"Lotto" commercial contest - Sep-Oct 1999 -- MikeL's Guide to WA Wineries

MikeL's Guide to WA Wineries Lotto commercial contest - Sep-Oct 1999

-- Contest is concluded -- Thanks to all who participated! (results near end of page)

Some of you fellow wine-lovers may have noticed a current WA State Lottery commercial playing on network TV in the Seattle area.

This commercial shows a fellow tasting wine and wondering about what he'd do if he won the lottery, and asks "... or would you become the winemaker"?

So this is a wonderful opportunity for MikeL's WA Winery Guide to have another contest! Your job is to identify the winery where the commercial was filmed! You can probably guess at the first hint I'm giving -- it's a WA State winery.

final update: 27-Oct-99
Only one week remaining in contest -- the commercial is still being shown -- get your entries in soon!

Hint #1 (given out 02-Oct): "It's a winery with a vineyard".

Hint #2 (given out 22-Oct): "There's a rose bush at the end of each row".

Hint #3 (posted 27-Oct): "Photo of the vineyard".

I don't know if it's playing state-wide; I spotted it on Tue. 31-Aug, and again Wed 01-Sep during the channel 7 (KIRO) morning news. Since then I've contacted them; it will be played roughly once per newscast, ie. 6-7am, 7-9am, 5-6pm, 11-11:30pm.

One entry will be selected at random from among all correct entries, to receive the prize -- a bottle of wine from the winery featured in the commercial, courtesy of Vintners.Net.

Simply email your guess to send email to mikel. Please be sure to have the subject be "Wawine contest".

Rules/Disclaimer:

There will be only one winner selected. The winner will be notified by email. Arrangements for pickup or delivery of the prize will be made with winner at that time.

Only one entry per person allowed, only one guess in that entry.

Contest closes 31-Oct, or when the commercial will no longer be run (if I am able to find this out), whichever comes first.

I'm sorry, I have no knowledge of when the commercial will be shown, though I will try to track down more specific info in the next few days, so you may wish to check back at this page.

This contest is in no way associated with the WA State Lottery Commission or the Lotto game.

In other words, please be nice -- this is all intended in fun!

Hints explanations
Hint 1: "It's a winery with a vineyard".
Very few wineries these days have their own vineyards. This is properly called an "Estate winery", however this term is in fairly loose usage in the US.
For this contest, you now know you can exclude any non-estate winery; this brings down the possibilities considerably.

Hint 2: "There's a rose bush at the end of each row"
The roses are quite visible in the commercial. The French traditionally plant a rosebush at the end of every grape row. I believe this is because roses are even more susceptible than grapes to certain molds. The rosebush thus acts as an early warning for the vineyardist of upcoming grape mold problems.
For this contest, you can now exclude any vineyard without rosebush row ends, thus limiting the choices even more.

Hint 3: "Photo of vineyard"
Larger image [64k], Much larger image [228k]
This photo was taken in Oct-99, so the rose bushes at the end of each row have pretty much died back, however they are there!

Results:
The commercial was filmed at Bainbridge Island Winery.

All told there were 11 entries. 2 people had the correct answer; in the end I declared them both winners, they'll each get a bottle of wine. No correct answers were received before I posted the photograph -- now you know why I started posting hints!

I've updated my webpage for the winery, including a non-cropped version of the "hint #3" photo; click on the link above (then click on the "more vineyard" photo).

The real giveaway came with the photo hint -- the vineyard is densely surrounded by evergreen trees. This immediately limits the possibilities to about a half dozen Western WA wineries.

I hope to come up with additional contests in the future -- don't hesitate to mail me any ideas you may have for a contest: send email to mikel

Thanks to all for participating!

Welcome to MikeL's WA Winery Guide (http://vintners.net/wawine/)

up to MikeL's WA Winery Guide -- Main Index