HELSINQI CREATIVE

New Dolcetto label for Carlton Cellars

Friday, 20 August 2010

We're molto felice that Carlton Cellars will be releasing their new Oregon Dolcetto with our label design this Sunday at Italy in the Valley.

The Dolcetto will be a one-time wine for Carlton Cellars, since they sourced the fruit from their friend Dick Erath, who subsequently grafted the vines to Pinot. It's a very nice wine with a big Italian heart but made in Carlton Cellars' softer, Willamette Valley style.

The photo is one that Anna & Leo shot on a location scout for Carlton Cellars in 2008. We liked the name Miles Crossing, and went out for a look at this picturesque area across Youngs Bay from Astoria, at Oregon's northwest corner. We were delighted to find this old, abandoned cannery, its delicious redness standing out so strikingly from the lush greens and dulcet blues.

Last night we supped with Dave & Robin of Carlton Cellars — at the excellent Lincoln, by the way — and they let us know they're thinking (only thinking!) of planting some of their own Russell-Grooters Vineyard to Dolcetto. We hope so, not just because we like the juice, but because that would give our little cannery pic a new lease on life.

Helsinqi Hosts

Friday, 11 June 2010

Thanks to all who came to our HELSINQI Hosts networking soirée last night! We put on a special wine tasting at the Wine & Spirit Archive (WSA) for clients and associates, with a selection of "enlightened wines" put together by the WSA's Mimi Martin, and the great Pinots of Carlton Cellars.

Mimi poured three organic/biodynamic wines: Alliance, a multivarietal white by Alsatian vintner Marc Tempé; Roseena, a rosé by Oregon winery Maysara; and Il Frappato, produced entirely from Frappato grapes from Eastern Sicily by Valle dell'Acate.

Carlton Cellars' Dave Grooters & Robin Russell poured their premium Roads End and Cape Lookout Pinots, showcasing their great winemaking skills (and, incidentally, HELSINQI's great label designs, if we do say so ourselves).

The WSA also gave everyone a free ticket to any of their Friday night tastings, and a drawing prize of two tickets to one of their Passport Series of international wine classes. Mimi also brought along Beverage Marketing Consultant Ted Farthing, whom it was a pleasure to get to know.

Some of our good friends and collaborators in the YWCA of Greater Portland were there: Marketing Director Kelly Blunt (who brought our man Scott Hall of Graphic Arts Center); YWCA Board President Anne Denecke of Denecke Law (who brought along Carolyn Reynolds of Canteen Vending); YWCA Board Member Peggy Kern of MPK Marketing; and Executive Director Eric Brown, who won a photo shoot with Kathryn Elsesser in our drawing.

Kathryn Elsesser is our photographer friend who did all the photography for our Lives Changed campaign for the YWCA, as well as the pix in this very post. She also has done great event photography for Carlton Cellars. Also from the Carlton Cellars camp were Chef Paul & Kathy Parenteau, who do the amazing victuals for the Carlton Cellars vineyard lunch event series that we helped conceive and produce beginning last year.

Green CPA Brian Setzler of Trilibrium, a B Corporation, won Carlton Cellars' contribution to the drawing: a magnum of Roads End 2007. The last time we'd seen Brian was at a Trilibrium networking event where they served what must have been a jeroboam of bubbly. So now we're always going to associate Brian with oversize bottles of wine! We know what to get him for April 16th next year.

FearNoMusic's Inés Voglar and Joël Belgique made an appearance (sans instruments) and contributed a pair of concert tickets to the drawing. Our clients Laughlin-Cartrell, Inc. couldn't be there but they contributed a set of his'n'hers high-style garden/casual gloves from the new Fields & Lane line we're working on with them.

Thanks to everyone (named herein and otherwise) for helping make it a tasty and networky evening!