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.

]]> http://senorsangria.com/blog/hurray-the-approvals-are-coming/feed/ http://senorsangria.com/blog/grassroots-coffee-sangria%e2%80%a6/ http://senorsangria.com/blog/grassroots-coffee-sangria%e2%80%a6/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:48:34 +0000 Sangria Blog http://senorsangria.com/blog/?p=97 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.

Take a few minutes to think about the design and leave us a comment.

I just got back from meeting with our design team. I had to take a video to show you my favorite label design. I’ll post the digital pictures of the label design over the next couple of days.

I am a little late in posting this video but I wanted to give you all an update on what we did this week and what is coming up next week.

~ Enjoy

I’ve found that many times when you take your own recipe and experiment with crazy ingredients you end up with something enjoyable and different. Something you need that change of pace.

A group of us once made a very strong sangria using Black Haus, which has a similar taste to Jagermeister (www.jager.com). As we proceeded to add half a bottle of this strong, knock you on your backside and forget what happened the night before liquor; we were surprised how well it blended with the wine and fruit juices. It sure was a fun night… though we were all hurting the next day.

The morale of this story is… Play with your sangria!

Check out our recipes for inspiration: http://senorsangria.com/blog/drink-recipes/

Honestly, we plan to keep adding to our sangria recipe list. We enjoy experimenting with recipes. In addition we have noticed that people have found our site because of the recipes. In addition to sangria recipes we plan to expand the list and provide drink recipes as well. Everyone who is part of Senor Sangria loves to entertain and has their special drink recipes.

Feel free to click “Sangria Recipes” from the menu bar above and make your own sangria tonight!

We’ve begun to summarize the feedback and will be delivering it with our own thoughts to the design team later this week. We’ll receive the next iteration from them within the next couple of weeks and we’ll poll our sangria community one more time.

Our competitors must be nervous as they read our blog. The clock is ticking before we start to take away from their market share. (I doubt we have any competitors reading our blog)

In addition to meeting up with the designers this week we are going to be pounding the pavement and meeting up with more retailers. Our goal is to lock in about 50 retailers who are interested in our product before we go into production. This will take a lot of effort but we feel fairly confident we’ll be able to pull it off.

It also looks like we’ll be finalizing a decision on our office space. This is a huge step for us and one that is needed for us to receive our wine wholesale license.

I’m going to keep this update fairly short today but I will leave you with a question.

———— What is your favorite type of “Sangria Pitcher”? ————

My answer: A full one! Below is a picture of a great looking “sangria pitcher”. A good friend took a picture of it. Notice that sexy little bottle of sangria strategically placed next to the pitcher. Brian, thanks for the picture. You did a great job of making it look very tasty.

1. View the video
2. Click on each label design to see a larger image
3. Leave a comment telling us which is your favorite below the video

Please don’t hold back, be passionate about your decision! Tell us what you like and what you hate. We need all the help we can get.

The design team did a great job of capturing our passion and energy in the concepts. They surprised me by the shear number of concepts they delivered. You can tell they put a lot of thought into each design.

Slowly but surely we are changing the world of sangria.