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~

They bought a car with another girl (the rock star of the group), and were planning to head way north to work on a farm for a little bit. They invited me to go, so I left my suitcase with a friend in San Francisco and hit the road with them. The following few weeks were beyond amazing… so many serendipities. My favorite was running into one of the winemakers I worked with everyday for 2 months in Argentina earlier this year in a small grocery store parking lot in Napa, and I just so happened to have a bottle of the organic wine we worked on in my backpack. Our car turned into a sustainable circus. We worked on the farm we set out for, did a little harvest work at a winery, but mainly stayed on the road visiting sustainable farms all around northern Cali. We touched Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, and Marin.

A couple of our favorites were Filigreen Farm in Anderson Valley, where Chris Tebbutt has built an amazing mixed biodynamic agriculture setup of vines and fruit orchards, it was incredible. He also had huge solar arrays setup that produce 100% of the farm’s energy… a true thinking farm. We also visited Paul Dolan at his biodynamic Dark Horse Farming Ranch in Ukiah, which was powerful. He has an “energy center” with his flow form, preparations, and a stunning “bug strip” of crazy flowers and vegetation that generates the biodiversity and balance in his vineyard. On our way south, we made a stop at Solar City somewhere on 101 south of Ukiah, which is a sustainable building/living community. We slept in a teepee and talked about what it takes to build sustainable communities.

Somewhere along the way we got tipped off about the Bioneers conference down in San Rafael so we trekked down there and crashed the conference for the weekend. I talked to Rebecca of the Biodynamics Association about heading up their booth for a day in exchange for a free pass, and she graciously accepted my offer. We got to see some amazing speakers and share even more amazing ideas, and I was able to pitch biodynamics all day Sunday at the trade show. I met some more of the folks with RSF Social Finance as well, which, in my opinion, is one of the most innovative financial organizations that exists.

We just kept going, drinking, laughing, breathing, seeing how these amazing farms are changing the environment, all while staying break even along the way. We went crazy and then sane and then crazy again. It was a ride. Now, I’m back in San Francisco to do some GrapeThinking. Represent some biowines, bring our own GT wine to market… use the elixir to drive the sustainable development of farms and communities.

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It’s all starting. The environmentalists have so much energy and knowledge, and now they have the all-important swagger. The surety within that they’ve been longing for to go to the politicians and have their way with them. They’re going to get what they want because as the planet heals, the (eco)nomy will heal, and people will heal. Disease will dissipate, spirit will be connected, and cashflow will become circular. Capitalism will die and ecolism will be concentrically born through the power of each person’s advocacy.

Something that excites me more than anything is the youth of the world. The interconnected spiritual nature that we all feel… the connection to each other and the connection to our world. The essence of the millennial generation.

Take a look at all the involvement and care that school sustainability programs are advocating. Every little clean up, recycling, or education program is huge now that everybody feels the impact. The critical mass needed to clean up the mess and make real change is here… for the human effort to surpass the industrial decay. The next few years are going to be unprecedented in global awareness, connectedness, debate, warfare, and ultimate renewal. We are going to reach the brink, the vesica piscis as I like to say, and then we’re going to bloom.  Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard for so many years to help bring about environmental awareness.

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Religion is losing us because it invokes disagreement and violence, and encourages negative characteristics such as laziness, procrastination, and moral confusion. We have a more unified understanding of the world around us with both scientific and artistic ways of thinking and being. We understand Einstein’s theories, we live for music, we are bio-inspired… we are a very intelligent generation and we love life. And with this one life we’ve been blessed with, why not use it connecting with each other and making positive change? This is the essence of the millennial generation spirituality.

Having grown up on the Internet, running our lives through social networks, and using our PDAs as a ubiquitous connector to the cloud, we’re innocently cultivating a true sense of connectedness among each other. Technology is becoming much more than silicon chips and software algorithms… its transcending the boundary betwewen art and science and influencing a unified spirituality.

I find when millennials connect, no matter the color, nationality, ethnicity, culture, language, or any other label, we tend to feel much more in touch with each other. We know that we’re all experiencing a similar since of technological spirituality in our lives, and thus feel our similarities greatly outweigh our differences. We see ourselves as global citizens above anything else and are becoming in touch with the force that connects us all. Call it whatever you want, energy, divinity, technology… I call it love.

Some see love as a human emotion that you feel for family and friends. However, love is so much more. It is gravity, breath, chance… it’s that divine infinite energy beyond the quantifiable reality that we perceive on the surface. ‘For example, a house has a set square footage, a car has a specific make, model, year, and color… all physical objects are limited and can be measured. And yet the deeper layer of existence has no specifications. It is inherently infinite.’ This is what love is, that feeling we have inside that we can’t explain, we can’t define. This is a real force that technology is helping us cultivate in our hearts. It’s something greater than ourselves and as a generation, we feel it. Call it the millennial generation spirituality… the millennial zen.

We don’t look at this selfishly or arrogantly though. We feel it’s a gift given through the use of connected technologies throughout our lives, and we believe anyone has the ability to tap into it. You have to let go of your personal ego, national ego, cultural ego, religious ego, and incorporate technology into the spiritual growth of your life. Become motivated to connect with something greater than yourself and to benefit others and the world around you.

“When the power of love exceeds the love of power, the world will know peace.”

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Beacons of Hope

In 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected president of my country, I remember an age of jubilation that was infused into children, adults and people from overseas alike. Backpackers would come to our country with Mandela t-shirts, and when we traveled abroad and told people we were South African we were somehow associated with a little bit of that Mandela magic and people were that little bit more welcoming. With Mandela in power, the dominant feeling was that no matter what happened – things were going to be okay.

In the past 8 years that formative optimism of the Mandela years had left me, and I found myself in the midst of a new generation of cynicism kicked off by the Clinton impeachment, followed by the stealing of the election in Gore v. Bush, and the subsequent anomalies of extraordinary rendition, water-boarding and the abomination that is Sarah Palin. When Gore released his movie, Inconvenient Truth, only then did the world realise what could have been – if only America had fought a little harder in 2000.

When I woke up on Wednesday the 6^th of November, after 18 months of watching this election, I realised the enormity of what has happened. As I showered a feeling of relief washed over me and I knew that the page has been turned.

Last night, drinking wine at a friend’s birthday party, by the end of the bottle and toward the end of the night, there was no more lamenting about the future of America and the ultimate waning power of the Western World. All the negativity and anxiety had been replaced by a palpable optimism. Progress will no longer be hindered by right-wing radicals who oppose any form of scientific advance or hope to pull society backwards – instead anything is possible. America has done the impossible and lived up to its name of the land of opportunity for the first time in many years.

From now until Obama is elected Americans have a reason to celebrate and raise their glasses in a toast to the future with their heads held high. I cannot describe the feeling of knowing that the Bush years are over. We no longer need to drink wine to forget what has happened… but can rather drink and toast to the future. Cheerz!

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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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I like to buy a whole Angus fillet and cook it first before cutting it into fillet steaks, this way you can keep the juices and really preserve a lot of the flavour. It also presents a perfect opportunity to do what any male wine millennial, or any male for that matter – likes most… marinade. Like making hot-sauce, there is perhaps no time more satisfying to a man than when given the chances to marinade something. There’s a certain feeling of alchemy in preparing the meat that really doesn’t come with other pre-preparation chores like peeling potatoes or rolling pastry flat.

The ingredients for getting a steak ready are quite simple: rock salt, English mustard, lemons, pepper, red wine, olive oil, chopped garlic and mixed spices. Adding lemon juice helps seal the steak and within minutes the pinkish colour will disappear and the fillet will start to gain a more cooked sort of colour. At this point I roll the fillet in a bed of rock-salt before smothering it in a healthy dose of English mustard mixed with spice and crushed garlic. Once done, leave it to soak in a pool of red wine on top of a bed of diced onions allowing the blood and fermented juice to comingle.

At this point it’s time to pour yourself a glass of wine and get down to preparing a simple salad (feta, tomato, cucumber, rocket, red lettuce and sesame seeds with a balsamic glaze always goes down well) together with some baked vegetables (onions, courgettes, egg-plant and butternut are perfect.)

After about 3 hours of marinating or so – once the guests arrive; you can chat and get the barbecue going for about half an hour. The veg will take about an hour to cook and the meat will take 15 minutes (if you like it burnt and bloody); 20 minutes if you want it medium rare… so stick the veg in in a pocket of tin-foil – and half an hour later gather people around as it’s always a bit of excitement to watch the meat go on.

Generally if the steak is sealed – leaving it on one side should do fine; and at a medium temperature it should cook through. At this stage you can heat the marinade up, add a lamb stock cube and a cup of water along with some diced mushrooms and pepper and you have a great red wine and mushroom gravy.

The perfect wine for steak on a summer’s day is a Shiraz Viognier – especially if you’ve used mustard, and garlic as they really complement and bring out the spice flavour. Some people would argue cab – but I think that that would more be for an evening event if there’s a chill in the air.

For our Angus Fillet I chose the Graham Beck Joshua 2003 – which turned out to be a perfect accompaniment. It may not have been March 14th, but any chance for steak and red wine is something to smile about.

Cheerz!

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Now this story struck a chord with me because from time to time in a winocentric situation people may sidle up to me and ask in hushed tones how wine can smell of apples, or blood, or cigars, and essentially the ultimate question is ‘are people putting apples/ blood and sweat into the wine?’ Whilst making wine may be a lot of blood sweat and tears, it is only so in a metaphorical sense. One has to really sympathize with this question because people often speak with such authority about wine that it makes people scared to ask obvious questions. Essentially the MIT story just demonstrates that the aromas inherent to a plant are at a biological level – and in trying to find what we smell, we’re doing some detective like nose-work and trying to gain a greater understanding of what is in the glass. Part of the guess work done is in being able to come up with linguistic descriptors on which to hang your hat. So in essence – the linguistic descriptor used to describe e-coli is ‘shitty’ whist we use ‘minty’ to describe Wintergreen, and all that MIT has done is swap the shitty with the minty.

At this juncture I insert a widget from Last FM which contains music similar to that of Feist… because I’ve been reading a lot of reviews about her – and one of the great things about music journalism is the attempts to describe a musicians sound, or voice. Essentially how does one describe a medium in words that should ultimately be heard? Feist has alternately been described by various reviewers as either sounding like ‘carved steam‘ or ‘crushed mirrors in a satin bag‘ – now there’s nothing in Feist’s genetics that lends to sounding like crushed mirrors in a satin bag… but its a fan-fucking-tastic description that really opens her up to the imagination. In this vein one could describe Eddie Vedder as ‘rusted razor blades slicing sandstone’ even… and though you may not know what that means it certainly makes you want to listen. Together with online reviews and recommendations, you may perhaps want to listen to Feist – apps like Last FM will also tell you who else she sounds like. So if carved steam doesn’t help… if one perhaps said Regina Spektor meets Cat Power, that may be more helpful. Following that, you may also be interested to find out she plays with Broken Social Scene… and so on down the rabbit hole.

This is where wine and music meet – at the point where words fail us in personal, private internal experiences – and we sometimes have to turn to a reviewer to help us explain or to a friend to get recommendations of what else tastes similar. Grapethinking and its team are on a missions together with many other bloggers to help explain what wine and technology mean to young people, what it means to us, and how we’d like it to change. So if you ever come unstuck, and perhaps are lost for words to describe something or need a bottle of wine that tastes a certain way – then don’t be shy, and give us a shout…

Also – don’t forget its Mother’s Day… so if you haven’t got a gift and need an idea go to about.com

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How dare Senator Clinton come out against Senator Obama, after his over rated comments about small-town America being bitter, with a series of photo-opportunities, going through the motions with a camera crew in tow – and in one audacious clip, pausing to have a sip of beer and drink a shot!

Oh sure Hillary, you drink beer so that makes you working-class.

The idea that a certain product can dictate one’s class is especially infuriating to a real wine-drinker, who recognizes wine’s essentially humble and agricultural roots – much the same as beer. That Clinton thinks that she can relate to the working class man with a photo-op drinking beer demonstrates that she is in fact far more derisory of the working class than she would dare let on. Although Obama may be on record saying that people cling to guns and religion because of economic uncertainty (which may not be entirely untrue), for Clinton to respond by taking a sip of beer and drinking a shot means that she thinks the best way to get the attention of the working class is to show an affinity for the bottle (which is slanderous.) Unwittingly, and thus tellingly, she implies that middle-class America are a bunch of drunks.

It is in follies like this that you can see the Rove-style politics at play, where there is power-play between the have’s and have-nots and well-to-do senators descend into the unwashed masses for the photo-opportunities and a quick ego-boost. However, with the recent Gallup ratings showing Obama’s new lead, we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that our man Obama will most certainly win in Pennsylvania tomorrow night.

What the Clinton coalition will never understand is that instead of being like a fine wine and maturing with age, they,ve gone sour. Obama has the sparkle and fizz of youth, with the sophistication, complexity and dynamite of champagne. Every time he finishes a speech one feels like celebrating and toasting the future, whilst Clinton’s speeches do nothing more than make you want to imbibe ouzo.

Obama has a fight cut out for him, but I advise you go and buy some champagne today and have it at the ready to pop open tomorrow night: because 20 years from now, you’ll want to be able to tell your children that that’s what you did. Essentially Obama has allowed every citizen to become part of the citizenry. Unlike the last two elections where many Americans felt robbed. Obama, through grass roots movements like An Obama Minute, his crowd surging rallies, online-community, and a winning coalition of tech-savvy , wine-drinking, young and able people the world over has been able to win countless hearts and minds. Being an American president is not so much about experience, but more about being able to take big ideas, and like the epiphanies at the end of a symposium, make people excited about them. And if it’s inspiration America wants, I’d recommend champagne over vinegar.

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Step 1 - What are you promoting? – Login to Facebook, then go to the Create Ad page and enter the url you want your traffic to go to. (For our clients, we customize a landing page for each ad in an effort to better convert the traffic).

Step 2 – Select your demographic – I love the functionality here. As you are selecting your audience, and using the auto-suggest for keywords, watch the top of the page. You will see it is construction a paragraph that explains your target audience, and displays the approximate market size for that demographic. I do wish there was a feature so you could choose all BUT high school students.

Step 3 - Create your Ad-Copy. Here are Facebook’s guidelines for ad copy. Keep in mind what you are trying to accomplish. If you just write something crazy in an effort to get traffic, your conversion rates will be low. If you are specific, and enticing, visitors to your site will know why they are there, and will be more like to join your site, or purchase your products. They will even let you upload a photo to attach to the ad. Your logo, or an image of the product works best here.. but mind the size, you don’t want a distorted image.

You can also specify social actions that relate to your ad here. If you are a member of a group, or have an application, Facebook will enhance your ad with associations to the actions of those groups or apps.

Step 4 - How Much Do you Want to Spend – The first choice you have to make is whether you want to pay based on the number of views (cost-per-impression) or on the number of actual clicks your ad receives. The cost per impression (CPM) is a good idea if you are just trying to spread awareness, as it carries an overall lesser cost. Keep in mind though, your ad can receive a lot of impressions on a site like Facebook, and just because it is loading on the page, doesn’t mean that eager eyes waiting to see your ad.

A good portion of Facebook users are going to be blind to advertising. This is why I generally recommend taking the cost-per-click (CPC) route, as you truly “get what you pay for”. Facebook will recomend a CPC price based on what others are suggesting, and as a general rule, put the most you are willing to pay for a click to ensure you get the best positioning.

You have a final option to specify if you want the ad to run continuously starting upon approval (Facebook does check the ads before they go live) or if you would rather the ad run only during a specified time. This is in case you only want to test out the service for weekdays, weekends, holidays, or special events.

Step 5 - Review and Pay – Alright… now just review the ad to make sure everything looks in order, enter your credit card information (if it isn’t already stored), and click Place Order. Facebook will review your ad, and unless you did something bad, like advertise for porn or ignore their guidlines, you’re ad will soon be sending traffic to your site.

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