Ashley Collins is the artist for our Refugio Cabernet Sauvignon label. You can find two of Ashley’s pieces on display in our Temecula wine tasting room. Ashley has a deep compassion for those in need and donates a portion of every sale to charity. The following slideshow shows a few examples of charities she has worked with.

Collection of photos of the paintings of Ashley Collins, showing charities where much of the proceeds of the art were distributed, including Camp Rainbow Gold, a camp for kids with Cancer in Sun Valley, Idaho, Aids Project Los Angeles, California, Paws/LA in Los Angeles, California, Horse Rescues across the US, Environment California, schools in Mozambique, Girls schools in the High Atlas of Morracco, orphanages in Cambodia and Vietnam, supporting The International Medical Corp., and Jackson Hole Community School Scholarships in Wyoming, The Valerie Sobel Foundation in California, and soon to be involved in theTeddy Bear Foundation for kids with Cancer in Santa Barbara, California as well as the Jane Goodall Foundation.
2008 Temecula Valley Regugio Wine Futures on sale here.

We just delivered all the toys from our toy drive to Thessalonika Family Services.

Thessalonika Family Services (TFS) provides quality long-term care and treatment for children who need out-of-home services. The particular needs of these precious children vary.  To help meet these needs, we provide services through three distinct programs: Rancho Damacitas Children’s Homes, Rancho Jireh Foster Homes, and Project Independence.

More than 24 years ago Rancho Damacitas Children’s Home was started here in the Temecula Valley by a loving couple with a big heart for children.  They bought one home in Temecula, caring for four girls.  Over the years this program has increased to include six homes, caring for 36 children.  Also developed over the years were Rancho Jireh Foster Homes, and Project Independence.  Collectively these three programs form Thessalonika Family Services, an incorporated 501(c)(3) nonprofit agency.
http://www.4kidsfirst.org/rancho_damacitas.html

Thank you to all our customers and employees who brought toys for the drive.

Ashley Collins, the artist from the Refugio label has a couple of pieces on display in our tasting room. They are absolutely wonderful. Stop by and take a look at the artwork and sample the next release of Refugio available for sale as futures.

We’ll be one of the Temecula wineries pouring at the San Diego Bay Food & Wine Festival. Chef Scotty is competing with a cheesecake dish that uses the Reserve Primitivo. We hope he wins!

Yesterday the crew picked 5000 pounds of Pinot Gris grapes! Today they’re working on another small vineyard in La Cresta picking Pinot Noir.

Posted by David Cragg, the author of this article, is a retired web marketing professional and the publisher of Temecula-Wineries.net

(Pictured on the right: Jim & Ellen Weiss, Lori Schwartz and Ben White)

A warm reception from the Wiens family began our exhilarating night of wine blending at Temecula’s Wiens Family Cellars‘ annual wine blending seminar. After a warm greeting, the crowd of more than 30 participants was ushered into the beautiful barrel room. This handsomely decorated room had ten tables covered by white linen table cloths. Each table had four place settings, four mystery wine bottles labeled A to D, a graduated cylinder (like you’d find in a chemistry class), and several other tools for blending wine. To set the proper mood, each of us were poured a glass of Wiens exquisite wine and provided tasty hor d’oeuvres.

The seminar was lead by Doug “The Palate” Wiens a winemaker, viticulturist, and one of the many Wiens family members in attendance. His 30-minute seminar was designed to prepare us for a contest, pitting table against table, as we designed our own blended wine which was to be judged by the Wiens family later that evening. During the seminar we learned that wine blending is a very common practice for wineries. It is used 1) to enhance the quality of the wine in terms of color, aroma, taste and finish, 2) to expand the size of a harvest lot in order to achieve bottling economies of scale, and 3) for marketing considerations. Doug also shared that as he blends wine and tastes the results, his math skills (critical for the blending process) deteriorate as his philosophical skills improve. Interestingly, we were able to share this unique experience as the night progressed.

Once Doug’s seminar was done, the teams got to work. You could feel the tension as each team battled to refine their blends. Some teams had more fun than others as their bottles emptied faster. It reminded me of my youngest son and his early experiments mixing various household items to see what would result; even though my son had a great time, he didn’t taste his creations (Thank goodness!). Some of our blends were not fit to be tasted either, but in the end, all 10 teams submitted their best blends with pride, wondering how large the royalties would pile up for their award winning blends.

These 10 blends were taken to the back room to be judged. Five minutes later, when the judges returned, we learned the identities of the four wines we had blended: two were high quality Wiens Temecula wine and the other two needed more time to mature. Being able to guess the weak from the strong wines really separated the novices from the connoisseurs in terms of wine palettes. The connoisseurs congratulated themselves with their award winning blends, while the rest of us took our bruised egos home with a better understanding of what is considered good wine. Surprisingly, some of the winning teams were able to include large percentages of the weak wines into their blends – a critical goal for professional wine blenders as they don’t want to waste a drop of the harvest.

After the awards were announced, we each tasted the winning blend. Most of us shared Rich Wild’s (one of the participants) observation that adding a small amount of a different wine to a blend can make a huge difference to the taste. Because of the fun we had at the seminar, other attendees, like Su-Chun Huang, plan on throwing wine blending contests of their own at their next dinner parties.

What really caught my attention was the fact that so many of the Wiens’ family members attended the seminar. They warmly greeted each visitor as we entered the winery and supported each of us as if we were members of the family. This family oriented Temecula winery is reminiscent of an earlier day when the family and community took care of one another. The attendees loved having the family there and gave a lot of extra attention to Grandma Wiens. As Mike and Holly Lester said, “Your help allows each of us to return home as wine Mix Masters.” We all look forward to the next event at the Wiens Winery. Well done Wiens family!