This video is a compilation of my harvests in the agroturismos of Italy, the desert of Argentina, and the sunshine of northern California. The music is one of my favorite songs of all time, it’s called Voyageur by Enigma. I moved out to California a year ago with a bottle of GrapeThinking, a bottle of ideas I guess you could say, that started filling up 5 years ago with conversation between myself, Jacob Bohall, Ruarri Rogan, Meghan O’Malley, and many others. Over the past year, those ideas have delightfully fermented, and the time has finally come for us to have a taste…

~circuit to cell, web to water, mind to vine~

Wow, what an excellent conference! A game changer. I have to thank my friends over at Village Green Energy for hooking me up with a free pass. I’ve been so passionate about this movement as long as I can remember… ever since 6th grade when I messed around with electromagenetic fields and plants. Early education for me was all about ecology and environment, and that followed with rigorous economics in college, which I didn’t quite understand about myself until now. Having not gone into banking with my degree and now seeing the state of the economy I was like shit… but David Suzuki put it so clearly… it’s (eco)nomics. I can’t believe I never recognized that. I automatically associated economics with the greedy, short-sighted mentality of Wall Street that focuses solely on the bottom line and exploiting the market for cash and egoic status. Yet you realize the bottom line is not the statement of cash flows or the balance sheet… it’s the fuckin planet. Ecology + Economics = Sustainability. This conference was absolutely buzzing! People were feeling alive and connecting and touching each other like I’ve never seen in my life. We all knew the green revolution is ready and about to change the world in a big way.

The keynotes were superb with Al Gore, Jerrry Brown, and David Suzuki really leaving a moving impact on me. Nobody was afraid to go deep. Sure there was plenty of talk about clean tech innovations or green building or policy changes.. but more so people were incredibly open about spiritual and conciousness based changes that are going to take place around the world to solve this crisis. Sarah Susanka even brought the crowd to tears with her moving presentation. It’s so much bigger than green or solar or oil… it’s about enlightening the human race that we are one and we share the same spirit with each other and with the world as a whole. I found it to be quite the religious experience to be at this conference. A few others being recently when I went into the wild of Alaska for a few weeks and when I saw the Dalai Lama speak in Bethlehem, Pa.

Aside from the heavy stuff, there were tons of innovative companies doing everything from cutting edge solar installs, to green acrhitecture consulting, to new age battery storage, smart grid stuff, efficiency software, New Resource Bank (which is exploding with business during this banking crisis… lol gotta love it!) and sooo much more. You had builders, utility reps, entrepreneurs, mad scientists, engineers, and everyone was so open and loving and connecting. I was blown away… it took me 3 full days to digest it all.

There were also brilliant seminars and panels, the best one for me being the State of Investing in Clean Tech, where partners from KPCB, Foundation, Sigma, and DFJ (all the big Menlo Park firms) talked about what companies they’re investing in and what technology is working… and yet something was different. These are VCs and of course money is there first concern, but with this clean green movement we are finally going to enter into a phase of social… or better yet eco-capitalism… where we benefit the environment and the social welfare of all while making a shitload of money and creating a shitload of jobs. This is an unprecendented opportunity in economic human history. Create a concentrically cyclical supply chain and pass the prosperity around the world. I was inspired by the VCs stories of how they’re going green in their own lives and their deep personal commitment.

A few themes from the conference to leave you with:

1) Nature to the grid baby – energy, health, architecture

2) Ecology + Economics = Sustainability (Eco-Capitalism)

3) Sky power will fuel the earth

4) The only thing special about humans is our foresight… our ability to see and shape the future. So lets use it.

5) A new connected conciousness is emerging that will limit the individual ego that has evolved and scorched our earth with fragmented, disjointed, greedy agendas. The only chance at eternal life is if we live together as one.

6) Be the change you want to see in the world!

In my humble opinion, these are unprecedented and magical times in the history of our race and our planet. There’s no better place to be then right here, and right now.

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Then there was Evil, a Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia. I’m waiting for the right birthday to surprise a friend of mine with a bottle of ‘Bitch’ and a bottle of ‘Evil’. I know it sounds mean, but listen they’re still getting wine out of the deal. I guess because of the Yellow Tail success, Australian wines feel they have to be uber creative to make a dent. This brings me to the next Australian wine, Suxx. I haven’t bought this one yet, but ‘Suxx’ Syrah does sound tempting.

Sometimes it’s the artistry on the bottle that draws me in. Last week I had this fantastically delicious, angels dancing on your tongue wine. James Iafrati did the label art for ‘Jazz’. “The Jazz Quartet: Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah’ drew us in. From the Branham Estate Wines in Napa Valley, ‘Jazz’ is a bit pricier, but completely worth it. Did I mention that angels will be dancing on your tongue?

Don’t get me wrong, just because the label is awesome doesn’t mean the wine will follow suit. When I see a creative label, I think two things: maybe they are covering up their horrible wine with a cool label or possibly this wine is equal in its creativity and taste. Nine out of ten times I buy it because that’s how I do. Say it’s that one time I didn’t buy the bottle, well I’ll think about going and purchasing it until finally I go and buy it. I’ll let you know how that one tastes. What’s the lesson here? Just buy the wine. Buy those outrageous sounding wines and as always Wine Your Diet.

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Insofar as Southern hemisphere sport is concerned – Argentina certainly holds its own on the Rugby field, but in the field of Malbec Argentina writes the rules.

The de Carodilla Malbec 2005 has a Medoc characteristic to it, with a rustic smokiness and distinct taste veins of strawberry and currents that course through the wine-dark juice. I’m reminded of the profile of certain Central Otago Pinot Noirs – except it delivers at a fraction of the price and much wider availability.

In an Argentinian wine-rugby club, anything with Malbec makes the side.

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Seeing as the United States is playing against South African on the 30th of September, in the white wine department I will have to concede a handful of points the America for this fine Estate.

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Whilst I was in New York we had a really good friend who wasa graduate of Sotheby’s School in London. His parents are one of the wealthiest antique dealers owners in Brooklyn and once a week they hold educational sessions, where they talk about antiques (whilst serving expensive canapés and champagne) and 85% of the people who attend the evenings are under 30.

Hip Hop soon caught onto old-man WASP brands that no one ever thought the market would be attracted to. Now Hennessey, Courvoisier, Aston Martin, Polo and Brooks Brothers are falling onto themselves for this business. However, it takes no sophistication to purchase an expensive brandy; or to own an expensive suit, all it takes is an Amex or a Mastercard higher than silver on the colour scale. Wine on the other hand requires a lot more, it requires scholarship, an epicurean nature, an interest in history and geography, a passion for fine food and an appreciation of art.

No one wants to act like an amateur and the only way to avoid it is to elevate oneself to the position where they can differentiate between blatant branding and false equity from real value based on craftsmanship and tradition. A collection of wine is like a book-case. It tells a story not only about the life someone leads, but it speaks of what he has done at the same time that it alludes what he will still do. A cellar is the unification of a man’s past, his present and future. Just like you can judge a man by his friends, you can also know his life from the wine he keeps.Copy of Article Below

‘Just Send It’

For vendors, those empty shelves spell opportunity. In Los Angeles, retailer Wally’s Wine & Spirits began providing prefab collections as props for Hollywood studio shoots more than a decade ago, and now it fills a couple instant-collection requests a month, from $5,000 apiece to more than $1 million. The Wine Club, a warehouse-style store in Orange County, Calif., says overnight-collection buyers accounted for about 2.5% of its $40 million in revenue in 2006. At New York’s Sherry-Lehmann four years ago, a client fresh from a remodeling job asked for help filling his new wine room. “I put together a proposal for 400 cases of wine, anticipating him to say, ‘I’ll take this or that,’” says company chairman Michael Aaron. “Instead, he says, ‘I got the list. It looks good. Just send it.” The $700,000 tab remains the retailer’s largest instant-collection sale, Mr. Aaron says, but now the company says it fills about three turnkey-cellar orders each month.

Michael Lorber, a 27-year-old principal of a real estate agency, likes to buy wines gradually for the 400-bottle cellar in his New York apartment. But he took the express track for his new one-bedroom piede-terre in Boston, where he plans to entertain friends and business associates in a wine-bar area off his open kitchen. “Considering I’m only there two days a week, I can’t keep on top of it,” says Mr. Lorber. He spent a couple hours with a personal shopper at Gordon’s Fine Wines & Liquors, a chain in the Boston suburbs, spending $3,000 for 40 bottles, including Caymus from California, Bollinger champagne, Montrachet from Burgundy and some sweet French Chateau d’Yquem. “I completely stocked up,” he says.

Instant stashes have their detractors. Wine experts say the collections tend to be less diverse than those gathered over time because buyers are limited by what’s in stores or at auctions. Thanks to a recent collecting boom, the most desirable bottles have become pricier at retailers and auctions, while many bottles in stores now either won’t improve markedly with age or won’t be ready to drink for years. Simon Lambert, a senior sales manager at The Chicago Wine Company, a retailer that holds a monthly auction, says overnight buyers are practically guaranteed a sub-par mix. “At a one-stop shop,” he says, “it’s virtually impossible to get a good, well-balanced collection.”

Long-time oenophiles also don’t relish extra competition for already-pricey bottles, particularly from collectors who might not know their Domaine de la Romane-Conti from a Beaujolais Nouveau. It’s also, some say, an example of people buying the trappings of wealth. “It’s not that these people want to be considered rich, they want to be considered connoisseurs,” says Sharon Zukin, a sociologist at City University of New York who studies consumer culture. “It’s similar to buying books by the foot.”

Not all the new owners are depleting global stocks of Chateau Latour. Two months ago, Kurt Manley, 44 and his wife, Sara, 30, issued a challenge to wine store co-owner Kristen Kowalski: Their new house has a cellar with a vaulted ceiling and 18th-century French monastery floor tiles, and they had a week to fill it with 700 bottles, in time to host a fund-raiser for Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. “He was really complimentary,” says Mr. Manley, a real estate developer in Eagan, Minn.

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