I’m getting really tired of the word ‘wine’, hoping not to offend those out there who seemingly like the way the word rolls, or doesn’t roll off your tongue…. I dunno, it doesn’t capture the magic for me - it resonates with ‘whining’ and being a ‘wino’ — you think that’s going to bring the product to the masses and change the world?

What about ELIXIR?

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Image via Wikipedia

So we’ve been going through a little bit of a whirlwind lately over here at GT trying to find our path, and it ultimately led up to a fabulous meeting Monday in Atlanta. Paul, Andrea, and Pascal from Inertia flew out to meet and hang with us. It was great because we had Gahnert and my pops and his importer operations guy Mike  — there was some serious industry weight in that room. Yet, everybody was laid back and chill. We built some great confidence in TasteVine being the product and the brand. We’re going to put the recommendation engine more backend for now and start focusing on finding some awesome global wines and producers that want to be a part of the brand. Anybody will still be able to use the engine (which will give recommendations from our retailer partners’ direct client base), and others can try our TasteVine Selections, which will be the best wines and labels from around the world. We’ve got some great people behind us and are going to work hard to find the best juice in the world. Create the magic elixir

This is the second post I’ve written using Zemanta, a blogging tool that recommends content based on what you’re writing. I tried installing their Wordpress plugin and got glitches so I tried the browser extension and am very impressed… it recommends pictures, articles, and links in real time as you write your post. The articles and links seem reasonably intelligent, but need to get better to be truly valuable. The pictures are decent as well… I thought that the pic above was absolutely stunning, not very relevant, but stunning. Lol, I also thought it was funny how a Zemanta logo didn’t pop up. Regardless of the strength of the recommendations, its the UI of the tool that excites me and makes me want to use it again… you realize that all the hype about semantic web technologies is cool, but it’s always a great user experience that paves the way forward.

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We’ve worked really hard over the past 6 months to establish our first client Tastevine as its own company, and feel very good about our work. We now feel it’s time to take what we’ve learned and become a more well rounded marketing and technology company. Holistic, I guess you could say… servicing the full holistic lifestyle.

Wine is a big part of this, and so is organic food, natural medicine, renewable consumer goods, social apps & games that bring people together. The whole deal.  We feel this represents who we truly are, as it represents the change we want to see in the world. Furthermore, with the clients we’ve been working with outside of the wine industry, it is clear that a holistic marketplace should be the focus of our services. In talking to people about this growth, we’ve received mixed reviews. Some say we should remain a wine company and others see us becoming something more.

Check out these rough mockups for our banner… a picture says a thousand words as they say. Click the images to see an enlarged view. One attempts to show a big evolution outside of wine and the other shows something more subtle.

Which one is in the right direction? What would you suggest?

This so far is my favorite restaurant in Atlanta. Incredible representation of South African cuisine and atmosphere. Part of the restaurant is an outdoor awning with design style very close to a restaurant on the Cape Town coast. Very rustic and breezy. I had the Kingclip fish, indigenous to South Africa, and it was nothing short of amazing – I’ve got to rate it up there with salmon as one of my favorites. My gf had ostrich, which seems like a stretch, but it was equally as tasty. Very fresh concept with exotic food – Love it! The Ferraris usually parked out front don’t hurt either — *****, $$