You Sipped & Bravium Gave

San Francisco’s Bravium Winery Gives to Charities with Help from Its Friends

Bravium Winery recently donated more than $15,000 via its Sip&Give program.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 16, 2013

Bravium Winery’s proprietor and winemaker Derek Rohlffs announced more than $15,000 in cash and wine donations to charities from his Sip&Give campaign this week.

Current Sip&Give beneficiary charities include the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, Community Gatepath, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Peninsula Humane Society, and Slow Food USA.

“I am very happy that these important causes continue to benefit thanks to Bravium’s success. I am also gratified that this year’s donations are 50-percent higher than last year’s,” Rohlffs said.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of all Bravium and artisan wines – from its vineyard-designated pinot noir and chardonnay to its proprietary White Wedding white wine and Lucky red wine – fund Sip&Give. Donations are made to each charity based upon the percentage of votes it receives at sipandgive.com.

More than 9,600 individual votes were received during the most recent campaign, with the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and Peninsula Humane Society leading the voting.

Bonnie J. Addario, BJALCF’s founder and eight-year lung cancer survivor said: “We are honored and thankful to be chosen by Bravium Winery as one of the recipients of their giving program.

The health industry is being hit hard with Sequestration so partners like Bravium are going to be more important than ever to fund research that will save lives.”

And the Peninsula Humane Society’s president, Ken White, added: “We’re more of a slurping crowd (especially our dogs!), but sipping is fantastic, especially when our adoptable dogs win. We are honored to be included among the beneficiary charities.”

Rohlffs chose the name Bravium (Latin for “reward, prize or gift”) to dovetail with the Sip&Give campaign that he made a part of the winery’s DNA at its founding. Bravium is located on Treasure Island in the heart of San Francisco Bay, overlooking Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. Traditional winemaking techniques are employed: native yeast initiate fermentations, wines are moved around the winery by gravity, and red wines being are bottled unfined and unfiltered. The resulting wines truly reflect their origins: cool-climate vineyards located in the Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa and Carneros appellations.

Bravium’s increasing wine production and sales are driving the 50-percent year-over-year growth of the Sip&Give campaign. Lucky and White Wedding are, respectively, the No. 1 and No. 2 “Most Popular” boutique red and white wines on Wine.com, and they are featured as “Bestselling Wines” and “Top Wines Under $25” on Amazon.com Wine Market. Bravium has also doubled its pinot noir production each of the past three years, recently bottling seven vineyard-designated wines from the 2011 vintage.

Roger Scommegna’s Signal Ridge Vineyard, Mendocino Ridge’s highest elevation planting, and John Floisand’s Beau Terroir Vineyard off Stanly Lane in Napa Carneros highlight Bravium’s growing pinot noir program. Rohlffs has also partnered with the Abbassi Family to produce Sonoma Carneros chardonnay from Robert Young clone vines planted in 1975, as well as two new pinot noir blocks that are being planted in spring 2013.

“The reason I love making pinot noir is because it is among the most transparent of wines. Pinot noir is greatly influenced by vineyard site, aspect, soil type, soil depth and weather conditions. Once in the winery, consistent winemaking protocols allow the fruit to communicate its source. And every bottle of Bravium pinot noir I make means more money for the Sip&Give charities,” Rohlffs said.

For more information about participating in Sip&Give, visit http://sipandgive.com.

For more information about Derek Rohlffs and Bravium, please visit bravium.com. To buy wines from Bravium, go to http://wineshop.braviumwine.com. The winery tasting room at 995 Ninth St., Treasure Island, in San Francisco is open Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 5 p.m. Follow Bravium on Twitter at twitter.com/InfamousWinemkr or like it on Facebook at facebook.com/bravium.

About Bravium
Bravium (Latin meaning reward, prize, or gift) produces vineyard-designated pinot noir and chardonnay and also bottles artisan wines, featuring proprietary white and red wedding wine blends, White Wedding and Lucky, as well as private label wines for casinos and celebrity chefs. Wines produced at Bravium’s San Francisco winery include its flagship Bravium Pinot Noir, Bravium Chardonnay and Bravium Rosé, as well as Carefree Pinot Grigio, Dearest Dessert Wine, Sunlight Chardonnay, Noiro Pinot Noir, Outlier Pinot Noir, Formidable Merlot, Summercloud Merlot, Ramblin’ Man Petite Sirah, Midnight Oil Syrah, Commitment Cabernet Sauvignon, Character Cabernet Sauvignon, High Stakes Cabernet Sauvignon and Sachem Cabernet Sauvignon. Derek Rohlffs is Bravium’s winemaker and, as a member of the Cherokee Nation, is one of a very small number of Native American winery owners. Bravium has been certified by the Cherokee Nation as a TERO business. Bravium wines have received numerous accolades, including San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and Shanghai International Wine Challenge awards. Bravium gives back to charitable organizations via its Sip&Give campaign.

Grand Harvest Awards Honors Bravium

Santa Rosa, CA – The 22nd Annual Grand Harvest Awards has revealed the results of this year’s competition. Chief Judge Bill Traverso announced there were 8 Double Gold, 94 Gold, and 371 Silver awards handed out in early November.
Established in 1990, the wine competition is based solely on terroir. No Best-of awards are awarded. “The wines judged at the Grand Harvest Awards showcase the art of winemaking from diverse terroirs from the United
States and other wine regions around the world,” stated Traverso. “No Best-of awards are given for GHA. Since judging deals with such a diversity of climates, there is no possible way to determine a Best-of standing. The awards show the individuality of each of the various terroirs.”
Bravium won a Silver medal for its only wine that was reviewed at the Grand Harvest Awards, the 2010 Bravium Chardonnay, Napa Valley, Carneros.
The Grand Harvest Awards are based on the concept of terroir as judges recognize this influence while tasting wines with other wines of the same appellation. With cross-regional competition removed, the inherent quality of wines can be seen without the influences that sometimes eclipse even a wine of very high quality. Wines are judged in the context of their viticultural region in order to accomplish two things: to recognize the complexities and nuances of regional wines, and also to measure the influence of regional soil and weather characteristics on the taste and quality of individual wines.
The specialized panel of judges, trained to assess terroir, included the following experts:
• William S. Bloxom-Carter Executive Chef and Director of Food and Beverage, Playboy Mansion, Los Angeles
• Virginie Boone Wine Writer for the Wine Enthusiast, Santa Rosa Press Democrat and others
• Carl Brandhorst President of the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association (ASWA)
• Jeanne Burgess VP/Director of Winemaking Operations, Seavin, Inc., Florida’s largest wine growing enterprise
• Gina Gallo Winemaker for Gallo Family Vineyards
• Dennis Martin Vice President/Director of Winemaking, Fetzer Vineyards
Official sponsors of the competition included WIN, Riedel, Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, Penta Water, Graber Olives, and Winery Advisor.

Eric Asimov Event and Book Review

We enjoyed pouring our wines at Eric Asimov’s “How to Love Wine” book tour event at the Commonwealth Club. Eric hit all the right notes about the ever-changing essence of wine and dispelled myths and misconceptions that were more than deserving of his well-reasoned critiques! Click here to link to the podcast of Eric’s talk. And following is a review of Eric’s book by W. Blake Gray that was originally posted on The Gray Report on September 26, 2012:

“Book review: Eric Asimov’s “How to Love Wine”

Robert Parker taught Americans, and eventually the world, a new way to think about, talk about, and drink wine.

Few wine critics since have been so ambitious. Most try to do what Parker does, only different.

Next month, New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov delivers a slim book with a goal as ambitious as Parker’s.

“How to Love Wine” didn’t win me over at first. Like a wine that Asimov would love, it starts off tight, acidic and brooding. When he writes that he doesn’t believe California vintners prove anything by holding blind tastings of their wines against the best of France, I resist. How does a new region get on the map? Asimov doesn’t much care about new regions or developments; he’s besotted by wines with long histories.

I could easily take some points of Asimov’s philosophy like that one and attack them, and I expect some people will. Though Asimov is not an aggressive writer, the book can be discomforting because it challenges many of the norms of the way we think about wine today.

Asimov, who once edited the features section for the best newspaper in the world, has 260 pages to explain his philosophy of wine. I’m going to try to distill it into a long paragraph. (Deep breath.)

Asimov believes the experience of wine for ordinary consumers has been distorted by an obsession with thinking about wine as a professional would. He believes the industry as a whole, including wine “educators” and writers like myself, mistakenly tell civilians that they need to identify wines blind, choose flavors from the Aroma Wheel, name the grapes of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, and otherwise master a sommelier’s skills in order to appreciate a glass. He believes people should drink more wine and obsess about it less. He would rather drink something weird than something boring. Despite his own preferences, he doesn’t believe people should take sides about wine: if you like only Two Buck Chuck or unsulphured orange wines, keep drinking what you enjoy.

Whew.

Then there’s Asimov’s philosophy of writing about wine. No critic I know of in any field is able to call his own shots as fully as Asimov. Even Parker has obliged himself to thoroughly cover entire regions. As I said in the Q&A interview I did with Asimov, when “The Avengers” comes out, some Times film critic has to cover it. Asimov’s editors don’t know or care about wine and he has few assignments.

So his philosophy of covering wine is also fully developed and separate from his philosophy of drinking. It’s easier to summarize:

Asimov is only interested in telling stories. He feels no obligation to cover or even learn how wine is made or sold. He’s not interested in writing about mass-market wines, which he calls the equivalent of fast food.

And his favorite kind of wine? Past the halfway point, he sums it up thus: “This combination of textural lightness and flavor intensity, I came to see, is a hallmark of a great wine. I have pursued these qualities ever since.”

It’s a personal story, not an encyclopedia or teaching book, and at the beginning I noticed where I disagreed with it. My focus changed with a simple sentence that I strongly believe, but few other wine professionals seem to:

“I have a great deal of difficulty recommending wines that I don’t care for myself.”

From that point on, what struck me was how much my personal beliefs and experiences with wine are similar to Asimov’s. I don’t know if it’s because we actually do have similar backgrounds — I was also a newspaper guy — or he’s just that inclusive a writer.

Asimov didn’t study wine, and his parents didn’t drink it at dinner. He discovered on a trip to Europe that he liked drinking simple red wines with dinner. When he went to college, he drank what he could afford, mostly red, usually under $10. And mostly, because he liked the labels, European.

His first big purchase of a wine, a 1955 Chateau La Mission Haut Brion ($185) for his parents’ 30th wedding anniversary, filled him with doubt and dread. He loved it for “how great the wine smelled,” but he took no tasting notes. He became more interested in Bordeaux and, as someone who obsesses on things he likes, began reading up on it, which meant reading Parker and Wine Spectator.

He decided to take a wine education course, which consisted of being presented with 6 white wines blind and being taught to identify them by the aromas and flavors. Asimov thought this was silly; why would he ever need to identify a wine? Couldn’t he just look at the label?

This is the biggest revelation of the book. He’s absolutely right. There’s never a situation, even for a master sommelier, when you actually need to identify a wine blind. Yet it’s the foundation of wine education in this country and is the source of many people’s anxiety about wine. Thank you, Asimov, for pointing that out.

Won over by this insight, I began to consider others, even ones I disagree with. Asimov talks of a massive vineyard he saw on the Central Coast of Californa, so large that a worker sent to prune it might disappear for days. He says there’s no way a wine from that vineyard could be interesting to him. It would be made for competence and commercial viability, but he would have no reason to drink it.

This is snobbery — but it’s not wine snobbery, it’s urban snobbery. Asimov lives in Manhattan, shops in fantastic wine stores and eats either in cutting edge restaurants or ethnic joints where he can BYOB. Plus, he has only lived in hip places. He’s from New York City, went to school in Austin, Texas and worked in Chicago before moving back home. If he had ever lived in Lakeland, Florida, he might understand not only the reason to drink competently made industrial wines, but also that readers might want advice on which ones to choose.

Yet I found his purity of focus invigorating. He’s not trying to be all things for all people. He cedes to others the Consumer Reports responsibility of judging Gallo’s $7 wines vs. Constellation’s $7 wines. That needs to be done, but he’s going to do something else.

The worst thing I can say about “How to Love Wine” is you won’t learn anything from it. The best thing I can say is, it might cause you to reconsider what you already know.

I’ll close with a few of my favorite lines from the book:

“Can you imagine the social embarrassment that comes from not knowing the name of the leading goal scorer or principal ballerina? Unfortunately, too many people find it all too easy to feel this way regarding wine.”

“Today, very little wine is spoiled. The challenge is to make wine that is not boring.”

“Some people are simply interested in toting up great wines, and crossing them off some master checklist, like a birder’s life list.”

And perhaps my favorite, on an ever-popular topic:

“Such a small percentage of the people who enjoy Yellow Tail work their way up to falling in love with wine that you might as well make the argument that people who start on orange juice will one day be wine lovers.”"

Sip&Give on Peninsula TV

Derek was recently interviewed by Dani Gasparini for an episode of One on One. Their discussion focused on Sip&Give and how the program continues to grow and evolve.

Click here to watch the video now.

Sip&Give Pays

Derek Rohlffs, Bravium’s Proprietor and Winemaker, announced a gift of more than $10,000 in cash and wine to Sip&Give’s beneficiary charities in 2011.
“I am very pleased to be able to help these important causes thanks to the success of our wine sales in 2011,” Derek said in a recent interview. “Our production has doubled each of the past three years and we have been fortunate that our customers continue to support Bravium and its artisan wines. I believe that we will build upon our recent growth allowing me to substantially increase our gifting program in 2012.” “BIG THANKS to all of our wine customers and fans. Your support and votes at sipandgive.com make this all possible. I appreciate your patronage very much, as do Sip&Give’s beneficiary charities.” Vote here to support our five 2012 charities!

James Melendez / James the Wine Guy Interview

Posted on Jul 22, 2012 by jamesthewineguy

“After publishing over 900 video wine reviews, I recently conducted my first interview of a winemaker – Derek Rohlffs – proprietor and winemaker of Bravium. Bravium winery is part of the urban wine making experience on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Derek has been a passionate winemaker for a decade and has a superb love for his craft – it shows in his wines and his philanthropic effort called Sip&Give which he founded. He shows genuineness in each footstep; for me it was a privilege to talk with Derek and taste his wines. Look forward to many conversations with him in the future.”

James Melendez is the author of the blog, James the Wine Guy. He is a San Francisco-based wine writer, video producer, educator, speaker, social media metrics aggregator, connector and wine businessperson. James has had a long interest in the wine category and how to connect to the consumer by demystifying wine.

James has also worked in a large multi-state wine retailer as national wine marketing manager: garnering a great trove of knowledge of alcohol beverage control laws as it relates to wine retailing, wine label development and advertising, compliance, consumer trends and analysis.

James received his B.A. at The University of New Mexico and his M.A., at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. Though frequently outbound to one wine country or another he is a native of San Francisco for the past 14 years and loves being at home enjoying wine with friends and family at any opportunity.

Lucky II Video Review

Published on Aug 4, 2012 by jamesthewineguy

This wine is:
- 55% Zinfandel
- 27% Petite Sirah
- 11% Merlot
- 7% Cabernet Sauvignon

¡Salud!

Bravium Pinot Noir 2010 Video Review

Published on Jul 30, 2012 by jamesthewineguy

¡Salud!

Bravium Chardonnay 2010 Video Review

Published on Jul 22, 2012 by jamesthewineguy

Salud!

Ramblin’ Man Video Review

Published on Jul 4, 2012 by jamesthewineguy

¡Salud!