German Wine Society: Membership Meeting 2015 – Postponed until April 10th

Notice – This event has been postponed to coincide with our 2013 Vintage Tasting with Phil Bernstein event on April 10th, 2015 due to inclement weather

Dear GWS Members:

You are cordially invited to attend this year’s membership meeting on Friday, March 6, at 7 p.m.   There will be some very good wines from the cellar to drink with our — by now traditional — quiz game and cheeses and breads to go with the wines. There will also be short reports on the chapter’s finances, membership, etc. Members pay nothing for this tasting; non-members pay $15 each. At this annual meeting we elect new officers.  The statements of candidates for the upcoming year are listed below; please note that several candidates are running for different positions than last year and two new candidates are running for director. 

The venue is the clubroom at Harbour Square, 500 N Street SW, Washington, DC, 20024. It is very easy to get to and park there.   We have reserved a few spaces in the Harbour Square complex’s visitor parking area, but we cannot guarantee that parking will be available.   Metro is very accessible, on the Green Line, Waterfront-SEU station, www.wmata.com.

This election is critical to he future of the society and your vote counts!   We should take advantage of this opportunity to introduce fresh thinking into guiding the evolution of the chapter and planning future events. This is your chapter and you can help shape its activities by voting.   Also, this is your chance to ask questions of  board members who are running for new positions they have not held before, as well as the new candidates for board membership, and make your views known on the directions that our chapter should take. Please also consider giving back to the chapter by volunteering to plan a monthly tasting. 

The deadline for reservations is Sunday, March 1. If any other member wants to run for a board positions, nominations are due by Friday, February 20, to be submitted to the current secretary, Hanne Caraher.  We recommend that you submit any such nominations by e-mail at hcaraher@verizon.net, to ensure that they are received in a timely manner.  Since there are no vacancies in any of the board positions, we will not be able to accept nominations from the floor for any positions during the meeting under the by-laws – all additional nominations must be received in advance.  If any other candidate runs for a board positions, a contested election will result, and new ballots will be recirculated to reflect the additional nominations. Members who are not able to be at the meeting but would like to vote must submit their ballots to the secretary by Saturday, March 1. 

Please send your reservation so that we know how much wine and cheese to buy (and a $15 check for non-members only). Send your ballot if you are a member and want to vote but will not be present at the meeting, to German Wine Society, 5607 Huntington Parkway, Bethesda, MD 20814.  If you are a member attending the meeting and are current in your dues, you can also return your reservation by return e-mail.If you have not paid your annual dues yet (July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015), please include $35 with your check (single or couple membership), to ensure that you are a member in good standing and entitled to vote.

All GWS members and guests are reminded that alcohol consumption can lead to intoxication.  Therefore, Society members and their guests are expected to drink in moderation at Society events.  It is advisable to provide designated drivers or other modes of transit where available, or mostly to taste rather than consume alcohol when such drivers or alternative means of transportation are not available.

Statements of Candidates:

Carl Willner (for president) – He has been a member of the German Wine Society for over 20 years and a member of the board for three years, serving currently as vice president.   During the past four years, he was been responsible for planning five successful GWS events:  the tastings at the Embassy of Luxembourg in March 2011 and October 2013, the Spargelfest dinners at Cafe Mozart in May 2013 and May 2014, and the Oktoberfest in October 2014. He  also helped conduct several other events including membership meetings and two Oktoberfests, and was in charge of the updating of our by-laws last year.   German wines have long been a part of his life – his grandparents from Bavaria ran a German restaurant in upstate New York – so the German Wine Society naturally became a significant part of his life in Washington. He looks forward to helping to lead our chapter forward, with the goals of several interesting and educational events each year – a mixture of dinners and modestly priced tastings, a return to the German Embassy for some of our events, outreach to new members including the use of Meetup and our new website inaugurated in 2014, and a continued wine cellar on a smaller scale with a more focused acquisition strategy including high-quality wines.  

Christian Schiller (for vice president) — A member of the German Wine Society since he came to the USA in 1983 and a member of the Board since 2010. He has a broad background in international finance and economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Mainz, Germany. Before his retirement in 2010, he worked for almost 30 years at the International Monetary Fund. With his retirement, he started to write about wine and was accepted by the International Federation of Wine and Spirits Journalists and Writers. His main outlet for his writing is his daily wine blog “schiller-wine,” but he has also published in “Falstaff,” “Weinfeder” and other journals. Many of his publications are on German wine. He has organized many interesting wine events and plans to continue to do so. In June 2014, he arranged a wine tasting with the German Wine Princess.

David Roehm (for treasurer) — He has been a member of the German Wine Society for more than 20 years and treasurer for more than 10 years. He loves German wines, particularly Mosel Rieslings, and had the wonderful experience of attending the German Wine Academy. During his tenure as treasurer, we have striven to keep adequate funds in the treasury while maintaining reasonable prices for events and an adequate wine cellar. He is mostly retired now, but his background is in management consulting and finance, including an MBA and experience as a CFO.

Alan Knapp (for secretary) — A member since the late nineties, a board member since 2005, currently serving as president, He has focused on three intertwined goals: interesting yet varied tastings that reflect the variety and quality of Germany’s wines, a responsibly sized cellar preserving vintages for our future enjoyment when they might otherwise be unattainable, and financial stewardship that ensures we have the flexibility to experience our wines in great settings from time to time. Throughout, he has guided the chapter to a consistent, stable annual calendar of events that allows members to predict and plan for upcoming tastings. Looking forward, he sees: our chapter reinvigorated, reaching out to new members while retaining current members; focused, educational wine experiences in a variety of settings; and an even smaller cellar, yet of higher wine quality; all while ensuring we have the funds to achieve these goals.

Marilyn Scarbrough (for director) – Carol Watkins, a business acquaintance, suggested wine tastings as an excellent way to meet people and introduced Marilyn to the German Wine Society soon after her arrival in Washington DC. She joined in 1986 and has been an active member ever since. When Carol wanted to step down from the Board where she served as secretary and membership chair, Marilyn took over membership and Hanne Caraher accepted secretarial duties. During her tenure on the Board, Marilyn conducted a survey of membership interests and was actively involved in Board functions, including the 30-year anniversary celebration of the German Wine Society. After several years spent mending a broken leg, she returned to serve on the Board and again seeks re-election. Marilyn still believes the German Wine Society is an excellent way to meet the nicest people in Washington and to explore the very best in wines.

Hanne Caraher (for director) – A member of the German Wine Society since 1982 and the chapter secretary every year since the late 80s. She would like to continue as director for the next year.   She is also the secretary-treasurer of the National German Wine Society and as such serves as liaison between the chapter and the national office. She has attended the German Wine Academy and taken many trips to taste German wines – seven or eight to visit German wineries, one to the Alto Adige (Tirol) where they make German-style wines, and one to Alsace. Her concern for the chapter is that our tastings are educational, not merely social events.

Mike Fritze (for director) – A member of GWS for about eight years. He was raised in a German-American household where he learned to appreciate fine German wine and beer.  He developed his emerging interest in German wine and wine regions during multiple trips visiting family and friends there. He has led several tastings particularly featuring German red wines.  He is interested in running for a board position in order to help plan new events, activities and tastings.

Kevin Ross (for director) – He has been a member of the DC Chapter for little over a year, though his interest in the wines of Germany extend further back. Attending college as the craft brewing revolution was in full swing, he enjoyed learning and tasting his way through the beers of the world. Several years later Kevin branched out into wine and has never looked back. His interest became so deep that he took a job at Schneider’s of Capitol Hill, a local wine store in DC, where he quickly developed a love of the wines of Germany, Alto Adige, Austria, and Alsace. Kevin has since moved on from his wine store days, but he continues his love of the Germanic wine regions. Kevin created the DC Chapter’s new website and updates its content.