Alison Sokol Blosser visits Joe Canal's

Thursdays the BottleBlog will feature an update on various exciting things going on at Joe Canal's: Reports of our travels, special event coverage, and more! Today Debbie Miller Nelson reports on Alison Sokol Blosser's visit to Joe Canal's.

I met Alison in March 2008 in New York City. I was a blogger for a wine column on a big New Jersey newspaper web site and one of her importers reached out to me to see if I’d like to do an interview with her. Of course, I happily agreed and they set up a fantastic dinner at the W Hotel's Icon Restaurant in mid-town NYC. Her people arranged a wine dinner with three of her wines so that I could taste them and talk with her about the winery.

The winery was started in 1971 by her parents. Their love for Pinot Noir started it all. Susan, Alison's mother stepped down on January 1, 2008 and allowed her daughter and son Alex to take over the winery as Co-Presidents. Alison handles the business side while her brother handles sales and viticulture. The winery is located in Dundee, Oregon, a location that mimics the climate of Burgundy making it ideal to grow fantastic Pinot Noir.

Alison was 6 months pregnant when I met her, of course, at the time making tasting her own wines difficult. It's always awkward in the beginning, not knowing anyone, but once the wine was poured, the conversation became easy. Alison explained that the winery was 100% certified organic and 100% certified sustainable. Basically, they don't use any chemicals and all of their farming practices are meant to give back to the earth instead of destroying it, so that over time, they continually reuse and renew their natural resources. Usually when I start to hear this, I get nervous about the quality of the wine, but the three wines I tasted were amazing.

Alison and I kept in touch over the last few years. Of course, Facebook has made it easy to keep up with everyone nowadays. When I told her last year that I was working at Joe Canal’s, we considered having her come in and set up a tasting of Evolution, the only wine of hers that we carried at the time. I’m happy to say we now carry all four of her wines. In addition to the white blend of nine grapes, Evolution, we also carry Meditrina, a blend of Syrah, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel, the Dundee Hills Pinot Noir and her Pinot Gris. Of course, in 2009, her trip to the east coast was already booked up.

Several months ago, Alison let me know when she was going to be in town and we booked her immediately. On Tuesday, October 19th, Alison showed up an hour early and was ready to go. Within an hour we practically sold out of all her wines! A Joe Canal’s first! This was the first time I’ve seen customers coming in just for her. She was charming and gracious and introduced everyone to her wines. Most customers were familiar with Evolution and fell in love with her other wines as well. Alison signed almost 4 cases of wine and was able to make it to the city in time to see her first Nets game at the Garden.