Onward & Upward

Well, on Monday night, the Petaluma Gap Winegrowers Alliance board approved going forward with seeking to sponsor a benefit concert/tasting, but not without going through THE most contentious meeting I've been to. There is still resistance from some on the board, but in the end, the vote was 6:1 for pursuing the venture, although it was decided that we would offer $1000 instead of $1200. Nickels & dimes, in my humble opinion. The Cinnabar Theatre will provide all of the logistics, the volunteer labor, the summer-long promotion, advertising... I think that we are getting a lot on the cheap!

Some on the board think that our private parties qualify as "events", but we're just preaching to the choir. What we need is to educate our local wine consumers. After three years of existence, the first thing that would qualify as a public event was our participation in the local Butter & Egg Parade two weeks ago. That was the first time that many Petalumans ever heard that we are producing world-class wines right here, in and around Petaluma.

Opponents to the event think that we should put on an event ourselves... but we do not have the experience or labor available to put on such a high-quality experience for wine consumers, not to mention the fact that $1200 is chicken feed in terms how much it would actually cost to do it ourselves. That is not to say that we SHOULDN'T put on our own events, but this is at least a start, which is far better than continuing to do nothing. A couple of board meetings ago, it was agreed that putting on a substandard event would be worse that doing nothing, so we postponed the Big Media Event, the pet project of the Opponents, for another year.

For now, the proposed event will do. Baby Steps.