Luisa-s-selections

Who’s in?

For years now Luisa and I have talked about bringing the wines we drink here in the “Maremma”, to our friends and loyal customers in the States….Most of the wines we love are from small local wineries, many of which are family run and don’t meet large production requirements of those imposed by large wine importers. Some of the wineries have a close connection to us, or some of them are simply producing a very good, honest wine.

So, we are starting a program called “Luisa’s Selections”.

How it will work: Luisa and I will select 6 or 7 wineries. Our criteria will be based on quality of the wine with respect to affordability, their production techniques, and how we know them.

Our selections might change every year or stay the same. Every year’s vintage varies from one winery to the next.

We want to bring you wines that we have personally tasted and actually enjoyed over a course of many dinners. Not just a quick sip at a wine festival or a formal tasting. Some of the bottling is done when we are not here, or the wines are not ready to sample. These are the wines we won’t bring to you because we will have not had the chance to really get to know the wine.

We also want to bring you wines that are in an affordable price range. We could very easily drive up to Montalcino, and bring back Brunello, to the tune of $60 a bottle or seek out the best Morellino di Scansano in the area….BUT it very well could be cost prohibitive and then you might not enjoy it.

For the following year if you would like us to find those types of wines we would love to visit with you, but for now “facciamo cosi’…” We will also be listening to your critiques for future selections.

So, here’s how we will do it: Once a month we will send you 2 bottles of wine paired with a healthy wedge (about a half of a pound) of our cheese or a few links of our “cacciatorini”, the little aged sausages, or a jar of fig marmalade, or a jar of our cured olives depending on the weather.

If it’s an oppressively hot summer we’ll opt for something more agreeable to ship. You pick or let us select for you! We’ll also send along a description of the winery and how you may contact them if ever in Italy.

The next part is going to get personal…We’ll also need your SSN, for customs purposes only. Hopefully, by now most of you know us and trust that we will keep this information secure and safe. If you feel awkward by giving us this type of personal info, we completely understand and no hard feelings.

OK…What if you don’t like our selection? You can cancel at any time and we’ll “pro-rate” your subscription and refund the remaining balance immediately. No strings attached.

We understand everybody has different tastes, and may want something other than what we brought back. On the same note, we want you to be happy with the program and have the option to re-join at a later time.

How to secure your spot… We are taking deposits of $275. This deposit helps purchase some of the wines and relieves some pressure of the peripheral fees associated with the shipping.

Then, the monthly cost is $58. BE AWARE! We are only taking 25 orders from friends, and prior customers. This is not open to the public.

How we arrived at the costs: Our experience shipping our olive oil to the States for several years now provides us with the logistics of how to best ship bottles from Italy to the US. About 600 bottles of wine package safely on a pallet. This amounts to about 25 memberships. We added the international shipping, the US shipping/packaging, entry and bond fees, duty on the wine, costs of wine and cheese. And here you have it…

Once we receive your deposit, we’ll email you a “Recurring Payment Authorization Form”, to fill out and get back to us as soon as possible. This will be very similar to the system for those of you who participated in the Olive oil CSA.

When will all of this shake-out?

Deadline for deposits: February 1st, 2013.

Organize wine and build pallet: March 1st, 2013

Send pallet to US. Pallet arrives in US and clears customs: April 2013

Receive first box: Mid May 2013 Program is now underway….

Luisa and I are super excited to bring this to the table and we hope you’ll be as excited as we are.

More importantly, I hope you enjoy Luisa’s Selections.

Thanks again for all of your support,

Saluti da Manciano,

Jody and Luisa