Your Holiday Update!

Before we get too “wrapped up” in the Holiday Season, your Board members wanted to bring you up to date on what we accomplished in 2019!  We hope that your year was as wonderful as ours was!

When we met last January and checked our email, we found a surprise! A Hollywood agent had stumbled upon the AWS-Pittsburgh blog, loved our story, and offered us a small fortune to write the history of the chapter and threw in a movie deal to boot! We even got the final say on who is to play the board members in the film!

The agent has become a good friend and visits with us often, in our new luxury log home on our own private lake in Zelienople. (Yes, we’re putting your dues to good use.) It’s so peaceful there. Bob has a top of the line wood shop where he builds custom wine racks that he donates to families in need. (Those Ikea racks that poor people use are so tacky!) He’s also furnished our Vintage Hospice House with hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces. Vintage House provides luxury accommodations for patients and their families in the event of any wine emergencies and is staffed by nurses who have WSET Level III certification.

When Santina isn’t busy writing and overseeing movie project, she spends her days with her private tutor. How lucky we are that Fabio was available and willing to come live in the Hospice!  Fresh from Milano, Fabio is teaching Santina to speak Milanese Italian (so that she can read Northern Italian wine labels), and would you believe he is a former male model?  Those two have such a good time together! When he isn't teaching Santina, Fabio enjoys swimming laps in the indoor pool. She just loves to watch him swim. Don't worry. We don't let her near the pool unsupervised!

With all the celebrities carrying five-pound Yorkies around in a tote bag, Kevin has succumbed to the trend. It's hard to carry off both the tattoos and a “Yorkie in a poke”, but she manages. She has also started the Occupy Ross Township project! The platform is demanding equal cellar values with our upscale neighboring towns. We’ve all pitched tents in our front lawns, stopped taking showers and throw used corks at the police. It brings a tear to your eye.

John still hasn't had his identity stolen. He tried to auction it off on Ebay, but without a computer, it wasn’t a success. A very nice Prince from Nigeria contacted him and started up a mail correspondence. He promises to totally change John’s financial profile.

Since Terry now off house arrest, he’s gotten several interesting offers. The most exciting opportunity, though, was the offer to restock The Vatican’s wine cellar.  They asked him to get rid of all those dusty, old wines and replace them with some of his brand new award-winning homemade wine!  He refused, though, as it would have taken six or seven weeks, and he didn’t want to miss our January and February tastings!

Thom was able to get funding for research that led to a cure for oenocenosillicaphobia! (Wine glasses are refillable!) You can also thank him for discovering that the combination of wine and cheesecake, when taken together, in large quantities, have dramatic health benefits. Who knew? The cheesecake blocks damage to your liver, and the wine flushes out the calories in the cheesecake. Why this wasn't realized years ago is a shame.

So, that was our 2019. 

We hope that yours was just as awesome. Can't wait for 2020!