Malbec is the Eva Peron of Argentinian wine varieties and its presence on a label has done much for the category of the premium wine production nation on the South American continent. Whilst Chile often delivers incredibly on value, Argentina packs in value with value added by diversity - especially in its ownership and complete creative license with the Malbec grape.
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.
What a weekend. Wimbledon Tennis final (go Federer and welcome back Venus); the Tour de France starting for the first time ever in London and of course Live Earth all over the world. As for Greg and I, amidst it all we were rooting for our man Al Gore as he continues to launch his book ‘The Assault on Reason’ and spread the good word about the need to conscientiously and actively protect our environment. How he manages to remain so calm and composed in the face of such stubbornness and obstinacy is beyond me - but I really think that these ideas are beginning to take root, and as Gore says, if the Internet had been as powerful as it is today, 5 years ago, Bush wouldn’t be in power and America would have stayed in Afghanistan and not gone on to invade Iraq. But, as a consolation prize to all we reasonable beings - at least we live in interesting times.
Do you read www.treehugger.com - if not, I seriously recommend visiting it on a weekly basis. It’s packed with well informed and easily digestible factlets, and is a good way to not only keep informed - but to learn how to make a difference.
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MOG is one of the newer communities to have arisen and it’s dedicated to music and features profiles of musicians like Ben Gibbard. Unlike MySpace, which has become slightly commercialized and is used by every petty marketer to invite people to parties or sell cell-phones, MOG is strictly for music. What I like about the site is the ability to see as well as listen to what other people listen to; there’s a MOG-O-METER which reads all your most recently played iTunes tracks, and then it makes recommendations of what you should listen to. Better than that, you can actually listen to music on other people’s pages for free, without downloading it.
Calwineries.com is a perfect example of how such brand innovation has stepped out of the music-only sphere and can be applied to wine. The formation of a community is exactly what the industry needs, wine people like talking, and so there are discussion boards, there’s information about any California winery you need, and one can even find emerging industry heavyweights such as Pinotblogger weighing in, which makes for a promising and powerful voice to be addressing this emerging wine community. Josh@pinotblogger.com has really opened up communication, with the recently launched Podcast and by going so far as to publish his cell-phone number on the blog, there’s no doubt that such graceful transparency is the future of wine marketing, especially for wines like Capozzi, and Stormhoek, and Vilafonte, which have all made unbelievable use of the online channel in building brands.
However, my feeling is that many California Wineries already enjoy a voice, and it’d be great if the conversation could be expanded and was between California and the world, rather than just California and California. Thinking about it this morning while reading The Pour where Asimov had quite recently spoken about various Natural wines, and linked through to a particular Rioja winery-site which enables you to do a cellar door tour, I couldn’t help but thinking that there’s a bigger picture here. Focusing on California when you have the entire world to talk about is to look too closely at the grapes when there’s an entire vineyard (to plagiarize seeing the wood through the trees.)
Grape Radio had a fantastic Podcast a while back from a Pinot Symposium, and wine-makers from Peay Vineyards and around were all discussing Pinot Clones and Swan, which had been gotten from Burgundy. However, the same clones have also gone to South Africa, New Zealand and Oregon, and it would be much more interesting to hear a world symposium where top growers held a tasting and related experiences of the same clone in completely different continents, let alone terroir? In real life it would be expensive to organize, but if the discussion were held online, where winemakers could freely exchange comments on a single discussion board, not just wineries from California, but wineries from across the globe, much interest could be sparked and a lot could be gained.Long term, it is not only an opportunity for foreign wines to get share of mouth in the US, but it’s also for Californian and US wines to get mind-share overseas. The best known Californian wine in the UK is Gallo, and if you want to find Frog’s Leap or anything from upstate New York you simply can’t, whilst you can find wine from Uruguay or Argentina quite easily in any London store.
Capozzi and Stormhoek, though from different countries entirely, have a lot to learn from one another, but at the moment there isn’t a platform to do it on. Grape Thinking, as many of you have guessed by now, will be that platform. In the coming months we’re going to launch an international wine community, where oenophiles will not only be able to affiliate themselves with global wineries, but they’ll be able to purchase the wine and review it themselves. Israeli Wines, a particular passion of mine, amongst others, will be given a platform to not only market themselves on the same platform as Australia and New Zealand, but because its digital there will be no fights for shelf-space or case-displays. Grapethinking will be the ‘digital vine’ connecting global vineyards, winemakers, bloggers, restaurateurs and wine lovers into the first global digital cocktail party where wine, opinions and dreams can be shared.
For all the talk of terroir, and the argument over its importance, I can see no better argument in its support than Britney Spears.
You see, when choosing the music you want to keep in your collection, you best know that the music has roots and that your collection will one day make you nostalgic for your youth and not make you cringe. I honestly never felt easy about Britney Spears, and throughout her career can proudly say that I boycotted all her number ones. This is not because I’m some sort of sage who could see into the future and know that my potential patronage to the pop-starlet could potentially leave me in support of an umbrella wielding maniac. Rather, knowing a thing or two about vineyards, with wine-sense comes an understanding that origin is a big part of appreciation. Read the rest of this entry »
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The international symbol for medicine, otherwise known as Caduceus is a sword with a snake wound round it. You may not know this but the sword is in fact a lance and the snake is a worm. In more rural settings, the method of getting rid of parasites is to lance the skin, and the parasite winds out around the lance. If you look at the symbol again, you will see that the sword is actually longer than the “snake” indicating the triumph of medical science over cruel nature. Now you may find this slightly irrelevant, but just look at the NY Times video feeds of the day and you can see a man that I greatly respect, Jimmy Carter, 82 years old, who after his presidency decided to tackle disease in Africa.
Watch this NY Times Video-Blog on Carter in Ethiopia.
Amazingly enough, the ancient symbol of medicine is based on a disease that still exists today, draculanisis or more commonly known as ‘Guinea Worm.’ This disease is found in ancient scriptures, is depicted in hieroglyphics and is thought to have plagued the Israelites in their journey across the desert. Since President Carter put eradicating it on his agenda, the instances of the disease have gone from being in the hundreds of thousands down to just over ten thousand. To read more about Guinea Worm, go here.
Carter speaks about how when he grew up in Georgia as a child, many of the diseases that he is tackling in Africa right now, were prevalent in the United States. But with the right focus, these diseases can be completely eradicated. Carter was the first President to put Human Rights issues on the agenda, and he points out that human rights means that we have a right to a decent life and to be free from disease; and so he has committed himself to fighting a war against disease. In an age when certain ex-presidents like George Bush Sr. and little GB Jr. request 100 Billion Dollars of taxpayers money to perpetuate misery in Iraq and diversify into Iran; for less than a hundredth of the cost, instead of destroying lives by fighting wars on our own kind, millions of lives could be saved by fighting a war against disease to save our own kind. And in this way, the US can foster an ethic of care, as opposed to an ethic of tyranny.
So quite recently, some friends and I have been looking at the world wine industry, and part of it has been to try getting a feel for the wine industry on a global scale. We have tried to do this in part by looking at all the wineries around the world. In our research we have learned that there are over 60 wine producing countries in the world. This was not that surprising to me, considering wine’s formidable background and importance in human civilization. What was, however, surprising was the number of wineries in the USA. Would you have guessed that of all the 50 States, every single one of them has wine producing vineyard? I find that just incredible, because not every state has a major-league baseball team. But if you were to look at the wine industry in the United States, at first glance you wouldn’t perhaps guess that wine-making was more widespread than major-league baseball teams, country musicians, Republicans, Democrats, Breweries or the amount of states Southern is in… out of all of these, no matter on what scale, wine is more widespread.
I’ve had wine from Maryland and have shared some wine from Georgia over dinner, but there are some States that it just seems improbable for wine to be growing in. Arizona for example… who would have thought that wine grows in Arizona besides the people who grow it there and the people living around the vineyard?
But what’s more surprising than the fact that wine grows in Arizona, is the man behind the vineyard: Maynard James Keenan, the lead singer of the progressive rock band so worshiped by Australian and New Zealand fans: Tool. And where this ties in today’s post is that the singer’s wine is called Caduceus… website www.caduceus.org, sharing the name with the symbol for medicine.
On the most recent blog post you find a post by the rockstar where he writes about arriving in Sydney on his way to the Big Day Out, which is Australia’s biggest festival, and attracts acts as big as Ozzy, Roger Waters, Muse, Incubus and of course, Tool. Keenan writes about coming off the plane, bumping into some people from the Roger Waters tour, and going out to dinner that evening at a Sydney restaurant and drinking Penfolds Reserve Bin 98A Chardonnay and eating sea-scallops with them.
Keenan’s wine is available to buy online right now, and I plan to order some myself and write a post on it. This whole business of direct shipping is just great in this regard: with all 
50 States producing wines, and over 60 countries doing the same, the forecast for the diversity of my wine education seems promising!
If you want to order their wine, go to https://vino.caduceus.org/
However, I wont be able to get the wine just for the moment, because I can only order it if I live in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Washington and West Virginia. So, being a New York resident currently in London leaves me a bit off the list, which is a pity. But if you do live in these states its best you hurry, because the wine is running out fast. Does anyone know how I can get around the shipping laws so I can get a bottle?
