My Client Appreciation Party

Last night I had my first annual client appreciation party for my real estate clients. I LOVE to host parties!! I invited all of my past clients (buyers, sellers and renters) to a private wine tasting at Church Street Cellars in Vienna. Invitations were done by Barb Heider at Inkworthy and were a Sweet Pea Designs formal invite. Each guest received a card to use on the Enomatics machine (more on this later!) and a cute fall wine bottle stopper from BeauCoup. In addition, a couple of my good friends helped me put together 3 gift baskets as door prizes - a fiesta basket, a wine basket and a movie night basket. My personal fave was the fiesta basket, which contained tortilla chips, 3 gourmet salsas, rita mix, Patron tequila, 2 handmade glass rita glasses from World market, cocktail napkins, margarita salt and a CD of spanish guitar music. It was fun putting these together and I think it encouraged people to stick around for awhile in hopes of being the lucky winner of a basket.

All of the guests were served champagne when they arrived, and given their Enomatics card. If you aren't familiar with these machines, basically you have the opportunity to taste different wines by choosing 1, 2.5 or 5 oz. pours from the machine. Each machine has 8 wines and there are 4 machines. This is a great way to taste a really pricey bottle of wine that you might not otherwise try! Then we poured four other varieties - a Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Chardonney, and a Sauvignon Blanc. Church Street Cellars also did an array of heavy apps for us - Pork Tenderloin with Mango/Black Bean Salsa, various cheeses, Pear Bruschetta, Spinach Balls & Bacon Wrapped Scallops. I wish I would have taken a picture of the food because it was really pretty, but I forgot that I had my camera for awhile.

All in all, I think it was a successful event. Approximately 20 guests and I think everyone had a good time. By the end of the night, one of the guests broke the store record for how long he could leave his hand in the wine chiller....I had a feeling that was going to happen....a freezing open container of swirling water is just too tempting for most boys I know!