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Dear Distributor Partner:
Thanks in large part to your efforts, Domaine Serene enjoyed yet another banner sales year in 2015.
Your solid execution in the marketplace parallels the uncompromising focus on wine excellence by Ken and Grace Evenstad and the rest of our winemaking team. As a result, Domaine Serene market share today among $40+ luxury wine brands from Oregon remains in double digits—at 12% of total dollar sales value, more than double the share of our closest competitor—and the Domaine Serene brand continues to deliver world-class profit margins to both our trade and our distributor partners.
As you hopefully know, Domaine Serene reinvests every dollar of profit we earn each year back into our vineyards and winery, through a broad range of important quality enhancements. We thought it might be a good time to share some of these initiatives with you, both large and small, as well as the positive market recognition and consistently strong accolades we’ve been enjoying as a result.
Along with Ken and Grace Evenstad, I would like to personally thank you for being a key partner in Domaine Serene’s success over the years. Let’s continue to create an even brighter future together. Happy selling!
Ryan Harris
President, Domaine Serene & Château de la Crée
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Accolades Recap
Domaine Serene achieved phenomenal media recognition in 2015 from a wide range of national and international wine publications.
Almost all current release Domaine Serene wines submitted for review in 2015 and 2016, eighty-three in total, were recognized with 90+ scores. This generated an average score across all wines and all media publications of 93 points. Media appreciation was evenly spread between both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir varietal offerings, as well as our Provence-style “r” Rosé. The chart below provides a convenient overview of scores awarded to current vintages of our three top-selling wines in Trade channels.
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Pinot Rally: May the Best House Win
Our second annual Pinot Rally distributor sales contest runs from February through June
Distributors across the country are again battling it out to achieve the most Domaine Serene placements in our 2016 Pinot Rally sales program. Brand managers and leading sales representatives from the first, second and third place distributors within each of our five selling brackets will win once-in-a-lifetime prizes, competing against distributor houses of similar size in different parts of the country.
First place winners, make sure your passports are up to date. You will be booking travel to the Côte d’Or, France—a Unesco World Heritage site and birthplace of terroir—as guests of our venerable Château de la Crée estate in the historic village of Santenay. Happy selling, and to the victor go the spoils!
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Full-Page Wine Spectator Ad in February
Strong accolade track record reaches three million Wine Spectator readers in February of 2015, then once again later in the year.
What better way to build awareness for Oregon’s leading luxury wine brand among high-end collectors and consumers than in the magazine rated #1 for dining and affluence! Although the Spectator editorial staff insisted that only Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate scores could be shown, Domaine Serene actually received a whopping 83 reviews of 90 points or greater across all major wine publications in 2015 alone.
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2015 Somm Selection participants (from left to right):
Jason Hunter, Spago Restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Beaver Creek; Michael Thackerson, The Fort Worth Club; Noah Hart, Farallon, San Francisco; Shaun Adams, Four Seasons Resort, Scottsdale; Travis Masten, Manzanita Restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton, Truckee; Matt Garza, Joe’s Stone Crab, Chicago; Michael Miller, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, Coos Bay, OR; Eric Cooperman, The Cliffs Clubs, SC.
We are pleased to announce the second annual Serene Somm Selection. Held at the Domaine Serene Winery in Dundee, the Somm Selection will again give a hand-selected group of wine service professionals the opportunity to have a true Harvest Experience at the Willamette Valley’s premiere wine estate. The experience features three days of collaboration, creation and education with the Domaine Serene winemaking and management teams, capped off by creating the “2015 Somm Selection Cuvée”: a custom blend sold exclusively in participants’ restaurants.
If you know of somms who may be interested in applying for Somm Selection 2016, please direct them to the application website.
“I learned what dedication to quality truly is. The passion behind each and every person that is involved was amazing!” Shaun Adams, The Four Seasons, Scottsdale, AZ
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“A special club where you’re an honored guest, and can bring your closest friends.” Grace Evenstad, Domaine Serene Co-Founder
Construction is well underway for our exciting new Clubhouse at Domaine Serene, with grand opening scheduled for Summer 2017. The Clubhouse will give the winery a much more dynamic hospitality and educational venue, with loads of customizable tasting spaces, and vines and vistas on all sides. Its elegant interior includes jaw-dropping views, a thirty-four-foot tasting bar, a private members-only lounge, and a wine cave. The Clubhouse at Domaine Serene will offer best-in-class hospitality and education for our distributor and trade partners across the country, effectively raising the bar for luxury hospitality in the Willamette Valley wine community.
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Château de la Crée
Winemaking excellence from some of the world’s most rare and exquisite terroirs.
Grace and Ken Evenstad came full circle in their passion for great Pinot Noir and Chardonnay when they purchased respected Burgundy wine estate, Château de la Crée. Featuring a restored 15th century château in the historic village of Santenay, the estate was originally owned by Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy and founder of the Hospices de Beaune. The estate’s 25 acres of vineyard holdings are located entirely along the Côte d’Or escarpment, including two monopoles and prime sites in Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet, Santenay, and Maranges. Château de la Crée also boasts a state-of-the-art gravity-flow winery, completed in 2011.
The majority of the Château’s export sales are Premier Cru quality. We are in the process of determining the distribution network for these wines, which may or may not be the same as for Domaine Serene. Stay tuned for more information. Supplies are limited; not available in all markets.
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Domaine Serene Guaranteed Cork (DSGC)
Taint-free pledge for all natural cork closures, beginning with 2014 vintage.
Domaine Serene President Ryan Harris has announced a zero-tolerance policy against TCA and other forms of cork taint for all Domaine Serene wines starting with release of our Provence-style 2014 “r” Rosé v.VIII in February 2016. Our DSGC assurance positions Domaine Serene as the world’s first winery to extend a comprehensive guarantee of taint-free natural cork closures to consumers and trade customers, regardless of where or when the wine is consumed. Already applauded by wine critics like Harvey Steiman of Wine Spectator, DSGC is yet another example of the unwavering quality commitment of winery founders Grace and Ken Evenstad, who envision the program as an outright refusal to tolerate cork-tainted wine under their labels going forward. Higher cost associated with these rigorous new testing protocols will not be passed along in the form of increased prices to consumers.
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Dijon clone, Jory soil, high elevation: the perfect combination for great Oregon Chardonnay
More than twenty-four additional acres of Dijon Clone Chardonnay planted from 2013 to 2015 in our Winery Hill and Triple Crown estate vineyards have increased total Domaine Serene plantings to 42.8 acres. All plantings are in the Dundee Hills at elevations above 600 feet, with low yields below three tons per acre from Jory soil: a magical combination for world-class Chardonnay. Our cutting edge winery provides copious space for individual barrel fermentation of numerous micro crus. We also utilize precision pressing and a broad, often site-specific yeast selection to drive complexity and quality. Our Chardonnays are left 3-6 months on the lees, followed by a full year of work on master blends, and extended bottle aging prior to market release. As Oregon’s most awarded Chardonnay producer, Domaine Serene is not resting on its laurels. We are in the planning stages for developing a sophisticated white wine expansion at the winery, which will help us to become as specialized in our Chardonnay winemaking processes as we are for our Pinot Noir.
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Website Upgrade: Education+Entertainment
Our 2016 Domaine Serene website: one-stop shopping for information, education and important sales resources, all in a fun, accessible new format
Finding out everything you ever wanted to know about your favorite Oregon winery has never been easier. Our new domaineserene.com website is more colorful, simpler to navigate, and more chock-full of valuable product knowledge than ever before. But the project is only partially finished. Watch for continuous improvement during the coming months, with a more robust selection of sales tools in our Trade page, a deeper dive into our precision winemaking and micro-cru terroir details, and easy access to a continually refreshed stream of the great accolades we are awarded.
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Splash of Winter Rosé
Our multi-vintage Domaine Serene “r” Rosé v.VII was released February 14 to great fanfare, and selected for a prestigious James Beard House event the same month.
Oenophiles associate rosé with summertime sipping, but Café ArtScience’s Patrick Campbell and Renae Connolly set out to prove that this delicate wine also shines in wintertime. True to the restaurant’s creative philosophy, they treated guests to a boundary-pushing meal at New York’s James Beard House, where innovation meets fine dining.
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Domaine Serene Evenstad Reserve voted #1 Oregon Pinot Noir for third year in a row by Vivino App users
The Vivino Wine Style Awards recognizes the best wines of the year. Over 13 million ratings from 8 million app users were collected to create these lists. Recognition is not influenced by wineries, distributors or wine shops. Sourced only from the ratings of wine drinkers, these lists represent the best of the best in the eyes of Vivino app users.
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Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay Selected for 2016 Governors Dinner
Our 2013 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay was selected by the White House sommelier as part of the menu for this year’s National Governors Association Dinner, held on February 21. The Governors Dinner is one of the most important events every year at the White House: a great honor both for Domaine Serene and for Willamette Valley Chardonnay in general.
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Domaine Serene
6555 NE Hilltop Lane
Dayton, OR 97114
(503) 864-4600
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