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January 12 2007
One of the wonderful benefits of a third, online dimension to our lives is the sheer mobilization of people that can occur quickly.
This was demonstrated to me as I sat at my computer screen, mouth agape, looking at the total raised in last months Menu for Hope III campaign which raised over $60,000 in a very short period of time. Good Grape was a proud participant and I always endorse local community engagement, as well.
While the monies for Menu for Hope III went to a UN Food Program to aid worldwide hunger issues, all areas of need are important to those that are passionate about that particular subject.
So, today’s post, while perhaps not as weighty as worldwide hunger relief, is important as well.
Jason Goelz, a very good guy, something of an Indiana native son, and a winemaker with his own label and developing winery called Sapid is sounding the clarion bell for wine sales … sales in the name of Dakota.
I’m a dog lover and can empathize with doing whatever it takes to maintain your dog’s health. And, so it is with enthusiasm that I urge you to consider buying some vino to help the cause.
Dakota is his dog and Dakota, it seems, got into an accident and tore his ACL. Normally the domain of football and basketball players, the ACL is a ligament in the knee that always requires surgical repair—on both man and man’s best friend.
In order to offset medical costs and drive some sales of his tasty and reasonably priced wines, Jason is offering 25% off of a three bottle purchase at his web site by February 1st. www.sapidwines.com. Just make sure you use the promotional code “Dakota” to receive your discount.
Do it because you just like to buy wine online. Do it to help out a furry friend, do it because Jason’s wines are very good price performers, but just do it. You can find out more about Sapid and their wines at this link.
Posted in, Tasting Safari: Wines You Can Buy Online. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
January 11 2007
I’m a bit of the self-aware sort, so I asked my wife at the end of the night if I was out of line, or even slightly too “in-the-know” and therefore exhibiting a pattern of behavior that could cause an eyeball to roll and be considered off-putting. She said no. And, trust me when I say my wife has no issue with calling a spade a spade and telling me exactly how she feels.
I leave it to you then, dear reader, to help me understand if I was dealing with a boor, or if in fact I was off-putting with an eagerness to express a shared understanding about a shared area of interest.
It’s kind of like the old poker axiom: when you size up the table you always try and find the sucker, the rube, and if you can’t find him, then you’re the sucker. Kind of like that, except this was a game of “find the boor.”
I recently had occasion to be a guest at a holiday mixer. The party was filled with folks who were familiar with each other but largely just acquaintances. This generally leads to lots of small talk and brief asides into a re-occurring conversational thread for the night. For example, roving rounds of conversation around the recent re-decorating, or how much time it took to get the house ready for the holidays, or the traffic at the mall for shopping, etc.
You’ve been to these parties, trust me.
At this particular party the host had a wine cellar that she was showing off to a wandering band of minstrel guests. That was the re-occurring conversational thread. “So, you have a cellar.”
The hostess is about 25 years my senior and was not aware that I drank wine any more than she knew about Jane down the streets odd predilection for vintage fiesta ware—this is to say, she had no knowledge. You have to understand then that contextually the loose outline of the conversation thread that follows would be prefaced by no baseline shared understanding of wine with the person with whom I was speaking.
Presumably, if somebody says something that remotely resembles some level of knowledge indicating a higher-level of interest than a rapport might start to develop.
In the cellar, which was a nice 7 or 8 hundred bottle area the size of a small walk-in closet with temperature control, I immediately noted the Saintsbury Pinot Noir.
Good Grape: That’s a nice bottle. I have a friend whose wife is Asst. Winemaker there.
You would think that might elicit some follow-up. You would be wrong. Cricket. Cricket.
Good Grape: (eyeballing the Silver Oak): Silver Oak is nice, do you get shipments?
You would think that might lead to a conversation about sourcing and the twice annual releases, but nah.
Good Grape: (eyeballing the Bordeaux cases): Do you drink Bordeaux? Every year I think about getting futures, but, boy, this year the prices are just crazy.
You would think that might lead to a conversation about the two dozen bottles from 1999 and 2000 that were sitting in neatly packed boxes. Nah. Distracted silence.
And, so on and so forth for at least another three comments/observations/questions. Basically everything I said that was an attempt at some level of shared understanding was a non-sequitar to something else, and so on and so forth.
I, unfortunately, left the conversation shaking my head wondering if she was just a completely self-absorbed wine snob, or if perhaps I was trying to hard to demonstrate my wine chops and therefore was coming off as my own sort of jerk.
Later, after I had excused myself to go back upstairs and get another house pour (which was pretty good, by the way) I asked my wife I was out of line or off-putting and she said no that the hostess was very rude for not picking up on the verbal cues to have an advanced conversation.
So, I leave it to you, reader. Was I a “check out the big brain on brad” or was the hostess either A) a clueless wine wannabe or B) An in-the-know wine wannabe that didn’t suffer fools? And, have you ever been in a situation like this at a party? Leave a comment.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (3) | Print |
January 9 2007
Somewhere in my wine blogging notebook, the one stuffed full of clippings, scrawlings and half-baked ideas that I use when I need inspiration for a blog post (which usually creates three ideas that I try to jam into one post that then becomes an unwieldy 1000 word essay, but enough about my pathos), I have the notion to create an all-star sitcom episode with the denizens of the wine blogosphere.
For example, Beau at Basic Juice would be Chuck from Happy Days—he is Richie’s wise older brother who appears on the scene occasionally to drop some pearls of wisdom and steal a home cooked meal before heading off into the night for some adventure.
Alder from Vinography might be Judge Harry Stone from Night Court—young, friendly and popular.
And, Tom from Fermentation might be Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati—the veteran, unaffected, cool, and laid back disc jockey at the station.
These are, of course, based on perceptions because I’ve never met Beau, and have only had fleeting digital contact with Alder. Tom and I have exchanged professional pleasantries, but we haven’t had the opportunity to break bread.
It might be a lot of fun to put people in categorical buckets based on perception, and have a little fun along the way, all in the spirit of fun and cooperation for a loosely organized, frenetic, all-over-the-map band of people doing something in the name of passion.
And, I guess that’s the intention of most awards, as well—create some order out of what can be quite chaotic—and to recognize those that are doing a good job.
So, many kudos have to go to Tom Wark at Fermentation for his development and launch of the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards.
The press release hit the wire and is getting a lot of traction as he points out here. There are six categories: Best Winery Blog, Best Wine Podcast or Video Blog, Best Graphics on a Wine Blog, Best Review Wine Blog, Best Single Subject Wine Blog and Best Wine Blog Writing.
It’s a shame that Tom cannot win, because pound for pound, with consistency and thoughtfulness, Tom’s blog wins hands down. It was Fermentation, in fact, that was a shining beacon of inspiration for this site in terms of being able to do a high-cut, general interest wine site without delving too much into reviews.
If Alder is the elder statesman of wine blogging, Tom is certainly your favorite uncle.
Nominate your favorite blog or blogs on the left hand navigation at Fermentation: http://fermentation.typepad.com
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (0) | Print |
January 8 2007
Tim at Winecast offers up some excellent predictions (found here) on the wine world for 2007 and one of his predictions has to do with a blogger going mainstream. He says,
At Least One Wine Blogger ‘Goes Pro’ - One could already argue that some wine bloggers have made the move already with Alder speaking at Antonia Allegra’s Symposium for Professional Wine Writers this year and Lenn introducing his own wine club, but I think a wine blogger will be hired by the established wine press in 2007. My money is on the Wine Spectator to be the innovator who will bring on this blogger as a “guest” but they will remain blogging there long-term.
One of the most under-played stories of 2006, before we get too far away from the year that was, has to be Robert Parker’s re-jiggering of his critics line-up. Kevin Zraly, David Schildknecht and a guy named Neal Martin, who was formerly a pro-am blogger in the U.K. via his www.wine-journal.com site, all joined Parker’s line-up of writers and critics with seemingly minimal to no disruption to the business at hand.
One might say that Neal Martin might be the benchmark for wine bloggers going pro, having already made the jump mainstream for the blogosphere.
Martin flew under the radar and out of the stream of consciousness of the U.S. wine blogosphere, but clearly going from being a wine outsider/blogger to a “Critic-at-Large” working for Robert Parker in the span of 48 months is a Cinderella story of some magnitude.
I’ve poked around the Mark Squires boards on the site for Neal’s threads and he’s still in ramp-up mode for sure, but check out his site Wine-Journal site for a three part narrative on the back-story for his ascendance—you can find it here, here and here. I’m providing a couple of excerpts, as well. Martin writes in the affected U.K. manner, rife with pop culture reference and graduate level vocab—similar to countryman Nick Hornby, author of books like About a Boy, High Fidelity and others.
Wine-journal started in June 2nd 2003, written by someone with not a book to his name, no column in a magazine or newspaper, no reputation to build upon. But neither did Robert Parker when he started off in the 1970’s and if he can do it then why not I? Even if I got just a couple of readers each day: that would be an achievement. For the first month I got exactly that, a couple of visits each day, usually myself or my mum checking what I had written about her in the diary. November 1st 2006 and during the 31 days in October I have over 130,000 visits and added another 24,000 unique visits from September. Nearly all through word-of-mouth, barely a mention in the press, without any compromise and without any bold proclamations of greatness. It is a readership, a status of affairs that I could never have imagined when I started.
Wine-journal.com built its success on a budget of precisely £11.49 per month including VAT (cue many webmasters to question the zero’s on their technical support bill.) That is everything, my total cost; so if any aspiring young writer reading this wants to express their adoration of Malmsey or Austrian Grüner-Veltliner or English sparkling wine to the Alaskan extremes, South American deltas or the metropolises on the Eastern Seaboard, then just do it - you will be astonished how simple it really is.
So for now I must bid you adieu. However, it will not be long before the site is transferred to its new home and then it is down to business. So dry your eyes because the end is just the beginning.
Neal hits his stride in the next installment where he recounts receiving an inquiry email from a Parker associate:
I maintain my morning ritual: de-scale my cup that is ossified with tea tannin; crank up the PC, open my in-box and then spend the next ten minutes deleting more spam than you would find in a post-war suburban butcher’s counter. Twenty invitations to enlarge my penis (no need thank you) and similar number begging me to share $10,000,000 from Dr. Ubalubu in Nigeria (still nothing in my account despite all his promises.) In fact, these messages are so profligate that I have a reflex action that deletes them in the minimal amount of time, so much so that have occasionally erased something whose modus operandi is not to clog up my mail-box.
It very nearly happens with one whose sender’s name I fail to recognize and with finger hovering over the delete key, I withdraw for the simple reason that it is highlighted in red and has a little flag that henceforth shall indicate “Do not delete me because I am about to change your life.”
I click enter and read the short but to-the-point message. There is this guy, innocuous enough name, claiming to be an associate of Robert Parker, the crux of which is: “We were wondering if you would be interested in becoming a wine critic and writer for The Wine Advocate.”
Check it out and kudos, as well, to Alder for his invitation to the Wine Writers Symposium—he will in all likelihood be next and the first US blogger to expand beyond the digital realm to full-time wine writing gig, as Tim astutely points out.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
January 6 2007
A wine-related goal of mine for the New Year is to figure out biodynamic wines—or, at the very least come to a reasonable facsimile of an opinion grounded in research and pragmatism.
Certainly, it’s one of the more contentious, lighting-rod type issues in the wine industry.
And, I may be biting off more than I can chew. But, who wouldn’t be interested in theories so seemingly contrary to our modern world as equating farming to the Zodiac. I mean, for goodness sake, there aren’t horoscopes in every paper are there?
The timing is good to start reviewing it though because another small resolution of mine is to participate in the Wine Blogging Wednesdays (WBW) on a monthly basis and this month’s edition is … yes, Biodynamic wines.
Though, a hunch tells me that a lot of people for WBW are going to operate in the gray and actually drink a certified organic. Finding BioD wines is difficult.
My own tasting experience is limited to just one bottle—a Sineann Pinot Noir that I tasted head to head with other Sineann non-BioD Pinot’s. To my palate it did taste fresher and livelier, if not a bit restrained—kind of like a ballet dancer performing to a three-chord guitar song. It seemed nice, but dissonant. But, because it wasn’t a blind tasting I think I was probably transferring some of my own psychosomatic bias.
The challenge with being a viticulture layperson and trying to discern some sort of essential truth out of BioD, as it’s affectionately abbreviated, is that there is no official documentation.
Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the movement, gave a lot of lectures in 1924 called Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture that make up the underpinnings of the philosophy.
But, because Steiner died within a year after giving the lectures a lot of his theory is left to wide interpretation.
Ironically, Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, held at the center of all of his teachings the notion that he wanted to bridge the material and spiritual world through a philosophical understanding.
Many Christians view Biodynamics as being equivalent to palm and tarot readers and anathema to Christianity based on many of its teachings.
Steiner, for his part, believed that farming consisted of viewing the farm and farming in its entirety, including cosmic and lunar forces.
A small bit of irony should be pointed out, though, that both the Bible and BioD require some level of faith because both source documents are anecdotal and opinion based.
As a part of my primary research, I just bought and received a copy of the book Biodynamic Wines by Monty Waldin—a doorstop the size of an old school Stephen King hardback, coming in at 544 pages. I bought it off Amazon and it’s probably as good of a primer as any. I’m not sure where this research on BioD is going to take me over the course of 2007, but I have a hunch I’ll have to do some research with the Demeter Association and with Steiner’s source documents from his lectures. Or I may just get bored with it and draw a conclusion, if I haven’t sublimely done so already.
A recent article in Decanter Magazine called Pinch of Quartz, Horn of Cow by Beverly Blanning offers up a somewhat flattering portrait of many in the wine BioD jetstream, but a parting quote before the walk-off line at the end of the article offers perhaps the most telling statement about BioD when Alvaro Espinoza from Chile said,
“It’s harder for a big company to become biodynamic, because everybody needs to believe in it.”
In the end, this may just be about faith and you can’t validate nor shake somebody on either side regarding their faith.
Keywords: Biodynamic wine, Rudolf Steiner
Posted in, Good Grape Daily: Pomace & Lees. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print |
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