Good Grape Wine Company

June 27 2007

What I would do for my 7 ½ Minutes of Internet Fame

As I recently read through the Chocolate & Zucchini cookbook while my wife read Julie & Julia, both books borne out of a blog, I got to thinking about what I would do if wanted to do an “e-stunt” related to my blog.  After all, first-person and memoir-related narratives are all the rage in the publishing industry, surely something from a wine perspective would sell.

And, there have been other, more hoary publicity-oriented items, as well, —the guy that sold all of his possessions piece by piece on eBay, the guy that photographed EVERYTHING he ate for a year and so on …

The epiphany happened while I sat in a rented RV while on my recent vacation.  I was sans laptop and Internet connectivity for the first time in two years (since my honeymoon) and I had traversed 700 miles in what would end up being about a 1300 mile trip in 7 days.  Sitting in a nicely appointed 2008 23 foot RV at June Lake, near Mono Lake east of Yosemite national park, my dog at my feet, the sun setting, I was drinking a very enjoyable ’05 Eberle Zinfandel (gold medal at the SF Chronicle tasting) and my wife and I had just polished off a beautiful light charcuterie and cheese dinner.  A book beckoned; after I finished the previous days LA Time sports section, before turning in early for a long slumber.

“Ah, Life is good,” I thought.

“These RV’s are pretty comfortable, too.”

“Man, it’s nice to be on vacation, but what I’d really like to do is kick my shoes off, fire up my laptop and write a blog post.”

Ding.  Ding.  That’s it!

I want to be a wine vagabond. 

As a child of the 80s, I have indelibly etched memories of Alan Hunter, in the early MTV days circa 1986, going “Amuck in America,” a tour of the U.S.

I want to do the same thing, except through a wine filter.

If I could take 3 months off of work and do some promotional masturbation, I would head up to Elkhart, Indiana, the recreational vehicle capital of the world, sweet talk my way into a loaner RV for 3 months, subsequently sweet talk my way onto some sort of sponsorship with Appellation America, Americanwinery.com or another wine-related company interested in the wines of the U.S. (hey, those vehicle wraps for sponsorship are pretty cool) and propose the following:

I’m going to write a book that starts out as a daily blog, which would be found at the recently registered http://www.winevagabond.com, and I’m going to travel the country from New York to California traveling as much as possible (exclusively almost) on established wine trails and their connecting highways.  Taking a meandering path from New York, to Pennsylvania, down to Virginia, through North Carolina, doubling back to Ohio, shooting up to Michigan, cutting through Illinois, traversing Missouri, crawling Texas, I would find a circuituitous path to hit all 48 contiguous states on their established wine trails, if each state had one.

Along the way, I would create a daily chart of places visited, sites along the way, via www.platial.com or a similar service, stop at the wineries, meet the people, learn their stories, drink their wines, and blog about the whole experience.  The end result would be a lifetime of memories, a kick-ass blog and a book that re-crafts the American experience for every road trip vacationer that that longs to drive Route 66.

Maybe this has been done in some form, but as a Wine Vagabond, I would strive to strive to transcend mere tourism in order to capture the American wine experience, no, the human condition via first person experiential travel.  How’s that for a lofty goal, especially for a minstrel like me.

How would you incorporate wine into your adventure if you could take off from work for 3 months?

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