Step in Sergio Esposito‘s Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine and Family in the Heart of Italy – which from the first page pulls one directly into the rental car of he and his brother Sal at the end of an epic 60 winery tour of Italy. Sergio, an Italian born New York wine retailer has embarked on a wine-buying tour of Italy with his brother who got him into the business in the fist place – and within the first pages of reading you are situated within a remarkable life, which I was utterly compelled by because suddenly the retailer I had been up against was given a face. I completely sympathise with the opening sentiments of having a job that on the surface sounds glamorous but in reality can be very gritty – however one quickly learns that Esposito has been doing this for 3 months every year for nearly 2 decades. From my part I was around the East Coast, Mid West and West Coast pushing wine to restaurants retailers and country-clubs tasting wine from 8:30 in the morning to 1am sometimes 6 days a week – and within two years I have more stories than I care to remember. For Sergio and his brother they’re diligently working through 10 wineries a day tasting through varietals and enduring long-drives in hot weather – often what sounds glamorous, and would seem like the setting for a series of Sideways style misadventures through a foreign country ends up being a lot more like work than anyone else could ever imagine. One has to take their hat off to such dedication even though amidst the work it is interspersed with tales of seductive winemakers daughters, raucous Italian weddings and personalities you’re unlikely to forget.

Passion on the Vine is an insight into a life less ordinary from one of the world’s leading wine consultants who can be found on the pages of the Wall Street Journal to the Times to the Wine Spectator itself. Esposito brings the innate raconteur nature of Italian New Yorkers, combined with a mellifluous writing style into a memoir that goes to the heart of what it means to be an epicurean. He illustrates so perfectly how passion, love and romance can go a long way to carrying someone throughout life. Ultimately this is a romance between one man and an entire region which will make you fall in love with Italy; and paints the picture of a dying breed – wine-men who actually love wine, men who excel in their jobs for more than money and people who add value not only to their families but pay their dues to those who have helped them over the years. Esposito’s is a poignant picture of optimism and love in a marketplace that is primarily having the life squeezed out of it by soulless critters.

Esposito re-introduced me to a feeling I nearly lost, and in his words I remembered a part of myself. When one is up against Little Penguin – it’s difficult to find the actual stories and vines and passion in a fuzzy cartoon character. There is no doubt that much of Western Philosophy was built on the back of wine-fueled sentiments; and from the foundation of Western culture there is no doubt that Italians built New York and have made the culture (together with the Irish) what it is today. Esposito, in a tale filled with adventure, comedy and energy has staked his claim to not only being a philosopher, a wine lover and a great New Yorker – but being an advocate and an inspiration to future wine millenials, showing that there’s no real substitute for loving what you do.

Cheerz.

Special thanks to Dianna Tingg from Italian Wine Merchants who has reached out to so many of us on the wine blogosphere, and has shared this wonderful book with us. It is a priveledge to have been given the opportunity to review such a great book.

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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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They were playing sick music too, and I found myself getting really fired up. I’ve been to nascar and indy events before and found them boring because there’s rarely a photo finish, but with cycling they say there’s almost always a close finish. In this one there were about 15 guys tight together at the end and they pumped it out, with a Ukranian pulling out the victory. Great inspiration for the power and endurance of the human body. The second leg of the triple crown is in Redding and the 3rd leg in Philly on Sunday.

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You know what Ruarri?

What M.O.D?

“That’s why I like wine, because it’s different, you know? Like this Yellowtail stuff here. It’s made in Australia, but I’m drinking it in Colorado, and you know, because of the altitude and all, it’s completely different. I bet you those folks in Australia had no idea how good there juice would taste at this height, I aint even sure if they have mountains over there, being on the other side of the world and all. Wine at altitude dude! WOO HOO!

This snippet of conversation is but one of many I’ve had in my life where people learn of my wine background and then go on to show that they have no what wine background at all. That’s not a bad thing by the way. In fact the thought that there are people out there who think that Yellowtail tastes different at different altitudes is so crazy that it may even be part of a bizarrely genius underground buzz-marketing campaign. Let me fast-forward a year though, where I had chosen to not spend Christmas in Vail, but had been invited to a small farm in the Netherlands to have Christmas with my wife and some of our friends on a farm.

Being a Dutch farm, there was a fantastic Cotes du Rhone being passed around and to follow, the Le Riche Cabernet Sauvignon 1995, which is one of my favourite wines. One may not understand what being a Dutch farm has to do with the wine selection, but the Netherlands is both close to France in Geography and close to South Africa historically, and so the connection between the French wine and a South African wine on a Dutch dining room table is rather breath-taking when considered in great detail, but I’ll leave that to another blog-post.

The people in our party were master’s students, young accountants, entrepreneurs and photographers, as well as our hosts who owned the farm. Being ex-pats we all joined forces and prepared our own dishes for the Christmas feast, and while we cooked passed around Chablis to cleanse our palate and ignite a little festive spirit. As we all sat down, everyone emptied their Chablis glasses to make way for the Cotes du Rhone, and it suddenly struck me how completely different it is to be a young person in Europe than being young in the US. No one in our party had ever been on a cooking course, or had gone to wine school, but it was just a part of their life-style. When they thought of Cotes du Rhone, they thought of summers spent in the region and how long it would take to get there. It so happens that the family’s uncle stayed opposite the Le Riche estate in Stellenbosch, and it just seemed that everyone had far more of a relationship with wine and food.

There is no question that McDonald’s is satisfying and cheap; and that Yellowtail is affordable and sweet. McDonalds has no relationship to its food, its food for food’s sake. Most people eat it whilst on the run and most people drink Yellowtail as part of their pre-game, that is, a means to the end of getting drunk. Whilst out on the farm I felt reconnected to the route of wine, to how embedded it is in farming, relationships and special occasions. Being in Manhattan, reading the Wine Spectator and taking occasional visits to Napa created a rift in my mind where I began to believe for myself that wine is about profit. If one closes their mind a little, it would be easy to believe Hollywood and can get the impression that a good film should be about massive production costs and Box-Office sales. However, for anyone with a passion for old movies or foreign film, they will appreciate that this is clearly not the case.

This past year, the quality of my free time has been greatly increased by my iPOD and being a subscriber to Netflix. This is by and large because I’ve been able to rent movies I was never previously able to and that I no longer have to subject my mind to radio-jockeys or advertising, and can instead listen to selected Podcasts, ‘This American Life’ and the Princeton Review’s ‘LSAT Logic in Everyday Life’ being among my favourite. And I really needed my free time, because most days I became frustrated at how restricted wine-buyers, and therefore consumers were by shelf-space. It was over Christmas, as I sat in the company of good friends, drinking wine that I thought how nice it would be if 2007 could be the year where everyone in the US in their 20′s could experience something similar to that. The feeling of being connected to a conversation, the meal, the wine and the moment, the feeling of ambience that so many Americans completely miss out on when they’re young.

Tastevine is 100% committed to changing the way young people experience the wine-industry, and 2007 is going to be the year that the wine industry is no longer restricted and that the diversity of it is saved. Until now, consumer trends in the USA were the cause of drastic and volatile decisions. We all know now that the end effect of the ‘Sideways’ phenomenon was that the industry ended up having a lot of bad Pinot Noir and a lot of good Merlot, and many farms planted Pinot Noir vines where it wasn’t able to grow and tore out Merlot vines from perfect Merlot-terroir. This is quite obviously the result of a trend gone wrong, and ultimately was caused by misinformation and an overly influential movie. The internet and Web 2.0 will help people receive better information; experience wine more diversely; research their decisions and ultimately have a more fruitful experience. May 2007 bring you good friendships, good times and good wine. Cheers.

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Last month, MySpace launched their UK website, and though their user registrations may be on the decrease, there is not doubt that they are the most influential Web 2.0 community in the world. To our young generation, one sees the limitless potential of communities fused with huge threat for saturation, as businesses scramble to try and find if they can benefit off of the prevalence of MySpace.The way MySpace has used music to link friends and promote new bands is rather visionary. Music in the 90′s became so commercial, and one couldn’t help but feel that large corporations were losing touch with the everyday consumer. However, now MySpace offers a forum and fan base to Indie Bands, and freedom of expression combined with creative license is thriving as bands are able to connect with their listeners in a personal and meaningful way that was never before possible on such a global scale.In regard to mass production and decrease in quality, one can see a similar trend in wine. Suddenly all Cabs have to be ‘BIG REDS’ and everyone wants high alcohol, and as soon as one tries to peddle a cab more aligned to the herbaceous Medoc style, wine buyers shy away.Wine, like friendship or music is about finding unity in diversity and multiplicity. We don’t want our friends to be the same as everyone else, nor do we listen to music that is repetitive and unsurprising, so why should we expect anything less of our wines?Wine is often the social liquid that can unify a gathering of friends in a great setting with excellent music in the background. Just as MySpace allows fans to include their favorite music in their group, as well as allowing bands to have direct contact with their friends, there is a definite gap in the market that would allow vineyards to have their own profiles, which users would be able to affiliate with. Just as MySpace allows bands to maintain blogs and post news, so too could this new community allow winemakers to connect with the greater public, receive feedback, post information on tastings and even have video blogs where they show the certain vintages being blended, tasted, crushed, bottled, labeled and released.In such a way, one would be able to support the diversity in wine and save it from becoming a homogenous, unidentifiable, mass produced commodity. Is there any company or organization creative enough or bold enough to take on this task?

I think there is…

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Wine is profoundly important in a way most of us can’t imagine. Reasons being: wine inhabits the same realm as literature and art. Literature and art are the only two things that separate man from beast. Literature and art save mankind from destruction and brutality, think that whenever a fascist regime comes to power first they outlaw the writers and the poets, and from there all other personal liberties crumble. The artist and the writer are the people who set us free and by implication, wine, being in the same realm as art and literature, is also an agent of freedom. Think of it this way, Budweiser and Miller represent corporate hegemony, whilst wine represents the individual and old-fashioned craftsmanship. One has to ask whether they would prefer a world that was ruled by mass markets and homogenized products; or whether they prefer an old-fashioned, time-honoured ritual that provides unique flavours free to be sought after and consumed by the individual that is so inclined.

Think about it, literature and art (and wine) are the only aspects existing in mankind that don’t exist in beasts. We have entrepreneurial animals; brave dogs (Lassie); birds and ants who weave and construct architecturally brilliant homes; elephants and monkeys that consume fruit that has become alcoholic and become aggressive; murderous monkeys; affectionate dolphins and the list of anthropomorphic attributes goes on and on. You name it, love, loyalty, humour, sadness, murder, happiness, bravery, persistence… pick a quality, any quality, and trust me, if you watch the Discovery Channel long enough you’re going to see some aspect of it in animals, everything except literature and art.

Art and literature are the only two things that raise man above beast. If we are to survive as humans we’re going to need every inch of humanity we can find, because if one thing is certain there is an entire industry out there promoting anti-humanity. Beer companies, FHM magazine, Hustler and Jenna Jameson, Oil companies, the CIA, fast food chains, MTV, Lockhead Martin, pick any array of multi-billion dollar organizations and chances are they are not advocating the furtherment and benefit of mankind. Most all big businesses provide a service that is generally detrimental to the world at large. Wine is not big business yet. In many respects the winelands of France, Italy and Spain are some of the last culturally pure and non-malicious organizations in the world whose soul purpose is to provide a sophisticated level of pleasure and enjoyment to the consumer. The only way this industry can survive is with the support and understanding of people in their mid twenties, who need to understand the wealth of benefits that wine can provide them, and more importantly, what may happen if they don’t start becoming discerning consumers.

As young intelligent people it is our duty to make informed consumer decisions. There are two types of company, one that would sell and market cigarettes with a smile (an item that is proven to kill you); and the people who would take time to inform and promote a product with anti-oxidant healing power. We need to start actively supporting the people who support us because there are people in this world that would have you believe that the death penalty is correct; that two people of the same sex that are in love do not have the right to commit; that it is justified for more Iraqi children under 5 at the hands of the American nation than the amount of people over 30 who died in an attack conducted by an independent group; that children in Africa should not receive anti-retroviral, and I’m going to stop there because the list goes on. These people I talk of are not wine drinkers, they know nothing of literature and have no understanding of art or philosophy. They are just glorified animals posing as humans who seek the destruction of our species.

Susan Orlean, in ‘The Orchid Thief’ relates a process whereby if a person focuses on and becomes obsessed with and truly understands one small part of life, it becomes possible that many other confusing components fall into place. What I intent to show in this blog is that wine is just such a component.

The entire world of wine is a microcosm whose intricacies mimic and go on to effect the world at large. In wine there are aspects of globalization, environmental issues, political debates, personal taste, family feuds, bad guys, heroes, villains, capitalist pigs, irreverent artists and every other kind of thing one can imagine. Moreover, I firmly believe that if any young person can learn to enjoy wine, they will learn to enjoy one of life, culture and society’s greatest pleasures, and I am willing to bet that they will understand life and the world we live in better with a fuller appreciation.

Wine has been a part of my life in so many ways and I’m so excited to express how it can help our world. If there is one beverage that could sustain a lifelong and interesting dialogue, it is definitely wine. I’ll be making weekly posts and coming back to answer questions some of you may be confused as to what wine has to do with people dying in Iraq; or how it can save the world, and I have my own answers to all these questions. This blog is intended to be a discussion, and online cocktail party that brings a diverse set of opinions to the floor with wine as the unifier. Thanks for reading! cheers.

- Ruarri

Read more: The Beginning

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