Client Vino Curioso Featured in USA Today

As a part of a six week series in the money section of USA Today, Vino Curioso is being featured as one of five start up businesses forging ahead with creativity and passion in our current recession.

The series, "Entrepreneurs Face Challenges of Starting a Small Business," will be tracking the path of Vino Curioso during it's challenges in opening up a winery and wine bar, "The Virginia Wine Factory." Organization, marketing and funding details are reviewed by USA Today's panel of respected "coaches," providing objective advice along the way.

Owner Michael Matthews is highlighted in a series of web vids in these articles, so you both see and read of his progress. Good luck Vino Curioso!

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/startup/small-business-challenge.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/startup/2010-01-29-michael-matthews_N.htm

Vino Curioso Pouring Tasty Italian Style Wines at 5th Annual Manassas, VA Wine & Jazz Fest

This weekend, June 21, Old Town Manassas shuts down to host a whole ton of booths, including a sort of "wine alley," featuring premier Virginia wineries.  There will also be a slew of fine Jazz music, including  Doc Gibb's of Emeril fame, among others.

My clients, Michael Matthews and Michael Sawyers of Vino Curioso are the real home-town wine guys attending the Fest.  Though they have grapes growing from Winchester to the Northern Neck, Vino is soon to open their "Virginia Wine Factory" at a huge, split level, absolutely industrially cool location near Nissan Pavillion, right outside of Manassas.  

Check them out before they get too full of themselves...nibbling teensy baby quail complimented with a room temperature fromage avec la réduction de grenouille et de crevette d'airelle (thems good eats), chatting with lots of nice, wine-loving people in one of their two lounges (the upstairs one is especially sweet) and quaffing their top notch Sangiovese out of grossly oversized snifters (garnished with umbrellas), all the while referring to each other in made up, foreign pen names.  Like "Monsieur Le Plume."

Plus, you can watch them make wine at the Factory...amusing and educational!  (Really, they  are fun guys and you can see how they make their absolutely great wines.  Neat.)

Check out this shot of the owners (above) and you will know who you are talking to when you attend the Manassas Fest on Sunday.  Michael Matthews is on the left wearing a stylish golf beenie.  Michael Sawyers is on the other left, greedily clutching for his own an entire bottle of fine, fine red.  Nobody knows who belongs to the ghost hands floating on either side of this photo, but they appear thirsty.  

Check out more Festival detailed info here: 

http://media.visitmanassas.org/events/viewevent.aspx?id=2051 

Photo Credit:  Steve Urry, HMI Marketing and Events Coordinator.  Thank you, Steve!

Vino Curioso at Culpeper Wine & Food Festival

Late in the season, there is a great wine festival in quaint, downtown Culpeper, Virginia. Old railroad town, antebellum buildings, the whole bit. Great place to hold a festival when they block off the streets and put in booths and a bandstand for music.

I helped pour for my friend and winery owner/wine maker Michael Matthews (in the photo), of Vino Curioso (Winchester, VA). These shots are from the end of the day, so don't show the crowds, but it was a good day in general and the quality wines of Vino Curioso...one of the few wineries in the Commonwealth to make a Sangiovese wine...were a big hit. Sold out, in fact.

Check out Vino Curioso wines at http://www.vinocurioso.com.

Digital printing services for Vino Curioso products were provided by Labels Unlimited, U.S.A. of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Tele: (757) 340 8893.