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~

The basis is an engine… a thinking engine that drives sustainable development, and more specifically, the health of the world. How do you create something in which the consumption heals the body and the production heals the earth?

Think about it

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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.

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 soak in what this place is all about, and make some magical elixirs along the way…

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1. We would be keeping the bears happy…  I mean seriously.. look at this fellow.  He’s enjoying a little splash in the water without a care in the world.   If we don’t make an effort to save the environment, this is going to be a grumpy bear without any place to go other than your back yard.
    
   
   
2. Prevent extinction – I’m constantly reading about how animals are going extinct.  This isn’t animal gone from the zoo, this is animal species GONE FOREVER!!   If you do a search at iucnredlist.org, you will see that in 2008, they listed 590 species as critically endangered, many with population trends continuing to decrease, and 8 species that were no longer in existance in the wild.  This article about the Monk Seal Extinction discusses the proof that humans are the cause of many of these extinctions.
    
   
3. Keep the planet from melting - The proof keeps stacking up that the planet is warming.  Regardless of whether this is part of a natural cycle or not, the truth is that it is most definitely happening, and that we do contribute in some part.  If we all take some action to reduce our carbon footprint, and it makes the smallest difference.. won’t that mean something?
    
   
4. Save the Rainforest – Deforestation is a huge problem.. Apparently, such a large percentage of the world is in need of food, that we continue to bulldoze the Rainforest to make cow pastures and corn fields… apparently noone pays attention to the fact that we grow all of this corn… TO FEED THE COWS.. maybe we should all just eat corn?   I found this pic which also explains it well..
    
   
5. Make Al Gore happy – Just look at this guy..  do you want his face to get stuck like that?   Well, then do something about it.  The only way he’s going to be happy is if he knows everyone is trying to do something to help our environment.

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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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My grandfather was a banker and probably spent his entire life working for the same profit a single banker a third his age would have made in bonuses over the last five years. The key difference between my grandfather and the modern banker however, is that my grandfather valued his society, his customers and the future – whilst the banker of today has merely intellectualised greed with a series of financial instruments used to justify the unjustifiable and create as much personal gain in as short a span of time as possible. So much has the plague of greed and lack of value spread that Rhodes Scholars and top intellectuals have been wooed into studying finance, whilst in today’s times of real challenges , their skills would be better employed in engineering, medical research and civil society.

The old institutions were even built with materials of substantial value – marble, granite slab and steel – whilst today’s modern building, like the ‘Gherkin’ in London or many other modern institutions seem to have chosen a material that reflects the high-risk, short-term gain and quick-buck mentality of modern business: glass. Today’s institutions are primarily made up of transparent and easily shattered material – how apt a metaphor.

Listening to a debate on torture the other day I was struck by one of the key tenets of the argument against torture being that it dulls our intelligence community and our ability as a society to ask proper questions and gain reliable information honourably. The strength of the argument for me was that it did not appeal to human suffering but rather appealed to the sustainability of our society – saying that torture makes our institutions lazy and therefore weakens our society. Surely that also holds for using high salaries and bonuses as an incentive to work, and the same argument can be made against the high-risk/ high-return mentality that has been in fashion for a time – not on the basis of an argument against greed, but rather on the basis of long-term sustainability and the value to humankind. Paying signing bonuses and giving large profits doesn’t make people work harder, it just makes them want more for less, and in a slew of defaulting banks one has to wonder where all that money for all those bonuses was coming from in the first place. What will impact the future of society more: the downfall of Lehman Brothers or major headways into stem-cell research? Stem-cell research is the obvious answer. Given that, think of all the wasted talent the job-losses that Lehman represents – intelligent minds distracted by greed who, instead of getting lost in the complexity of derivatives and materialistic pursuit could rather have been adding actual value to society trying to make their mark on history.

In these times of financial uncertainty, three things have actually gone up in value: wine, art and mineral resources. These are all things with perhaps the exception of oil that our grand-children will one day see (assuming the world is still around of course.) Society demonstrates its true wisdom in times of adversity as was the case during FDR. Only when great societies are ascendant do they lose judgement and overextend themselves (think Rome and post-Clinton America). Adversity forces us back to the basics, while opulence encourages indulgence in the superfluous.

If we as a society are to succeed, and our civilization is to continue prosperously and sustainably, then we must focus our efforts on those things that create value for more than ourselves – but for generations to come. Wine is such an area – it enriches families, creates a profitable supply chain, puts focus back into the environment and provides pleasure to the consumer. Whilst old Lehman employees may have hit bottom, they can always get up and dust themselves off and try again –taking comfort with a few friends and a couple glasses of wine. At this time when their employer no longer exists – it will prove that the only thing valuable in their lives is their friendships and their family. The failure of their institution discredits their chosen career and hopefully when the hurt of Monday’s events subsides and the lens of greed is lifted, they can refocus on what matters and ply their brains to creating sustainable value in an industry our grandchildren and children the world over will one day benefit from. Let us not fear economic uncertainty, but merely reflect on the causes of it and then go back to the thread of that which runs through history and continues to last today: art, wine and all that which thousands of men throughout the ages have laboured away at –not for profit or wage but merely for the love of civilization and society. Let us say cheers to the death of Lehman and hope their employees will emerge with a desire to help society and not just themselves…

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Red Wine is a perfect libation for festivals – primarily because it doesn’t need to be kept cold; it doesn’t lose its fizz and if you’re drinking wine locally produced its dirt cheap and super-good. Within minutes of popping the cork however I’d managed to spill the Rioja on my new pants and was questioning the merits of wine in a situation where a shower is hard to find… when suddenly, with a splash of from my water bottle – the wine was gone. Brilliant! Wine proof pants – what more could a young millennial wine-lover at a music festival wish for? I reckon marketing the pants specifically as wine-proof and selling it at Bonnaroo could be a good gig.

Festivals have become huge in the UK – and I guess the States is now picking up. Winemakers have a huge opportunity to sponsor music festivals – because the combination of music, nature, art and alcohol are what festivals are all about. Festivals have re-invented themselves since the days of Woodstock and are a perfect platform for not only entertaining people, but many organisations use them to spread awareness and raise money.

The Green Man Festival coming up next week is one of the most prominent indie festivals – where, much like the Big Chill – and both less commercially than Glastonbury, it promotes organic food, green living, sustainability etc. There’s a huge oppotunity in this concept and I’d really like to see some of the Oregon wineries putting on some music festivals and promoting their wines together with bands from Washington State and around. Many vineyards have acres of land and there’s plenty scope to host festivals on the vineyard grounds themselves. Once millennials cotton onto the benefits of wine and the contribution of viticulturalists to the environment and to local communities – it’ll certainly be the final push needed.

Now that I’ve found a pair of wine-proof pants; and have finally sprung for a decent festival tent whilst having fallen in love with festivals on the first night of Benicassim in a monent of sitting with my wife and two close friends, Will and Anin, drinking Rioja as a pre-game at the campsite with Sigur Ros about to play… I think it’ll be hard to go back to taking normal holidays.

Hopefully next year the Grapethinking team can bring some of the fabulous Tastevine collection to Bonnaroo and some of the other festivals in the US, and one day to the UK – we’ll provide a tent, picnic blankets and a selection of some of the best and most affordable wines from around the world… we’ll leave the music to the musicians though. Don’t forget to bring wine-proof pants…

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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!

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Peace Oil is certainly a product that takes this notion of creating peace through consumerism on. The project is a collaborative effort at the foot of the Carmel Moutains, and sees Arabs, Jews, Druze and Bedouin all working together to create the product. The profits are then used toward peace and reconciliation efforts within the region.

This is cultural capital realized in full, and for those unfamiliar with Marxist thought, cultural capital is a term that denotes the value held within a group of people; their values, work ethic, ethos, cultural habits and the strength within the community.

Vineyards are yet another entity where cultural capital can be promoted as they speak so much for the land, geography, people, lifestyle and culture of a region. If we are going to reform the world and promote peace, the only alternative to ineffectual militarism is to do it through promoting trade, and if we promote cultural capital in the same breath then there can be no fears of a backlash against globalizing at the risk of losing one’s culture. Instead one will be entering a global market to preserve their culture.

Let’s face it – an army is ineffective when you’re not fighting another army. The US are chasing ghosts in Iraq – the enemy is not one particular faction; the enemy is a mindset. And the mindset is one of hopelessness and fear. If you send soldiers into a country gripped by fear, you’re just going to fan the flames of destruction and put yourself in harms way. The Iraqi people are already dealing with their own militias; and for the US to come into it all is just to add guns to a situation where there are too many guns in the first place. Guns will not create a disincentive to resorting to violence – and instead they’ll cause more violence.

An incentive is money. An incentive is a better life. An incentive is the chance to raise children in a world where you can be sure they’ll live a long and happy life. War accomplished nothing. Trade uplifts societies.

We’re beginning to see the process of peace-talks and in Israel/ Palestine the prospect of forming a Palestinian state is back on the global agenda. If this goes through we’ll see something positive come out of 2007 in the region, which has thus far been pretty bleak.

Two weeks ago I declared that the Greek wine market is alive and well; and rather upliftingly, Apartment Therapy announced the come back of the Israeli wine industry. So perhaps there’s hope for similar initiatives to Peace Oil and we can start seeing a wine to toast to world peace with.

Cheerz!

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