Well, I guess we thought. That’s why we’re Grapethinkers… lol. Exciting for us, given that we’re a technology company focused on enhancing the health of our world. We always made a big bet that grapes and wine would become this icon for health, environment, sustainability, and even technology, who knows. As this magical little fruit becomes symbolic of so much more, so will Grape Thinking.

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A holistic philosophy on products, services, businesses, organizations, and humanity as a whole that advocates growth and change through systems thinking. I recently found an amazing write up at the LOHAS website about how this philosophy will help the business culture of the future.

Here’s my favorite excerpt:

“For the last 250 years, we have been living in what Peter Senge calls the ‘industrial age bubble’, based on a ‘take, make, waste’ worldview. Behind this way of life has been a set of attitudes and beliefs about economics, wealth, and business. We tend to think of these beliefs as “common sense”, or even as objective natural law. But in fact, they are received knowledge, the inheritance of centuries of cultural, political, and philosophical tradition. Our way of business is based on learned behavior, not natural law.

With this worldview, we’ve created unprecedented wealth, knowledge and communication. And, we’ve created environmental toxicity, cheap throw away products, denatured industrially-produced food, and a culture of low self-esteem and spiritual poverty.”

So how do we change? How do we grow?

Bio-inspiration is very interesting to us. Recognizing that many of the solutions to our worlds’ most urgent problems are right in front of our face, in nature. Anything from how plants use water and sunlight to produce energy to natural supplements being the preventative medicine to perceiving businesses as living systems much like forests, and even to feeling a oneness with nature that fills that spiritual void many of us feel inside. The answers are right there, we just have to see it and feel it, and take action. If we can incorporate this way of feeling and thinking into our own lives as well as our products, services, and business operations, we can work toward helping the planet become what it was meant to be and pretty much already was until humans arrived… a living, breathing, renewable system in itself.

There is no doubt a groundswell forming behind this message and when it reaches critical mass, it will sweep the world and help bring about the unity we need to start healing. So who’s gonna do it? Who is going to help bring about this change? Well, for starters, we’ve just elected a great man to the presidency of the United States. He is a symbol of unity and as he surrounds himself with more and more incredible advisers, his message will be honed, and he will be able to deliver it to the American people and the world in a way that touches their hearts and inspires them to find their own answers inside.

On our end, we see ourselves as bio-inspired marketers and technologists. The grapethinkers incorporate this understanding and awareness into our own personal lives, and now feel ready to build an organization that incorporates it as well. I talked about similar philosophies in a previous post on biodynamic agriculture and anthroposophy. The idea of a living system where people are simply parts of the whole. This is why I love wineries so much because I think that they’re physical locations that people can touch and be a part of, that gives tangible meaning to the words behind the message. It’s the essence of Zen… you can’ t just contemplate these things as intellectual ideas, you have to experience the world and feel it for yourself. I had to go all the way to Alaska this year and then ride a motorcyle to LA to start understanding what it is and start feeling it… everybody obviously can’t do that, so wouldn’t it be cool if you could go to a biodynamic estate and get the holisitic experience?

I’ve come to believe that another big part of this understanding sweeping the world is an acceptance of evolution and what evolution really is. That the planet has grown over time and that people and other life are simply extensions of the one life force that is our planet, our galaxy, and ultimately our universe. Just as our life force as human beings is comprised of all the individual living cells that make up our bodies. Seeing the recurring pattern in nature. However, many devout religious sects have trouble believing in evolution, for many reasons… it takes away the crave for afterlife, it’s below them to think we evolved from apes, or most significantly it implies a lack of belief in God. But what if evolution is simply the force of God? Human beings didn’t just appear one day, did they? It’s a humility that I think the world needs to find, a beautiful insignificance if you will. When we see a mountain or a tree or another person, we feel one with that ‘other’ object. We overcome the dualism and delusional developed sense of self that has evolved, and find unity within ourselves and with the world around us. Yet, it’s only when we find and feel this individually that we can form organizations that feel it as well.

What lies ahead is unknown, and it may take great hardship and struggle over the coming decades to reach this point of enlightenment in our world. We’re currently in the middle of one of the greatest economic crises ever, and are fighting multiple wars in the middle east. The world is reaching a boiling point, and I don’t know if it’s going to spill over, or if the movement can gain enough momentum fast enough to calm things down and begin the healing. It’s important to keep spreading the message and working together, but yet sometimes creative destruction is necessary.

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1. Environmental Capital Partners, a private equity firm that provides long-term capital and management support to leading middle-market companies in the environmental industry.

 

2. Lumosity, brain training games to improve memory and attention. Jake turned me on to this earlier this year and we love it. Ironic that it showed up as an ad.

 

3. Ideal Bite, offers bite-sized ideas for light green living. Their Daily Tips cover everything from biodynamic wine to organic cosmetics.

 

4. Locallectual, a database and community that helps people find local products made closer to home. Shop at local stores, buy local goods, eat local foods.

 
 

5. Green Irene, a trained and certified eco-consultancy that offers Green Home Makeovers and eco-products for your home. They help you cut energy and utility bills and create a healthier environment for you and your family.

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For those of you who’ve been reading our blog for awhile, you know we’ve focused on wine as a unifier in the sustainable development of our lives. We’ve woven it into the core values of economic, social, and environmental health in an effort to exemplify its unifying power. The GrapeThinking passion has always been to create a sustainable world, and we feel the time is now to grow from our wine roots.

Wine, water, organic food, holistic medicine, and other natural supplements that create healthy bodies and minds. Renewable energy, green building, and recyclables that grow a vibrant environment. Information technology to ensure the establishment of a smart energy grid and a deep social connectedness among community. And most importantly, a rich understanding of the intense economic times we face ahead and the pragmatic ways by which we will turn our ideals into profit and pay it forward.

Book cover via Amazon

I remember conversations between Ruarri, Jake, and myself back in the summer of ’06 about starting our company. We talked in depth about the sustainability movement and how it’s going to change the world in our lifetime… usher in a new golden age if you will. This got us thinking heavily about the ancient philosophers of our past… Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. The greats that helped us gain a better understanding of life. In Plato’s well known work, Symposium, he attributes the rise of the golden age of Greece to the symposia, better known to them as drinking parties. Where society’s elite would gather and drink wine together. The magic started when everyone became equally inebriated on their elixir and the eros or arete as they called it would start to flow. Everyone would share ideas clearly and with intellectual humility and grace. They started feeling the connectedness of everything and each other beyond the realm of space and time, realizing it’s all energy. We share one life together and everything we do as individuals affects the whole. This collective awareness spread throughout society and created their golden age.

We found this fascinating and started believing in a mystical significance to wine. Something that inspires us and brings us together. That can help cultivate the tranquility and enlightenment that we need to build a sustainable world. We still haven’t quite figured out what it is and may never find the answer, but we do feel it has something to do with how wine is alive. How it ages and matures and becomes better with time.

These types of ideals and feelings are what drive the grapethinkers to their core, and we feel that as an organization, it is time to grow. We must address the sustainability movement and become a better way of living… a better way of thinking.

I just spent a week in Chicago in the wake of Obama’s historic Presidential acceptance speech and had a chance to attend the Midwest Alternative Energy Venture Forum. It felt great to represent Grape Thinking and promote it not just as a liquid but as a way of thinking. A better way to live and a better way to think.

To Ruarri and Jake, we’ve come a long way over the past few years since talking about how wine can save the world, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have such amazing partners and friends. What we’ve built is something that binds our deepest passions for life and I look forward to the road ahead.

Cheers guys

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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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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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This product represents so much, from the health benefits, to the social cohesion, to the lifestyle, to bioenergy, organic growing, and ecolistic spirituality that vineyards represent. Wine seems to be a unifier of the world in the emerging sustainable global economy. I like to call it the Human Elixir.

Travel & Leisure magazine recently contacted us about info on green wineries for an article they’re writing, which was really exciting for us. Mostly because we started this company with a passion for the sustainable movement. With our connections in the wine industry and our limited business experience, we found an avenue with wine to be a natural fit. Now, after a few years and a few brands, we’re ready to connect with companies doing amazing things to change our environment and change our health. We want to work with cutting edge wineries and vineyards above all, as well as other sustainable businesses to help create a new type of sustainable marketplace… a millennial marketplace… a taste marketplace.

Seriously tho, can’t you see vineyards and wineries becoming the poster child for the green movement? And not just a marketing ploy, but actually turning these beautiful places into the pinnacle of harmonization between man and nature that can then spread around the globe. You’re already seeing wineries pop up in every imaginable country and state — lets heal the earth, right?

What if we started planting more than just grapes… organic fruits and vegetables… terraform the soil with mycelium making it ultra healthy and inhabitable. Algae farms and the power of solar and wind on the vast expanse of beautiful land that encompasses a winery… more so, create an explosion of tourism to these spiritual meccas, where people come to feel their oneness with nature… to have an experience and to embrace a new global spirituality we like to call ecolism.

With all the great liquid, energy, and tourism, these estates could be quite profitable and could help wine emerge as our world’s elixir of life!

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First of all, labels mean absolutely nothing, so when you go to buy wine don’t even look at the front label ignore it, there is more useful information on the back like a good importer. In this era of opulence and visually stimulated purchasing, Louis Vutton and Cadillac, take a more refined and dare I say classier approach. I am reminded of the movie Tommy Boy with the late great Chris Farley. Tommy is selling Callahan Break Pads; one of his retailers says there isn’t a guarantee on Callahan’s box. Tommy says you can put a guarantee on shit and its still shit, same thing with wine – creative picture means the winery spent all the money on a design and not the juice. Like a guarantee vs. the actual product. There can and often will be a cute picture on the bottle but the juice, more times than not, is still absolute Swill (a colloquialism used to describe wine not worth drinking).

Best quality indicator – a good importer. While there still are names in wine worth buying anytime you see them there are also many wineries out there that have sold the names to bigger corporations to take advantage of consumer’s name recognition. Cakebread is a great example of a wine that once was a great wine for a good buy and now its just expensive and not much to talk about, one can find better for half the price. Importers on the other hand like Robert Shadderdon, Kermit Lynch, John David Hendrick and Neil Rosenthal, use discretion when picking wines to promote and have built up a strong reputation based on their names.

In closing, to all those wine creators, make sure your brand is innovative, but when it comes down to it, build a rep for finding kick ass juice… easy enough

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