National Customer Service Day
January 17, 2010
It is a relatively mild (temperature wise) morning along the shores of Seneca and the vineyards of Glenora. Our temperature is 20 degrees, wind chill reading of 19 degrees, and the wind is out of the south southeast at 1 mile per hour. The weather gurus are predicting another great weather day for Pasta and Wine, and as well great weather for most of the upcoming week.
Vineyard Report—still trimming, and there has been some discussion regarding the low temperatures that were recorded early last week, at this point it seems that all is well in the vineyards with respect to cold hardiness and bud damage.
The Production Teams (Cellar) at both Glenora and Knapp had their bottling lines “running” this past week. Team Glenora bottled 2008 Riesling and Team Knapp bottled Superstition.
The second week of each month seems to be wine group meeting week. This past week the editor attended meetings of the Finger Lakes Wine Alliance, the Seneca Lake Wine Trail, and the Cayuga Wine Trail. The common denominator—ways to increase awareness of our wines (brand building) and ways to encourage more people to visit us during the winter months.
The annual meetings/dinners of local Chambers of Commerce continues. On Friday evening several members of Team Knapp and Team Glenora attended the Seneca County Chamber Dinner, This coming Wednesday evening Sherry and her husband Bill will be representing us at the Chemung Chamber annual. After that we will have the Geneva Chamber dinner on the 28th and the Yates Chamber dinner on the 30th. We are getting very good at critiquing roast beef, chicken, and pasta.
At the Chemung Chamber dinner our Twain 2010 Riesling will be introduced. We were approached by the Chemung Chamber two months ago inquiring if we could produce a special wine and label for the 2010 Twain celebration that the chamber is conducting this year. Since it was either illegal or immoral we said “yes”. For those not familiar –we have saying at Glenora “we do not say no unless the request would be illegal or immoral, as no one, especially customers, like to hear the word “No”.
The Glenora administration team Tracey D, Joyce, Kerry and Margaret with some help from Barb C and the maintenance team undertook a major cleaning and office rearranging project in the Admin wing this past week. Offices were cleaned, offices changed, and a ton of unused files and equipment found its way to the recycling bins.
Trouble—is what the editor found himself in late Friday morning when he started adding a few decorations for the Pasta & Wine event, that in addition making some music suggestions caused the temperature in the retail shop to drop by about 40 degrees—someday he will learn!!
We had 111 people attend our Pasta Nite event on Thursday evening which benefitted Millie’s Pantry. This coming Thursday it will be Mikey Merlot (Yates Chamber President Mike Linehan) in the chef’s garb as he and his team will be flipping the pasta pans to benefit Keuka Comfort care.
Last evening Chef John along with help from Assistant Chef Brendan and the Knapp Restaurant Team presented The Ultimate Comfort Food Wine dinner to 44 guests (a sold out event), the dinner included 5 courses: potato soup, tiger prawns, macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, and cake. Each course was served with 2 wines that were selected from Glenora, Knapp, and Zugibe Vineyards. As always Chef John his team’s presentation was impeccable and creative—example: White truffle macaroni and cheese severed in an aged Asiago lace cup with a crimini mushroom Béchamel sauce—not quite the way it was prepared by the editor’s grandmother.
The Seneca Lake Wine Trail’s Pasta and wine event is bringing out lots of visitors. We had 45 event attendees join us on Friday afternoon and 388 yesterday. They all enjoyed Chef Orlando’s Baked Penne Rigati. Once again the editor “lowered the room temperature” by suggesting that the serving size be increased—it may be safe to assume that the editor not be getting birthday cards from the Retail and Kitchen teams this year!
Thought for the Week: Service - To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity
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