We’re looking for some cool young people from around the world to join the Grape Thinking team and become global liaisons for us. This will involve writing posts, discussing the cultural unifying power of wine, and most importantly, reviewing wines from your country or region of the world. You can write posts on Grape Thinking, put up reviews, and interact on our forum at World Cup of Wine. The perks of being on the Grape Thinking team are expense paid travels, free wine, and becoming part of a team that wants to help bring the world together. Ruarri has been doing an awesome job of rep’ing South Africa and the UK. Now we’re looking for people anywhere else in the world that would like to be a part of this — France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Romania, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Israel, Indonesia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Morocco, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Peru,– just to name a few… However, the great thing about wine is that it’s in virtually every country in the world, so anyone anywhere interested, contact us.

Most of the players in the United States Rugby side probably wouldn’t know where to point if you asked them to indicate Tonga’s position on a map, and thus it must have been quite satisfying for the small island to serve a cold can of whip-ass to the world’s only remaining superpower yesterday when the shamed Eagles lost 25 points to 15. The USA’s dismal performance in the Rugby and Soccer World Cup all serve as a startling reminder of the tremendous lack of interest in world affairs on the US’s part - and that when it comes to world sport, environmental protocols and UN resolutions, the US is not a team player. Of course it is not only in sport that the US are beaten by small and obscure nations, it would seem that recently the score-board in War hasn’t been to flattering either (think Vietnam, Somalia and Iraq where most of the soldiers who have been thrown into wars there probably couldn’t have found the country they’re fighting in on a map before they were stationed there.) Perhaps the lesson in all this is that aside from at a bit of geography in high-school, it would perhaps be good foreign policy to try prime the pumps of worldly curiosity within the Nation. I dare say that there’s no better way to get to learn a little geography and some history than by drinking wine and having a love of food. Imagine people switching off the mind-dulling and hate spewing Fox News, and switching over to the Food Network for a cooking show in Tuscany, a wine tour in Syria or a cuisine pilgrimage to Morocco. Perhaps we could do away with some of the demonization of the Middle-East if we were to explore their culture. Hell, how’s this for an idea: instead of trying to destroy the rest of the world, how about enjoying it! What a crazy thing that would be, enjoy and don’t destroy. There is after all such a thing as soft-power, which is where you win wars not with bullets and rifles, but with culture and ideas.

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Pinot Noir is the McDaddy of wine grapes - and that’s supposed to be quite literally. Some time back I was listening to grape radio, and they featured a symposium on Pinot Noir where it was said that the oldest vines in the world, discovered in archaeological sites and then tested, were most similar to Pinot Noir - placing it in the same class as Australopithecus (perhaps a brand idea there. Australopithecus Pinot Noir. perhaps not!)

We take clones from vines, because the seeds will only produce a genetic mix of the plant the seed-bearing vine and the male plant which fertilised the seeds with its pollen. To get an exact replica - we need to take a cutting and graft it onto root-stock. Anyone who has ever tried out their green thumb at college whilst cultivating non-medical marijuana will be well acquainted with this process!

So, it stands to reason that nearly all varietals are derivative of Pinot Noir and have evolved over thousands of years of not only by natural selection - but farmer’s intervention as well. I’m sorry to break it to any wine-creationists out there that all the vines in the world didn’t just miraculously appear - but that’s what botany tells us anyway, and it’s generally wise to give science the last word!

As Pinot Noir is thought to be the source of all things winey, this particular article: The Grapevine Genome Sequenced, is rather interesting as it comments on the genetic sequencing of Pinot Noir. A few commentators weren’t quite sure how they felt about it - however, its been known for a while that certain farmers began splicing rat genes into tomatoes a while back in order to save tomatoes from being susceptible to frost (obviously this is part true, part urban legend.) I don’t see the problem really - for places like South Africa, which battle with leaf-roll virus - or others that are threatened by Phyloxeras or horn-beetle or harsh tannins etc. Imagine we could make all vines seedless - this would greatly reduce bitter tannins released in careless crushing. We could even make grapes less susceptible to oxidization and microbes, and reduce the need for using S02 - making red wines more accessible and less tannic.

However - where do we stop? Will wine-makers be Willy Wonkas, with Umpa-Lumpa’s crushing the grapes and fantastical scientists making wine that tastes amazing in curious and fantastic ways, with oenophiles waiting to get into the special wineries, where passage is given only to those who have a bottle with a golden screw-cap?

I’ve read a few articles about nano-technology’s potential implications on food and wine. Its hard to know what to say about this without getting into slippery slope arguments where people may forecast the end of wine as we know it if we permit too much tampering. However - if we consider that all wines are derivative of Pinot Noir, then it would seem that nature has done a lot of its own tampering, and its probably worth buying a lot of wine now and lying it on its side, because its going to be very interesting to compare the taste of now, to that of the rapidly approaching future.

The World Cup of Rugby is just around the corner and will be upon us in September. Now I know that American’s don’t really give too much attention to the amazing sport: but this year is perhaps a year to change your mind. As you may or may not know - France, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Italy and New Zealand over and above being awesome regions for the production of wine - are also the world’s top Rugby players. In the rest of the world outside of America, we genuinely mean ‘world’ when we affix the term ‘world’ before a sports tournament - and thus watching one of theses series’ is about more than sport: it’s about international unity, global community and solidarity. This year the tournament is taking place in France (it only happens every four years) and so - for any of you curious globally oriented wine lovers out there, nows a chance to get yourself to France, participate with the rest of the world and get a taste of some great wines and some of the global culture too. For those of you unable to go - fear not - the World Cup of Wines , which is a virtual live wine-tasting taking place on September 1st, 7:30pm-9:30pm at the Virtual Wine website, where they’ll be pitting the wines of Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Argentina and South Africa against one another - so switch on, pull up a chair, get some wine and pick a side. The folks at Virtual Wine have done some pretty cool events in the past, which shows that this could pretty easily become a trend in the future of world wine tastings.

However - with the intent of drawing some attention to the of my passions - travel, wine and rugby - www.grapethinking.com in association with www.tastevine.com will be hosting our very own Wine World Cup for the month of September.

For every day in September myself and a handful of the wine blogerati (volunteers welcome) will be doing one review on one wine per day for each of the six countries. That’s 180 posts in total (and a lot of wine to be drunk.) I’ve already got 16 bottles which I will begin opening this weekend to start my reviews. At the end of each week we will decide on a winner - and at the end of the competition there will be one country and that comes out tops.

TasteVine is working on planning a few live wine world cup events in the south, which will be an opportunity to taste 6 wine regions at once, and an enormous variation in style, flavor and taste.

In addition we’ll be awarding prizes (details to follow) to people who make comments and having a random draw for people who subscribe to our blog during the duration of the competition.

I’ll be giving regular, brief updates of the goings on the the actual teams who are playing - and all in all this is a blog event which hopes to spark interest in global culture and give us all a good excuse to go out and try a lot of different wine!

The first post for the World Cup of Wine will appear at 10am EST on September 1st. We’re accepting reviews before then - and will be sure to feature any reviews we receive. Get tasting and may the best wine win!

Apartment Therapy is one of the most updated and relevant sites I’ve encountered of late, and their blog-roll alone is enough to keep you informed. Now, insofar as adding finishing touches to one’s apartment - there’s nothing better than a well stocked wine rack. If you’re having guests or inviting a date - nothing is more impressive than being able to offer a drink to your visitors.

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