Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/112023
WINEMAKING French American And Eastern European Barrels, Oak Add Ins, Casks and Tanks Nadalie, quality from forest to finish We Select our wood from the forest and process at our own mills in the USA and France Wine samples are prepared for a ChemWell enzymatic analyzer (top) in the lab, where Foss equipment computes free and total SO2 (bottom). tration is rare, with Brown preferring to have fining agents and gravity do any needed cleanup. Moving product For packaging his finished wines, Brown relies on relationships built up over many years in the business. His bottles come from Global Package, corks from ACI, capsules from Ramondin. He describes the initial Ken Brown label as a placeholder���one some of his customers got attached to; the new label was designed and printed by the WS Packaging Group in San Luis Obispo, Calif. With a small production, Brown only aims at California distribution through Wine Warehouse, though he has a couple direct relationships with restaurants and wine shops out of state. Much of the Wine Warehouse distribution is to restaurants. Brown currently has a problem a lot of other wineries would like to have: an excess of direct-to-consumer sales, with wine club and tasting room sales somewhere above 70% of production. (As the highest profile AP at Terravant, Brown has a small suite of office space and an on-site tasting room.) Open houses and release celebrations offer other opportunities for direct sales. He���s wary, however, of having the DTC component, profitable as it is, displace the wholesale business, since ���there is a point of no return where you lose visibility.��� He has gradually increased production from 2,000 to 2,500 cases. It���s true that Ken Brown has now become a small-production fish in a very large custom-crush pond, but there seems little chance that he and his wines will become invisible. Tim Patterson is the author of ���Home Winemaking for Dummies.��� He writes about wine and makes his own in Berkeley, Calif. Years of experience as a journalist, combined with a contrarian streak, make him interested in getting to the bottom of wine stories, casting a critical eye on conventional wisdom in the process. All our staves are air dried and seasoned for a minimum of 2 years and up depending on your request. We control the manufacturing from forest to finish for every oak product we make, whether it is for Barrels, Tanks or Add Ins. Three Cooperages to Serve You: Tonnellerie Nadalie in Bordeaux, France Tonnellerie Marsannay in Burgundy, France Nadalie USA in Napa Valley, California Nadalie U.S.A. 1401 Tubbs Lane, Calistoga, CA 94515 Tel: 707-942-9301 Fax: 707-942-5037 www.nadalie.com Win es & Vin es M A RC H 20 13 35