Ellen Michaels Presents, Inc.
PLANNER'S PORTFOLIO: Adventures in Meeting Planning
The Great Estates Satellite Wine Tasting held by Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Kendall-Jackson Wineries on March 19, 2001.
The plan was for a panel of experts to sample and judge 11 new wines at Kendall-Jackson’s Sonoma, Calif., headquarters, while at the same time various wine experts and celebrities in 19 venues across the country participated via satellite. A total of 3,000 tasters were involved in the event.
EMP’s job was to design elegant coming-out parties for Kendall-Jackson’s new upscale Stature wines simultaneously in 19 locations, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas and Seattle. “The idea was to find venues that would be as much of an attraction as the event itself,” says O’Connor, “and then design a menu at each that would pair perfectly with each wine.”
As an alternative to restaurants, the EMP team chose plush private clubs and landmark venues. Carefully developed menus featured local dishes along with the wines. Setting up the tasting rooms proved tricky. Tables at each venue had to be made to accommodate 150 attendees, with 11 10-ounce wineglasses, a water glass, a spit cup and a waste bucket for each person. In addition, O’Connor had to find suppliers in each location that could deliver the required 1,650 wineglasses.
Along with the 19 venues, EMP had to create the special wine tasting at his client’s winery to host the elite panel of judges and the company’s top executives.
An extra complication developed a few weeks before invitations were mailed out, when the winery needed to change the date of the event. “This meant many venues were no longer available,” says O’Connor, who had to scramble to come up with suitable replacements.
On the big day, the far-flung tasting was run like a military operation. Kendall-Jackson employees, dispatched to each venue, synchronized the opening of bottles of wine and helped the hired wait staff pour the samples. “Just pouring the wines took three to four hours at each venue,” says O’Connor.
