsletter published by
Fine Vine Wines, LLC
"The Wine Maker's Toy Store™"
1300 N. Interstate 35-E, Suite 106
Carrollton, Texas 75006
January 2009
Volume 7, Issue 1
866-417-1114 (Long Distance)
972-323-7921 (Local)
972-323-7955 (Fax)
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I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to Fine Vine Wines, LLC, "The Wine Maker's Toy Store". Whether you need home wine making products or just need information, we are here to serve you. I want to extend my thanks again for making The Wine Maker's Toy Store your home for your wine making needs. It continues to be my hope that every time you visit our web site or retail store, you will find something of value. |
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WINESTOCK 2009 - April 10-12, 2009
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Time to start making plans for the next WINESTOCK. It will be held once again at the Addison Conference Center. We have not finalized the schedule, but we do have 4 featured speakers.
- Nino Piazza and Matteo Meglioli, President and Technical Services Manager of Mosti Mondiale.
- A representative from Buon Vino.
- Dr. Joe Cleaver, a member of the staff at the Cooper Center here in Dallas who travels the U.S. speaking on the health benefits of wine.
MacDay Labels is currently planning to attend, as well.
We will again have our People Choice awards, outstanding food and lots of time to meet your fellow wine makers. We are working on additional speakers and hope to have the complete schedule with sign up information by next month.
This will be our third Winestock and we plan to make it our best yet! If you want to learn more about making wine, this will be an outstanding opportunity.
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SMOOTH AS SILK PORT
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Several months ago, one of our customers, Richard Key from Arkansas, sent me a bottle of his port that he called "Smooth as Silk". At one of our Saturday tastings, I opened the bottle for all to sample and the consensus was that it was "as smooth as silk". Consequently, I asked Richard for his recipe and he obliged my by sending it.
Richard used the Vinifera Noble Valpolicella for his port, but you should be able to produce similar results with any of the 10 liter red wine kits. The following is his simple recipe:
- Make your kit wine of choice by following the normal procedures up to bottling.
- At that point measure your alcohol level and then transfer to a 6.5 Gal carboy.
- Now add enough Everclear to bring the alcohol up to the level that you want (Richard prefers 23-24% ABV).
- At this point, add enough sugar to bring the s.g. up to 1.040 (you will need to watch your hydrometer carefully so as to not over-sweeten.)
- Mix very thoroughly.
- Now it needs to sit for at lease three or four days, to make sure the sugar and alcohol blend.
- Bottle and age for thirty days -------- next pop a cork and enjoy.
My thanks and a $100.00 gift certificate to Richard for his contribution to our monthly newsletter.
You too, can get a $100.00 gift certificate from us by sending us an article or recipe we can use in one of our newsletters. |
| WineMaker Magazine Awards
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Each month, we will remind you about these awards because we want to be the "Retailer of the Year". This is based on the total scores of the wines entered for each retailer. Last year, we finished 6th in the U.S. and 13th overall and I would like to be #1.
The due date of next year's competition is March 17, 2009, so start thinking about which wines you want to enter. |
WINES OF THE MONTH
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Since we are now in our sixth year, we are putting all of our high-end wine kits on sale for 6% off. The individual brands included are:
- Mosti Mondiale All Juice Masters Edition
- Mosti Mondiale Original All Juice
- RJ Spagnols En Primeur
- Winexpert Crushendo
All of these wine kits will need at least 1 year to age, but will be well worth the wait. Remember with all of our "Wines of the Month", we try to anticipate demand, but may not be 100% successful. If we run out of a special, we will advise you of such and an expected ship date. We appreciate your understanding.
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| DFW AREA HOME WINE MAKING CLUB
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The next meeting will be held at the store on January 10, 2009 at 6:00 p.m.
The monthly varietal will be Tuscan Reds: Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montelpulciano (all of which consist of primarily the Sangiovese grape) and Super-Tuscans (a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and/or Merlot and Sangiovese). Unlike past meetings, we will not have a formal tasting. Instead, we will have a social meeting starting at 6:00 p.m. Please bring a commerical or homemade Tuscan red to share at the meeting and you will only need one wine glass per person. We will also be electing officers for 2009 at the meeting, as well as starting a Tuscan red wine kit at the meeting. For those of you who have not yet tried a wine kit, this will be an excellent opportunity for you to learn about kit winemaking. If you would like to continue more formal tasting, we will be having a pre-meeting at 5:15 p.m. for those who would like to become wine judges for competitions.
Valentine's Day falls on the second Saturday of February next year. Therefore, the February meeting will be on February 21, 2008 and the February monthly varietal will be Zinfandel.
The website can be found at http://www.homewinemakersclub.com or http://www.homewinemakersclub.org.
The chapter name is the Corks Crew.
If you would like to be added to the club mailings, please give me a call.
Hope to see you there. |
| Toys of the Month
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To help with your bottle cleaning needs, we have our bottle drying trees and vinators on sale for 10% off. These products will simplify the cleaning and sanitizing of bottles and save you significant time. To see the pricing on these items, click here. |
| NEW PRODUCTS
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To see all of the products added during the last 60 days, visit our New Products Page whenever you visit the web site.
If you are looking for a product that I do not carry, my distributors are LD Carlson and Crosby & Baker, Ltd. You can see their complete product list at their public catalogs. If you find anything you would like me to add, please let me know. |
BOTTLING PARTY - JANUARY 24, 2009
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Our next bottling party will be Saturday, January 24, 2008, at the store. We will start at 5:30 p.m. and plan to be finished with the bottling by 8:00 p.m. when the tasting will begin. Everyone that helps will get to take home 3 bottles of our wine.
Hope to see you there. |
ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Over the next several months, I will be re-designing the online ordering system to make it more user friendly and provide more information. I have looked at several "canned" shopping carts, but none of them provide me with the flexibility for offering my special discounts. As such, I will be making the changes myself.
Some of the planned changes are:
- Ability to fill your shopping cart anonymously,
- Ability to move items from your cart to your wish list,
- More information about the wine kits, including links to our online database of the wines we have made.
- Ability to track your order through our online system.
If you have any suggestions, please email them to me. If possible, I will incorporate all suggestions. | |
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When you have a question or just want to learn more about wine making, don't forget our forum! We have 1,200 registered members with over 92,000 posts! We have some extremely knowledgeable wine makers with loads of valuable information willing to assist you in your wine making needs. Responses to most posts are made within minutes. We are also known to have an occasional contest available to forum member only with valuable gifts, savings and coupons!
Whether you are an expert or a novice, it is an excellent place to ask questions, exchange ideas and meet other home wine makers. If you haven't logged into the forum, try it sometime. I think you will find it most informative and enjoyable, as well as, a great place to meet fellow wine makers.
DISCOUNTS
The most common discounts are listed below:
CUSTOMER REFERRAL PROGRAM
We have a customer referral program that provides additional discounts to registered users. We will give you a coupon worth 10% of the first order placed by any person that you refer to our web site. The stipulations are as follows:
- You must be a registered user of finevinewines.com,
- The person placing the order must register and provide your full name in the appropriate field on the registration screen, and
- The discount is only good for future orders with finevinewines.com and is not redeemable for cash.
CUSTOMER APPRECIATION PROGRAM - FVW GROWERS CLUB
Please check out our FVW Growers Club. You can get all of the details on our web site, but the bottom line is we want to buy your loyalty! Once you spend $500 with us, you get at least 5% discount on everything you buy from us (10% on orders over $100.00). Find out more on the web site.
REGISTRATION DISCOUNT (FIRST TIME ORDERS)
To receive this 5% off, all you have to do is register with us and place an order for $50.00, or more (excluding shipping and taxes). If your first order is for more than $140.00, we will give you 10% off. When you register, you will also be given the opportunity to sign up for our monthly newsletter, which is the only recurring email we send. We will not blast you with email after email touting our current specials. We encourage you to register to make the ordering process easier on you.
BIRTHDAY CLUB
If you are a registered user and have provided your birth day and month, every year you will receive a coupon good for $5.00 off any order over $25.00. This coupon is in addition to any other discounts in which you may be entitled. These coupons are emailed on the first of the month and are good for your birth month only. To join up, register, go to the My Account section and provide your birth day and month.
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
We appreciate all of your comments, whether good or bad. To demonstrate our commitment to outstanding customer service, I have created a web page with your feedback. As we receive emails that comment about our service, I will post them on this page:
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As a reminder, we continue to add products and content to the web site, therefore, if you have any special requests, please let us know. We like to hear what you have to say about our site, our products and/or our customer service, good or bad. Please send your comments and/or suggestions to winemaster@finevinewines.com.
Don't forget we like you to CALL!
If you have any questions about our products, our service and/or wine making, please call us. We are here to serve you and enjoying assisting you in any way we can. We have an international toll-free line so you WILL call us. Someone is usually at the store between 9 am and 7 pm, Monday through Saturday. We always try to answer the phone when you call; however, sometimes, we are unable to answer the phone as we are on the other lines or we have customers in the store. If you get the voice mail, please leave your name, number, brief message and a best time to call. We will return your call just as soon as we can. If you don't want to call, just send us an email. We usually answer our emails daily. Please remember, we are a resource and we are here to serve you.
We don't want to be the biggest store, just the BEST!
Cheers!
George Cornelius, President
Fine Vine Wines, LLC, The Wine Maker's Toy Store
Contact Information
George Cornelius - President
Mark Cornelius - Shipping Manager
Joseph Schuitema - Resident Wine Maker and Technical Creator
phone: 1-866-417-1114 |
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