On Sunday morning, bright and early, I flew down to Eugene along with Michael Heijer and Basant Singh to attend a two-day bank board retreat. Michael and I are the Seattle Directors for the Pacific Continental Bank Board of Directors and Basant is the Pacific Continental Bank Market President for Seattle and Bellevue. We spent all day on Sunday in an ALCO Committee Retreat, but were rewarded at the end of the day with dinner at a spectacular local winery, King Estate.
Founded in 1991 by the King family, King Estate is comprised of over 1,000 acres and includes 465 acres of organically certified vineyards, 15 acres of orchards and a state-of-the art winery. The winery, which reflects the architectural traditions of Europe, is majestically situated atop a hill surrounded by vineyards and produced around 175,000 cases of wine last year. Located within the winery is an excellent restaurant where we were led to a private room with a wood-burning fireplace for our wine tasting and dinner.
It was a great opportunity for the Pacific Continental Bank Board of Directors and management team to spend some non-meeting time together relaxing and talking about other topics in addition to bank business. CEO, Hal Brown, toasted the group as did Chairman of the Board, Bob Ballin. President, Roger Busse, toasted Shannon Coffin for all of her efforts in pulling off the entire weekend so seamlessly and efficiently with every detail handled.
We began the evening with a blind wine tasting of three Pinot Gris white wines and were asked to guess which was the correct vintage for each; 2004, 2007 or 2008. Several of us got all three of these wine vintages correctly. Next we were asked to guess which was the correct vintage for three Pinot Noir red wines; again 2004, 2007 and 2008. Only one of us identified both flights of wines correctly and the winner was Casey Hogan, the Chief Credit Officer for the bank. It appears that Casey has a nose for more than low risk bank credits!
Top photo from L to R: Basant Singh, Bob Ballin, Michael Heijer, John Rickman
2nd photo from L to R: Don Krahmer Jr, Hal Brown
3rd photo from L to R: Rachel Ulrich, Casey Hogan, Cathi Hatch
4th photo from L to R: Shannon Coffin, Roger Busse, Charles
5th photo from L to R: Charlotte Boxer, Dan Hempy
6th photo from L to R: Mike Holcomb, Mike Holzgang, Don Montgomery
7th photo from L to R: Roger Busse, Cathi Hatch, Charles
When my wife told me she wanted to spend the weekends on a wine tasting tour, I was not very happy. Thought it was so boring. But when we arrived in Adelaide, I got excited since the view was amazing! The place was romantic, the food was great and the wine tingled my palate. We toured the wine region riding on a luxury mini-coach and visited 5 wineries. A perfect weekend for me and my lovely wife.
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