LOGO: Permission of the Bluest Sky Group
What is Bluest Sky Group?
From Micheal Yurch’s Website:
The Bluest Sky Group (BSG) is a brand focused organization specializing in working with wineries worldwide that are trying to either enter or improve their position in the very complex American marketplace.
Our basic program is a three year plan:
- One year of consultation during which we work with the winery to maximize item selection, pricing and packaging with the goal of securing an American Importer.
- Compensation for the first year is by a quarterly retainer.
- Having secured an Importer, in the second and third year, BSG functions as your market representative, managing your importer and working with their sales team, while at the same time leveraging our relationships with wine journalists and high profile customers to build a permanent position for your winery in America.
- In the second and third years of the plan we are compensated in traditional broker fashion with a percentage on sales.
In this way, we only succeed if you do.
Who is Michael Yurch
PHOTO; Permission of Bluest Sky Group, from The Italian Trade Commission’s induction of Michael Yurch Into the Wines of Italy Hall of Fame at Vino2011
From WineBusiness.com:
Michael Yurch Departs Sherry-Lehmann, Creates Bluest Sky Group
Posted on November 01, 2013
Michael Yurch, president of the iconic New York retailer Sherry-Lehmann since 1997, has sold his interest in the firm to form a new company. Yurch has been a part of Sherry-Lehmann since 1985.
“After 33 gratifying years in the New York wine market, I want to spend the next phase of my career working closer to the vineyards,” says Yurch. “Working with producers has become the part of the wine creation process that I enjoy the most.”
PHOTO: Alfons Taekema on Unsplash
Tuscany Is on the Horizon
I’ve always wanted to go back to Italy. I haven’t been there in this lifetime, but I’ve always wanted to return.
If you believe in past life experiences, you know what I mean. If you have yet to read any evidentiary examples, might I suggest Dr. Michael Newton‘s book. Newton is the founder of the Newton Institute. As a psychiatrist, he didn’t believe in past life experiences, until a woman that he was working with who he had hypnotized, began to tell him her past life story. This led to Michael’s curiosity into this kind of therapy, and subsequently becoming the author and documenter of many books, on the subject of successful past life – and in between lives – hypnotherapy. If you’re curious, the books are compelling. And, when you finish the book, you might feel a tremendous sense of loss that the book ended, because you really want more of his fascinating recorded examples.
PHOTO: Cristina Gottardi
So, back to Italy… I’ve always felt that I have a past life in Venice. I can see myself in an apartment, second or third floor. I had a clothes line that was on a wheel and pulley, going across the canal to the apartment on the other side of the water, to another one. I can hear myself calling “Yoo-hoo” across the canal to another woman. That was our communications system. Each day we called to each other, most especially when we were hanging clothes to dry. Rainy days were sad days, like a day without the internet, and being shut in.
Another example, that still freaks me out: One night, years ago, I had a dream. I was with three other people: an old man to my left, an interpreter in front of me, and a child to my right. The old man and child were conversing. The old man was speaking Italian, the interpreter was well versed in both languages, the child was speaking English. The banter was going back and forth. I understood EVERY word in Italian.
It startled me into waking right up. Everything was so vivid. I told Jose about it and asked my, what do you think this means. He simply said, “In a past life you were Italian. I knew he was right. This is one powerful dream I’ve never forgotten.
I’ve had two years of high school French and one year of high school Spanish. I’ve studied two more semesters of Spanish in college. I know NO Italian. I’ve heard it spoken, when my Spanish speaking husband has talked with some Italian people; each speaking his own language to the other, and both completely understanding each other. I understood only bits and pieces of Jose’s Spanish, but not a word of Italian.
Although… my dear friend Hector Bedolla, when teaching me viticulture in Bill Hambrecht’s vineyards, told me that I speak Spanish with an Italian accent.
Let’s just say it’s all there for me to know that I am now about to return to Italy, again. With this new development in my life, another piece of my puzzle is coming back to me. While living in Venice, in that past life, I had a dream of going to Tuscany. I’m not sure if I ever went in that lifetime. I’m about to find out if I actually did get there, or if it was just a desire.
Email from Michael Yurch
I got an E-mail from Michael Yurch. My eyes blinked as I read, and then read it again. Nothing had changed, it really was Michael Yurch inviting me to go to Tuscany and Le Marche, in the hope that I would find something interesting enough to write. I was stunned, speechless, because I really knew what this meant… I really knew. I created a quick answer that evening. God forbid that I didn’t respond right away and perhaps lose this opportunity. My answer was brief, but I did want him to tell me more, as I was most assuredly interested.
As I have just told someone else, younger than me in this wine business, who recently went to France, these are opportunities of a life time. The next day, when Michael and I talked in person, he told me he did hope that I would find something interesting to write about. Oh – my – goodness, will I ever be able to stop writing about Tuscany and Le Marche?
To be continued… Leaving on October 9, for Rome, and then off to Tuscany and Le Marche!
Still blinking my eyes…
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