French Broad Vignerons

Minutes for February 2013

 

Present at the meeting:

Tom, Pete and Judy, J.D., Alan, Paul and Julia, Tony, John, new members Ron Barrat, Maleah Pusz, and Karen and Bob Bens. 

 

Maleah works for a vineyard in Argentina as a local tech representative

Bob and Daren Bins have a 6 acre vineyard and winery in Mill Spring. 

Presidents Report

            We now have a relationship with the Bio Network.  Our representative is Sarah Shobert who works both with the Bio Network and the local colleges that house the Bio Network.  Sarah will provide tests for most of the modest testing that needs to be done.  The state is providing funds to equip a testing lab and we use such equipment at cost.  To fund more elaborate testing, Sarah will help us obtain grant money.  Soon we will have a plan detailing our relationship with the Bionetwork and this plan will be published.

The first set of test requests have already been submitted to Sarah but if you have some that were not included be sure to tell Alan.  It is not too late.

Our tag line logo is “Opening Doors for a Grape Future”

 

Vice President of Public Relations Report:

             Chuck was not at the meeting since he had a Sustainable Viticulture Conference the next morning.  All FBE members are urged to attend. 

Vice President of Education Report:

               Paul got permission from Frank Lilly to take a tour of his wine testing lab.  Date to be arranged.

                We are looking for more winemakers to man the conference tables for the FBV Forum in April.  We need three more wine makers. 

Old Business:

            JD says that the Ag center is very interested in having a wine judging.  More details on this topic will be forth coming. 

New Business:

            Bob Bowles is willing to let us use his meeting hall when he is available.  Unfortunately Bob is not available on Tuesdays because he is involved with the Chef Challenge.  Therefore, we are going to change the meeting day for our organization from Tuesday to Wednesday starting in April.  The March meeting will be held on the third Tuesday as usual, but the April meeting will be held on the third Wednesday.  We still want to meet at volunteers homes when possible, but Bob will be able to provide us with a backup meeting location in case we have problems finding one for a particular month.

            Each of the winemakers on the AB Tech panel need to meet sometime in March to discuss our presentations and to make decisions on takeaways for the participants.

            Alan had a report from the Wine Growers Conference:

He will get us a link to the info from that conference that members might find interesting 

           Paul is taking orders for Chilean Juice.  It comes in six gallon pails at a price of $13 per gallon.

           Julia had an idea that the FBV should take advantage of social networking by establishing a presence on Facebook and Twitter 

           At the next meeting we will review goals for the organization.

           Be thinking about officer nominations for the May meeting. 

Meeting adjourned: 

          After the meeting we had a potluck dinner and then judged four cabernet sauvignon wines using two testing methods, the linear presentation and the flight presentation.  Initial results seemed to indicate no difference in the scoring for the wines between the two presentation methods.  Testing data will be forth coming.