CoolVines Swims With the Big Fish...and Surfs in Their Wake.

On Wednesday, May 2nd we made our debut, representing New Jersey at Wine & Spirit Magazine’s annual Top of the List Tasting in NYC. Entering the enormous ballroom, we found our way to the table reserved for us. We opened the one bottle we had chosen to pour for the evening: the delicious and organic Roccamora Negroamaro from Puglia, Italy, a wine we felt encompassed what stands for--family-owned, small production, high quality, and great value.

Curious, we took a look around to see who we were sharing space with at this event.  We were in fact surrounded by HUGE wineries and producers like Silver Oak, Ridge, Ruffino, and Kendall-Jackson (to name but a few), unfamiliar wines to our shelves.  We felt a bit out of our element – the tiny fish in a very big, wine-filled pond.

We decided to embrace our odd-man-out status and throughout the course of the evening, we made our presence known. We walked around and tasted wines, some that we were familiar with and others that were new to us, most that were absolutely delicious, and others that didn’t quite live up to expectations. As we sampled, our confidence in our own wine selections was completely justified. The reassurance that what CoolVines set out to achieve has succeeded remarkably. Our ability to choose amazing wines that can stand up to, and even surpass, in both taste and price, the big names out there has set us aside from other wine retailers.  People knew who we were and had a lot of respect for our small company with its big ideas and unique, daring business philosophy. Then, something perfect happened ...

A prominent winemaker from the Napa Valley who produces outstanding, award-winning wines (I won’t mention the name but it rhymes with “famous”) visited our table. He was interested in the Roccamora; we gladly poured him some. Towards the end of the event he came back and offered to trade us one of his famed pinots for our $15 negroamaro. So impressed with the quality to value ratio, he had to take a bottle to enjoy back home!

We had rocked the event! We weren’t the wine shop with the tiny table in the corner of the room, akin to the girl with the glasses who sits in the bleachers and never gets asked to dance. The perception of the obscure, nerdy wine boutique was washed away and replaced with the refined, playful, creative CoolVines—proving that if you dress us up, you can pretty much take us anywhere and have a good time.  We’re already looking forward to next year…and a bigger table.