Good Grape Wine Company

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I saw a post here that calls Stormhoek wine, perhaps a bit playfully, the drink du jour for the Valley harkening back to the go-go days of the 90s:"It can’t be a 90s bubble party without Absolut," says Dot-com marketer David Parmet. "Could we say Stormhoek is the new Absolut?" With marketing blogger Hugh MacLeod pimping this wine in the Valley through branded prints, blogging, and sponsored geek dinners, Stormhoek is the official drink of the Valley alcoholic.The larger context of the blog posting on the site Valleywag.com is whether the parties (which are getting better from the dark days of 2001 - 2004) are up to snuff with the old days circa 1999.  But, this time they’re covered not with the tulip-like mania that accompanied the stories back in the day, but now it’s a hipster detached sort of irony.Instead of buying First Growth Grand Crus with the vested options, now it appears that the order of the day may be to sock a little money away and drink some Stormhoek.  Stormhoek oughtta set-up some sort of pink sheet stock investment program for all of the new Internet fans they are cultivating.In correspondence with a couple of the guys from Stormhoek, they sent me a link to a podcast and the contents to this brief speech given at a Stormhoek wine dinner. I thought both were sufficiently interesting to include here.Stormhoek Dinner speech attributed to Andrea Rodenberg:StormhoekDinner Speech "Lotsof people will tell you how the internet changes everything, andthey are usually willing to tell you how, but their how’s aregenerally quite contradictory. We are more isolated, more connected.We know more, which is great: we are overloaded with information,which isn’t. The internet makes our lives better, it makes our livesworse. Whatever.It all goes back to the first frivolous human impulse: story telling.Art originates in the same place writing originates, and with the samepurpose: to say it was so. We’ve come a long way from cave-drawingsand oral traditions. Now our desire to have a story, tell a story…be a story is co-opted by people who want to sell us something. Everywhere you look, advertisements are out there telling you what kind ofa story you could be in, if you only wore their clothes, bought theirfurniture and so on.But here is the first thing that the internet actually changes: ourrelationship with the products we enjoy is no longer that of anaudience. It is now a conversation. Stormhoek is a wine company thatgets it. They have provided the wine tonight, not because they havesomething to say to their customers, but because they are interestedin what we have to say. They want to participate, here and now, not inthe story they are making for us, but in the story that we make forourselves.If you like the wine you’ve had tonight, fantastic. Blog about it,tell your friends, tell Stormhoek. If you don’t like it, that’s okay.You can still tell Stormhoek, though I’m sure they’d rather you nottell too many friends about it before they have a chance to respond.Their thank-you for being here tonight is a signed print from the guywho helped make their ethic a reality: Hugh Macleod, the only thingthey’ve asked in return is that we send them back a signed guestsheet, which is by the wine. So write a note, sign your name, pick upa print and drink up."Stormhoek is imported by Palm Bay Import Co.--the same folks behind the hugely popular Cavit Pinot Grigio from Italy.  You can see more on Stormhoek at the Palm Bay web site.  http://www.goodgrape.com/index.php/160/