It’s a day for the Oscars! I think my wine of choice as I watch the academy pass around its highly anticipated awards will, in the spirit of the event have to be a Californian. But, in the spirit of my own African heritage, and because last year whilst I watched the Oscars from my NY apartment I had the fortune of seeing South Africa win an Oscar for best foreign film, I’ll be choosing the Acacia Carneros. To me, nothing is more reminiscent of home than an Acacia tree, as we had two giant Acacia’s growing in our front yard when I grew up.

Carneros is not the sort of region that would have been promoted on the aisles at the local super-market; and perhaps if I’d gone into my favourite wine-store up the road and said I was feeling like a Pinot Noir, Dan wouldn’t have thought to give it to me unless he’d been given a special deal on it. In truth Carneros is a region I may well have never come across on my own. But like a good movie, or a recommended read, sometimes all it takes to discover what you really want is just a helpful tip from a trusted source.

I’ll let you know how the wine goes tomorrow…

Our vision at TasteVine, true and honest, devoid of any marketing spin, is to focus the lens through which people view wine. You see, the thing is that America is still steeped in post-prohibition law and the impact of the woman’s temperance movement still leaves its mark on the industry. When Parker emerged in 1980 he was a true pioneer. Americans at the time were drinking spirits and beer, and the section for wine in grocery stores was limited to jug wine, standard varieties from large producers and not much else. Parker created the Wine Advocate, began getting circulation and developed his point system which would go on to be his legacy, and suddenly a culture routed in thousands of years of Asian and European history was being controlled by a newcomer from Maryland. This is quite phenomenal, because Parker existed in a vacuum, in that his system, although staggeringly consistent is entirely self-referential and suddenly consumers and buyers were making their decisions based on what someone else thought. And this is where the way America began to view wine became distorted.

TasteVine’s one goal is to remove the Yellowtail-goggles or Parker-vision that has caused every recent wine to either be thought of in terms of its point score or compared to Yellow-tail in sales volume. With a fresh perspective, young and worldly minds, enthusiasm and passion, we’ve started this company in order to be the first people to create a service that caters to your taste, and recognises that your tastes might change as your knowledge and passion grows and that a wine recommendation is completely subjective.

Literally and figuratively we’ve developed a ‘tasteful technology’ that customizes itself to you. None of us claim to be experts in wine, we’re just passionate, and we would not presume to pass judgement on what constitutes good or bad, because we know that the person who knows what you like most: is you.

Why would anyone who is in their mid twenties to early thirties take time out of their week to read a blog about wine? A great question, which, if reader will allow, will be answered in the following sentences:

Wine is profoundly important in a way most of us can’t imagine. Reasons being: wine inhabits the same realm as literature and art. Literature and art are the only two things that separate man from beast. Literature and art save mankind from destruction and brutality, think that whenever a fascist regime comes to power first they outlaw the writers and the poets, and from there all other personal liberties crumble. The artist and the writer are the people who set us free and by implication, wine, being in the same realm as art and literature, is also an agent of freedom. Think of it this way, Budweiser and Miller represent corporate hegemony, whilst wine represents the individual and old-fashioned craftsmanship. One has to ask whether they would prefer a world that was ruled by mass markets and homogenized products; or whether they prefer an old-fashioned, time-honoured ritual that provides unique flavours free to be sought after and consumed by the individual that is so inclined.

Think about it, literature and art (and wine) are the only aspects existing in mankind Read the rest of this entry »