I’ll Have What She’s Having

underwood wine coolers feast

On September 13th, 2018, we blasted back to the past for Feast Portland: 80s vs 90s. Feast Portland is one of the nation’s most beloved food & drink festivals, and is where we introduced our Underwood wine in a can back in 2013.

If you know us, you know we’re not afraid to mix our wines with other quality ingredients to create new wine drinking experiences.  We debuted our Riesling Radler wine cooler in 2017, but for Feast, we wanted to take things up a notch and and create a lineup of special wine coolers exclusive for the event.

Our enologist, Jeb, was up to the challenge and may or may not have cracked a few Zima’s to inspire the brainstorming process. After some trial & error, we landed on two limited edition wine coolers: the Ecto Cooler and Wu-Tang.

menu for wine coolers wine cooler lineup

The Ecto Cooler was questionably green, but don’t let that fool you – its taste was reminiscent of Hi-C, and the Feast attendees couldn’t get enough of it. It was the first keg we emptied and quickly became the drink everyone kept coming back for. Our other special edition wine cooler, Wu-Tang, was an effervescent version of the time-honored Fuzzy Navel that tasted just like a peach ring, but better. These wine coolers were served alongside What She’s Having (our Strawberry Cooler, temporarily rebranded) and the Cosmo Cooler (our Riesling Radler). 2,700+ pours later, our kegs, and our Union Wine Co. staff bartenders, were exhausted.

wine cooler

We decked out our space with 80s and 90s ‘antiques’, or should we say, priceless relics borrowed from our Marketing Ops Manager Joan’s basement.

underwood wine

As we brainstormed what Union Wine Co. would’ve been like if it was around in the 80s or 90s, we thought: weren’t we there all along?

 

Feast Portland, thanks for letting us relive our glory days. We’re still on cloud nine, and will continue to rock our canny packs around the Industrial Chateau – why did they go out of style, again?

dacn pinot noir underwood feast photo booth

 

feast

Photography by Adam Wickham

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Short Strokes

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For when you need something a little stronger than a Pumpkin Spice Latte, we worked with Portland barkeep Ansel Vickery to create a cocktail for a cozy night in.

Short Strokes

2.5 oz Underwood Rosé

.75 oz fresh lemon juice

.75 oz Kronan Swedish Punsch

1 teaspoon 2:1 simple syrup

4 short dashes Regan’s Orange Bitters

Combine all ingredients, shake and strain into a glass. Add 1 oz soda water, ice to fill, lemon twist and a cherry to garnish.

cocktail

rose

About the Bartender

Ansel Vickery tends bar at Free House, where the quality of the cocktail program has made it one of the top spots of the service industry folks. The cocktails Ansel likes to drink (and subsequently make) are big, juicy and fun, which mimics the way he approaches his job in general. For Ansel, life and beverages should be fun, and loud, and big, and dark, and sorta crazy. Go check them, and him, out to see for yourself.

ansel vickery

Photography by David L. Reamer

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We’ll Drink To This

 

At Union Wine Company, we’re passionate people. Passionate over the wine we make. Passionate about the place we live and work. And we care a lot about giving back to the organizations that keep our community thriving.

Last month, we presented a check for $100,000 to our local Planned Parenthood. This donation was the result of Get it Girl, our white wine blend made in collaboration with our friends at Wildfang, whose profits (all 100% of them) were given to Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette.

“This partnership was about more than making great wine. It was about using our platform to stand up for the values we believe in and make an impact for organizations that we care deeply about. It is an honor to be able to write a check of this size to such a fantastic organization. Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette is dedicated to helping people in the local community, something that we at Union Wine Company believe strongly in.”

– Ryan Harms

Union Wine Company Founder, Owner

We are pretty darn proud that our company was able to raise this amount of money for an organization doing so much for our community. It’s far and away the largest donation Union Wine Company has ever made. Even so, we wanted to do more.

After our founder, Ryan Harms, presented the check to Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, our team hunkered down in a conference room – powered by coffee, pastries (and maybe some Bubbles) – to get crafty. After all, winemakers (and those that support the winemaking process) are good with their hands. We spent the morning stuffing bags and making buttons.

Donating $100,000 and making buttons for an organization our company cares so much about? We’d say that’s a pretty great way to spend a morning.

Thank you to all who bought a can or two or three for the cause. We couldn’t have done this without you.

Still interested in getting your hands on Underwood Get it Girl? Limited quantities are still available for purchase on our online shop, with 25% off.

 

 

Photography by David L. Reamer

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Rosé City Sour

For the first weekend at home in awhile, we worked with Portland bartender, Jacob Grier, to craft a Rosé cocktail that’s perfect for a night in.

Rosé City Sour

2 oz London Dry Gin

1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice

3/4 rosé syrup*

1/2 teaspoon Green Chartreuse

Combine the gin, juice, syrup and Chartreuse in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Option to garnish with an edible flower.

*For the rosé syrup, combine 1 cup Underwood Rosé wine and 1 cup white sugar in a small pot and stir over medium-low heat until the sugar is fully dissolved. Pour into a clean glass bottle and keep refrigerated for up to 5 days.

 

cocktailcocktail

 

 

About the Bartender

Jacob Grier tends bar in Portland Oregon and literally wrote the book on beer cocktails, Cocktails On Tap. He also founded Aquavit Week, the weeklong celebration of the signature spirit of the Nordics. He enjoys working with unusual ingredients and introducing drinkers to spirits they’ve never tried before.

jacob

 

Photography by David L. Reamer

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Make Summer Last Forever

We worked with Portland mixologist, Douglas Derrick, to create a Rosé libation to help make summer last forever.

Broad City Punch

2.5 oz Underwood Rosé

1.5 oz white grapefruit juice

1 oz Aria Gin (or London Dry Style)

1 oz chamomile syrup

2 dashes cherry-anise bitters (Peychaud’s or Creole)

Build all ingredients in a mixing tin. Shake, strain into 10 oz glass filled with ice. Garnish with a long stem mint sprig.

Bartender note: 

For the chamomile syrup, brew 2 chamomile tea bags in 8 oz hot water. Steep for 5 minutes, filter out tea and sir in 1 cup bakers sugar while hot. Let cool and refrigerate in airtight container for up to 5 days.

 

About Douglas Derrick

Southwestern by birth, Italian by heritage, and Northwestern by preference, Douglas Derrick has found his home in Portland’s thriving restaurant scene. On top of leading The Negroni Social and inspiring Negroni Week, a world-wide charity event which joins bars from all over the world to raise funds for local charities with Imbibe Magazine and Campari, Derrick creates handcrafted cocktails in the way chefs that he has worked with create menus: by using seasonal and in-house, made from scratch ingredients that change with the farms they source from. He works full time for Campari America, preaching the gospel of Negroni to bars all over the world.

 

Photography by David L. Reamer

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