With a background in marketing and a love for great wine, I have but one take away from the Molly Dooker wine dinner I went to at the Tulalip Casino. They are sooooo cool. Yup, that’s my technical term for it. The guys from Molly Dooker wine have branding, selling, marketing and wine-making completely nailed down and I was lucky enough to witness it in person. But even with that one take away, I’m going to break down for you just why they’re so cool.
I was invited to the dinner as a guest of Tulalip’s public relations firm, so I went in a little apprehensive. I expected the hard sell and to get my ear talked off about how great everything was (yeah, darling readers, you don’t get to hear about those dinners. You can thank me later). Instead I got to sit back, drink lots of wine and laugh my ass off at the Molly Dooker guys. By the end of dinner (and as you can see from this post) I’d drank the Molly Dooker kool-aid. Delicious, shiraz-style kool-aid.
To learn more about Molly Dooker
To learn more about Tulalip Wine Dinners
10) Molly Dooker means left-handed so they set our places backwards (forks on the left, knives on the right). As a left handed person, this actually meant my fork was for once on the wrong side. They also shook hands with their left hand, which was really more confusing than anything.
9) Wine dinners in general are an awesome way to eat a lot of food and learn a ton about wine–seriously, there were scientific charts and everything at this one. But I’ve already gone over that over here, so read it.
8) The Molly Dooker Velvet Glove Shiraz that we got to try goes for about $200/bottle (it was that good), and each menu had an actual glove shaped velvet piece on it. Three glasses in and people were petting it like a puppy. It was very soft.
7) They gave away like a jillion bottles of wine to people in the audience and as a gift to all the waitstaff. Love seeing the waitstaff so appreciated!
6) When you finish the delicious wine and everyone filed out of the banquet hall, instead of standing on the street, disoriented and squinting into the darkness to find your car, you’re in a Casino! Awesome.
5) The Molly Dooker dude’s name is Sparky. And he brought his mom along too.
4) Once they decided it would be cool to have all their bottle caps screw off left handed too, but it was going to cost $100,000. Instead, they took that money and used it to support a school in Cambodia.
3) I don’t even normally like shiraz. And while I might have liked their lower end cab, the Gigglepot, the best, the rest of the wines changed my mind a little bit toward shiraz.
2) They have a pull off tab on all their labels so when you get too drunk to remember the bottle you drank with dinner at a restaurant, you can pull it off and stick it to your date. Er, put it in your purse.
1) As good as the wine was and generous the pours, I still managed to drink enough water and eat enough food that I could safely drive the 45 minutes home. Though I did appreciate my mom’s best motherly impression “Just call if you can’t drive!” Nice, but I’m pretty sure I’d have heard about it till I was 65 if I’d taken her up on that one.
That sounds like a fun dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a $200 bottle of wine. At least not left-handed.
Glad you had a great time! We were absolutely thrilled when he commented afterwards: “Now this was a real blast.”
Molly Dooker is by far my favourite favourite wine (all of ‘em) and I’m so bummed I missed the event!