TRAVESSIA Winery Blog

One stage at a time

Have you been following the Tour de France?  I have and I’m surprised as to how much I’ve enjoyed it.  I don’t fully understand all the tactics and unwritten rules that seem to play such an important role in the race.  Lance has no chance to win the Tour this time but it’s still quite impressive that he’s even able to compete at the highest level of his sport after being out for 4 years.

But I’m not following the Tour just because of Lance Armstrong.  I’m following because I’m captivated by the tolerance for pain that these cyclists are able to sustain, day after day for three weeks.  And I haven't decided what is more impressive... the uphill grind or the downhill speed.

From the interviews, most of these cyclists seem like pretty humble guys.  Most of them really dream of winning just a single stage not the entire race.  Most are just happy to reach the finish line in Paris.  The few who aspire to win the Tour seem to take a stage at a time, slowly reaching to their goal.

This week Travessia reaches an important stage in its 7-month old life.  We are having our very first Wine Club Day.  On Saturday, July 25th, our wine club members are invited to come to the winery for a Members Only event.  They will be picking up their very first wine club package which includes 3 wines and a few other goodies.

It’s been a lot of work to put this wine club together.  One of the biggest difficulties we have faced is the fact that most people around here (and by that I mean a wide area, not just New Bedford), aren’t familiar with how wine clubs work.  Well over 90% of Travessia Wine Club members have never been members of any wine club.  So, explaining how a wine club works has been a challenge.  Despite this, we have over 100 members in the club which far exceeds my expectations at this point.

If you are interested in joining, you can do it at the winery or via the Travessia website.   If you like our wines and think that you could drink three bottles of Travessia wine in the span of three months… what are you waiting for?

Cleaning up - good for your soul and sometimes... your wallet

There’s a small room in the basement of my house which began as a music studio.  Over the last couple of years it became a storage room for all sorts of objects.  From magazines like Bass Player, Wine Business Monthly, Revista dos Vinhos, to Isabelle Grace Jewelry shipping boxes, to some of my kids toys (overflow).  Tonight I decided to “take over” the room once again and bring the studio back to life.  Success!  There is actually some open space, enough for me to strap my Pedulla Rapture J4 bass around my neck and jam along a couple of tunes once in a while (very unlikely to happen any time soon).

As I cleaned up the room, I had a semi-broken boom box playing Antena 1 via WJFD.  The cool thing about Portuguese radio stations is that you’ll hear Coldplay followed by Pedro Abrunhosa followed by Foo Figthers followed by Da Weasel.  And I love it… I love the feeling of not knowing what comes next.  Life is just so much more exciting when unpredictable.

During the clean up I came across a box of unplayed Portuguese music CDs. The remainders of an old project of mine… LUZO BEAT - a small business that I setup around the turn of the century.  I promoted Portuguese modern music mostly to a young generation of Portuguese immigrant descendents by selling CDs via a website called www.luzobeat.com  A couple of years into it I realized that passion is not enough to make a business succeed.  You’ve got to sell.  Not enough people really cared.  Besides, I saw the "digital writing" on the wall (a.k.a. napster) and put an end to it before taking any serious losses.  Since then someone took over the name and URL promoting some other sort of music related activity.

But back to the box of unplayed CDs… about 50 of them, from straight Pop/Rock to Jazz, to Dance.  There are even a few from bands whose lyrics are in English like Wonderland, Primitive Reason, and The Gift.  Tucked away in one of the corners of the small box was an envelope.  Inside it was a Luzo Beat catalog, a list of all the CDs I sold at the time.  Memories....  But inside the envelope there were also $90 cash!  How about that?!

Now I’m happy I found the cash and could use it in many ways.  But I also feel sort of sad that almost 10 years later I still have these CDs in a box.  So… I decided to give them away and use the cash to pay for the shipping expenses.  So, please help me find a home for these CDs.  Send me an email with your address and a CD will arrive at your door.  It’s 100% free to you so you have nothing to loose – there is no catch whatsoever. You’ll have no idea as to what it may be.  Who knows maybe you’ll even dig it.

*P.S. Of course I will not share your address with anyone!... Not even with that Travessia dude… :-)