Freaking Out Together

What what??? Only 2 more days left of January 2015? So much has been and is going on for Smith Story Wine Cellars this first month of the New Year!  A little insight to running your own winery for the first time...IT DOES NOT SLOW DOWN AFTER HARVEST ENDS! The first of the year has been crazy wearing so many hats, shoes and gloves...all while Eric broke his ankle (saving a baby seal), Ali lost her car-keys (all of them) for over a week (she found them in a pocket of course!) and Lord Sandwich came down with a case of the fleas (thank you Russian River Banks!).  Freaking out - ohh yeah, but every day our to-do list grows, we are able to check major items off.  We'll see our families soon  - we hope...oh and start calling all our friends to let them know we are ready to mingle again!

We hardly know where to begin with this post - other than to

say - GET READY FOR OUR FIRST RELEASE NEXT MONTH EVERYONE!!

Yes yes, ALL-CAPS is extreme, but's it's been extremely non-stop since New Years Day.  First time to make decisions on packaging for each wine - glass, label design, label paper, colors of the capsule, type of corks to use, screw-cap colors, boxes, where to warehouse, who to sell our wines to...it's ALL HAPPENING. The ecommerce area of the website is in beta-testing right now - we're going live soon!  All this while our Harvest 2015 vineyard partners are lining up, man we are so excited to tell you all about this soon.

How can you HELP us?  Please take a moment to sign-up for our mailing list  - we are sending out our first official winery email offering within days. Yikes - days away from showing off our new Harvest 2014 Babies to the world.  Oh and we've been meeting folks for barrel tastings at the winery...don't hesitate to contact us for a special "garagiste winery" tasting in the Russian River Valley with us!

A nerve racking, hard as hell, insanely awesome time of our lives going on...thank you for following and being a part of Our Story too.

Most of all, we are so glad to have each other through this beginning chapter of our new winery!

This is Our Story,

Eric & Ali

Remaining Faithful

We did it. We started a winery. We made wine. We made really good wine. We think, we hope, no -  we believe! We're emotional as hell! We want to tell everyone!

And we are so very thankful to our Smith Story Wine Cellars Inner Circle...

Our winemakers Katy and Ross - so grateful for their support, expertise, their endless hours of insight and advice and most of all for their devotion to making fine wine for us.

Our "garagiste" custom crush partner, Vinify Wine Services. Wow, we never encountered anything during crush but "hustle" at Vinify and loads of cooperation. It was like an anthill of super focused wine artisans waltzing around 24/7 for weeks straight.

Our vineyard managers, grape growers and families that kept watch over our precious grapes, from the Southern Sonoma Coast, the highest peaks of Sonoma Mountain, the far West of the West Sonoma Coast, the heart of the Russian River, the depths of Knights Valley and all the way up to our beloved Anderson Valley.  We are so thankful for each person, each vine, each row, each picking crew who helped bring in the highest quality grapes we could afford this year.

Our biggest thanks goes to all of our family, friends, Kickstarter Backers and folks working "behind the scenes" to keep us going. Your encouragement, connections, support and enthusiasm on a daily basis was (and is) so awesome...which also brought us to meeting our new investor, who's been our most wonderful unexpected happening this year.  We are honored, grateful and thrilled to have our first year of business come together so effortlessly.

Hard work and remaining faithful to the process and keeping the faith that a higher power is watching over us feels unbelievable. Now we wait patiently for our Harvest 2014 babies to do their thing in the cellar.  The 2014 Sauvignon Blanc will be our first release next spring.

With Much Love and Tears of Joy - Happy Holidays Everyone!

This is Our Story.

 - Ali & Eric

It's all over...

Harvest 2014 is in the barrel & tank that is!

So - here it is folks, we envisioned, created, produced and now patiently await for our wines to properly ferment and age in preparation for bottling and release. Both Eric and I can't think of a busier time in our lives and more exciting time too.  We crushed our last few tons of fruit - Sémillon from the Sonoma Mountain AVA 2 weeks ago (pictured here in action at the winery).

Thank you all for your unsolicited support and enthusiasm for our new wines. It's been great fun to see our mailing list members grow each day, a small thing that is the most important to us!

We have so much to say and share with you all in the coming weeks, big news and interesting news we hope.   In the meantime, we're off to cheer on the San Francisco Giants in Game 2 tonight - over a few bottles of very cold wine - it's 100 degrees today in the Bay Area.  Tomorrow we're off to select bottles and capsules for our Sauvignon Blanc, everyday is full of new beginnings & big decisions. 

This is Our Story,

Ali & Eric.

A little piece of peace.

Today we awake to sounds down the hill of kids playing soccer and church bell chimes from The Mission in San Rafael.  It's crazy to think that our first Smith Story Wine Cellars harvest is coming to a close already.  Tonight we pick our last 2 tons of Pinot Noir and we're still waiting on 4 tons of Sémillon to ripen way up on top of the Sonoma Mountain AVA.

The past 2 weeks have been INCREDIBLE.  Thank you and to each and everyone of our Backers who supported us on Kickstarter.com, we reached our goal of $25,000 on Labor Day.  This is going to pay a nice chunk towards our grape-grower contracts!  We were able to update the last few weeks with numerous photos here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/837539083/smith-story-wine-cellars/posts 

We gained so much more than the Kickstarter amount, tons of new mailing list sign-ups and record breaking web traffic hits will help us to continue telling Our Story to the world. THANK YOU.  Next...we are looking forward to finalizing smart financial partnerships to help with the enormous costs of our first year.

To be very honest, as fascinating and thrilling as the past few weeks have been for us, it's also been an uber stressful time for us.  Why?  We want the success of Smith Story Wine Cellers to happen more than ever before.  It's all consuming. Thoughts of how the wines are going to taste, how we are going to sell them, who's going to write about them, how much do we want to produce next year...our thoughts are near manic. Thankfully, we have our day jobs to keep it all in check and mindfully put the brakes on the anxiety of building a business.

We have so much more to say, to update you about, to involve you with, but we are taking a few hours off this morning to enjoy a little piece of peace. Thanks for following...

This is Our Story,

Eric & Ali

*Our wine releases will be allocated, please be sure you are on our mailing list http://smithstorywinecellars.com/allocations

Better Together

Our dreams are made out of real things...

14 days of travel through Austria, Alsace (well for 15 minutes to taste the worlds best croissant) and now Germany -  at least a thousand songs have blasted in the rental car as we've rolled along.  Jack Johnson's "Better Together" is the theme song of this amazing trip!

We've always known we could get along just about anywhere, but now that we've been challenged with very little sleep, foreign languages and being on the move near 18 hours each day, we are thankful to have each others company.  Today is the first day I've taken off to catch up on a little work and write while Eric is visiting a few wine producers from the Mosel in Germany.

Eric's wine career began over 15 years ago when he began working part-time for K&L Wine Merchants to earn some cash for a backpacking trip to Europe. Towards the end of his trip, he sent an email to K&L and asked for a full-time job with them in Redwood City upon his return, the wine bug had bitten.  I have to brag a bit here, he's been such a Rockstar over here among wine producers and importers. I'm so proud of the way he's conducted himself with a great mix of integrity for the business and passion for the winemakers, his work ethic and enthusiasm has made a difference to so many producers over the years.  We haven't met a single one who hasn't greeted us with a big smile and warm-hearted welcome. 

A gazillion highlights to record and chat about, but the one thing that has happened at nearly each stop is seeing husband and wife teams working hard together.  Whether they've sat with us in their living room and tasted with us over a home-cooked meal, or met us in the vineyards with their kids & dogs playing around our feet, their presence has been so inspiring to us.  Their dreams are also real things they've made come true.  We hope to so the same with Smith Story Wine Cellars one day soon too!

Our dreams, and they are made out of real things
Like a, shoebox of photographs
With sepia-toned loving
Love is the answer,
At least for most of the questions in my heart
Like why are we here? And where do we go?
And how come it's so hard?
It's not always easy and
Sometimes life can be deceiving
I'll tell you one thing, it's always better when we're together
Mmm, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, we'll look at the stars when we're together
Well, it's always better when we're together
Yeah, it's always better when we're together

  - Jack Johnsons "Better Together," from the album In Between Dreams (2005).

 It's always better when we're together.

This is Our Story.  - Ali

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