We’ve been pounding the pavement really hard recently. Sometimes you forget to look around to see what’s going on. Well today something caught me by surprise. I was looking around the website for one of our customers and came across a short description of our product.
“Señor Sangria, NV ($8.99) - Yes, Charlotte, this is the first time we have ever gotten even remotely excited about a Sangria. I’ve been following the development of this product since last year when the earnest Rick Martinez came into the store with his girlfriend (now fiancée) and told me he planned to create and market a high quality Sangria using real fruit. What can I say? It won’t compete with Chateau Latour or Joseph Phelps Insignia, but this is a delicious, all natural, summer quencher that leaves commercial Sangrias in the dust.”
Reading the description brought a huge smile to my face and also reminds me that along the way you have to stop and look around at what is happening. I want to thank Joel from Beekman Wines & Liquors (www.BeekmanWine.com | 246 Rock Road, Glen Rock, NJ) for the kind words. Joel we may not be competing with the big guys right now but all I have to say is “Senor Tinto”. Hint hint!!!
We’ve received a lot of emails from people who have tried our product. Thank you so much for your support. The best part of it all is when someone who hasn’t been to one of our tastings emails us. The fact that someone is in the store picks up our product and then shoots us an email after finishing a bottle is an awesome feeling.
Many of you have been asking for an update. So we put together the brief video above. In addition we’ve laid out some items below. We’ve had some LONG hours recently. So my energy in the video is a bit low but no worries that’s not stopping us from pushing forward.
What’s new with Senor Sangria
Availability of Senor Sangria is Growing Quickly
We are now available in 32 locations in NJ (View List)
In 18 different cities
Senor Sangria is available online
Two online retailers are carrying our product; Check them out below
I want to thank you so much for your support at the Hoboken Spring Wine Tasting. This was the first wine tasting that we have participated in with our sangria. It was a huge success due in part to all of you. Below you’ll see a few pictures from the event!
I wanted to shoot out a quick/fun email for you to enjoy and to provide you an update on our progress.
Senor Sangria Bottling Video
I hope you enjoy this video as much as we do. We’ve must have watched it over 20 times by now. This was truly a very exciting time for us.
Theme Song
In addition a good friend of ours (John Divine) found a great song that we may make into the Senor Sangria theme song. Check it out for yourself.
Where to buy Senor Sangria Sadly Senor Sangria is only available in NJ. Many of you want to buy it online and we are working real hard to land a retailer who sells online. We will have our sangria available online before the summer starts!
On Friday March 20th, after 2 years in development we finally bottled our first batch of Senor Sangria. I can’t tell you how ecstatic we are. I did not sleep at all the night before the bottling. At home I paced around the whole house. Our dog was not so happy with me. I kept on waking her up with all the noise I was making.
That morning the guys at the winery got a kick out of watching me run around taking pictures and filming the bottling process. The smell of sangria consumed the entire bottling area. As each case was packed I felt 2 years of tension and stress drift away.
We are very proud of our sangria. Though, things don’t get any easier. Selling our product to retailers will be a big challenge. I don’t think anyone is ready for a premium bottled sangria. I’m confident that slowly but surely we’ll convince that there is a large market for our product.
Where you can buy our sangria:
Starting next week Senor Sangria will be carried by some local retailers in NJ. We’ll post the name and location of each as they start to carry our product. In addition for those of you who do not live in NJ we are working on locking in some retailers who can sell our product online. We hope within a couple of weeks it will be available online.
Rather then rambling on I thought you’d get a kick out of looking at some of the pictures we took.
Ready for Bottling
After two years of sitting around and drinking sangria (oops… I mean research and development) we are ready for our first production run. Today we dropped off the remaining ingredients at the winery. All that is left is for us to be slotted into the winery’s bottling schedule. It almost feels like we are waiting for a baby to be born. At any time we may get a call saying “Rick, we’re ready!”. I get goose bumps thinking of it. Hopefully you do too.
Below are a couple of pictures of the fruit juice and sugar we delivered today. The fruit juice comes in drums and large pails. It’s all natural with no flavors or anything artificial added. The sugar is 100% cane sugar. We are not using any high fructose corn syrup.
T-Shirt Contest
Don’t worry you haven’t missed entering the contest. We’ve been to busy drinking sangria (hmmm common theme…) with friends and family to pick a winner. The winners of the contest will be picked this weekend March 7-8th. We’ll contact the winners directly and place an announcement on our site. If you are interested in entering click on the link below to learn more.
Senor Sangria Proposes
It’s true! After 7 years of dating I’ve popped the question my Senorita. If trying to start up a new business isn’t enough work, we now have to plan a wedding. If you have any wedding tips I am all ears! At least we know what we’ll be serving at the wedding.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s newsletter. Remember feel free to contact me any time with your sangria questions or if you just want to talk. We love talking about sangria.
Yesterday was the Super Bowl and sadly we still don’t officially have our product on the market. A friend invited us to his Super Bowl party and I thought that it would be a good opportunity to get our product in front of people who haven’t tried the product before.
We brought along some of my homemade sangria as well as samples of our Senor Sangria which we had bottled at the winery. One of the first comments I heard was “This is the best bottled sangria I’ve ever had!”. I have to tell you. I still get goose bumps when people tell us how much they like our product.
Now all we have to do isget the darn thing bottled already!
Happy New Year! I hope everyone has had a great start to 2009.
Things slowed down toward the end of 2008 but now we are back. Recently I’ve received a lot of emails asking me what’s going on with our sangria. So here an update…
- We have received all the state and federal approvals/licenses we need to make and distribute our sangria
- All design work is complete
- Labels are being printed as we speak
- We are currently working on marketing material
- If all goes well our first production run should occur very early in February
Overall we’ve had 2 issues come up that have severely delayed our progress. As many of you know our original goal was to have our sangria on the market this past summer. That sure didn’t happen. With those issues behind us we will be ready for the summer of 2009. Even though it is cold and many people would prefer a hot chocolate over a refreshing glass of sangria we are going to hit the streets.
We still have some major hurdles ahead of us and we’ll need your help. Once we are on the market we’ll need for everyone to march down to their local liquor store and ask for our product. I’ll be sure to let you know when to start.
Senor Sangria T-Shirt Contest!
Now onto some fun stuff! Here is our first contest. We are looking to make a bunch of different t-shirts with “sangria” related sayings on them. To the right is an example of one we printed out not too long ago.
If you have an idea for a witty t-shirt let us know. Click on the link below and submit your idea. Our sales team will review the sayings and we’ll print out t-shirts using the top 3 sayings. The people who submitted the winning sayings each will each receive 3 shirts (one shirt per saying). In addition we are working on a secret surprise for the winner.
I’ve been a bit quiet recently. As you probably have noticed we haven’t had many updates. Our team has been heads down working away on many things. We have been finalizing working through some government approvals, dealing with some legal items, working through designs for shippers, etc…
Now all of our work is beginning to pay off. Our formula was approved by the TTB which is a huge accomplishment for us. We are now waiting for the TTB to approve our label. Once that is done we’ll have the green light to go ahead and start making sangria. At the same time there are some approvals that we need to get from the state of NJ. Just last week we got our Wine Wholesaler license. This is another big accomplishment.
Over the next couple of weeks we should have all of the approvals we need to push on forward and sell our sangria. It has been a long road for us but it sure is worth it.
I don’t think we’ll be able to squeeze in a product run before Christmas & New Years. I am a bit disappointed about that. I was looking to get our product into a small number of stores just to see what the reaction from the consumers would be.
It feels great being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. This product is going to be great! I’ve pasted a picture of the NJ Wine Wholesale License for all of you to enjoy. We are very proud of it.
If you want to get noticed in a coffee shop take out a bottle of our sangria. That’s what I learned on Monday when brainstorming marketing ideas with a friend at a Starbucks in Midtown Manhattan.
While talking through some grassroots marketing opportunities we caught the eye of 3 women who had met for coffee. Apparently the label on our bottle did its job by grabbing their attention. The next thing I know we have 4 cups with ice and we are sampling our sangria. I was a bit nervous as I waited for their response. There was a long pause, followed by a surprised look of “wow, this is pretty good”. At that point the flood gates opened, I could not stop talking about our sangria and how we got started.
The best part of the story is that the women live not to far away from the winery where we are bottling our sangria. In addition one of the women knows the owner of a fairly large liquor store in NY. While we sat there she sent a text to the owner of the liquor store, letting him know that this a guy with a crazy dream of bottling great sangria will be calling him later in the week.
Moral to the story, if you are looking to market your product go to a Starbucks in NYC.
