Member Spotlight - Erin Saunders

Our club members are what make our Key Club so special. Meet one of those remarkable members, Erin Saunders.

Erin hails from Canada and lived in Calgary for 23 years prior to coming to the USA as a traveling nurse. She discovered a love of wine on repeated visits and family vacations to Canada's Okanagan region. She currently works in nursing leadership and has received extensive training in process improvement, where she helps to improve the communication and interactions between patient and staff, making healthcare for all a little easier every step of the way.

Her discovery of Long Shadows came when she read about the amazing winemakers involved in our project, and she felt a particular connection to two of them. Erin had met Phillipe Melka in California at one of his wine events. She has friends who have a lot of his great creations, so she wanted to see how he was doing with Washington reds. In addition, her husband is from Australia and her sister-in-law worked at Penfolds. She has had many great Australian wines from John Duval and when asked about this she said, "How can you pass on what his talent brings to this industry? I love that he branched out to this hemisphere!"

When it comes to Key Club shipments, she tends to try one bottle and then hold on to the rest to cellar for the full development of the wine. When she gets access to older Long Shadows wines, she jumps at the opportunity to buy them as a great way to quickly build her cellar.

The story of her favorite Long Shadows wine is everything we love to hear from our customers. When visiting our tasting room for the first time, some long-time club members shared a glass of 2006 Pirouette with her. She fell in love with the wine and bought a bottle. Then she relays that, "We also became members due to the friendliness and kindness of your team!"

Erin enjoys the Key Club not only for the great wines, but the options that we offer with each shipment, "Variety and choice, helping us to try other varietals."

As we finished our conversation, I asked when she was going to open a bottle. She laughed and said she and her husband were enjoying a 2018 Syrah as we spoke.

Cheers Erin!