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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The crux of the problem lies in what Robert Reich in his book Supercapitalism labels ‘socialised capitalism’: which is ultimately a form of capitalism that allows the rich to get rich with no obligation to share their wealth; and then when the rich go bust (ala Bear Stearns) then socialism kicks in and everyone shares in the losses. The essence of the open-source industry is akin to the blogosphere in that it is a platform upon which ideas are shared with no restriction. Ultimately, wine shares much in common with this ideology in that its wealth is often shared out along the supply chain more evenly than in say, the motor-industry where practically everyone from the production line workers to the environment gets a raw deal.

The Ford-style capitalism brought to the wine industry by Ernest and Julio Gallo will always be a factor – but ultimately the winosphere is clearing the way, and the likes of Mondavi are having to step aside for the multiple Capozzi’s, Tastevine’s and other niche wines and wine companies which are emerging as a result of the netroots. And of course, it certainly helps our case that Obama style wine democrats will soon be in power as opposed to the No-bama-chanting beer swilling McCain luddites.

I saw an advertisement which caught my eye the other day for Banrock Station – which is now pushing the phrase ‘saving the world one glass at a time’ and has a wine glass with a stem that has been photo-shopped to be the stem of a rose. Last year at the London International Wine and Spirits fair I got talking to the folks from Banrock Station and they all broke down to me how their vineyards support local water supplies, preserve the local wildlife, enrich the local community, cultivate a diverse eco-system on their sites and practice sustainable farming tactics. Essentially, farmers have the land and the earth at their best interests and are oftentimes at the forefront of organisations fighting to protect nature and the earth. It is comforting to know that if it is to be inevitable that if the world will run out of fossil fuels and everything comes to a grinding halt as big brands do destroy the world and we are sent into a pre-modern state of existence: at least seeds, water, soil and sunshine cost us nothing… and even though our computers may have powered down and our iPods may no longer work – we’ll still be able to sit down for a bottle of wine at the end of the day.”

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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.

The good news is that drinking wine promotes agriculture, and generally speaking that’s a good thing – because leafy crops absorb carbon. It’s pretty cool to know that doing what you enjoy can simultaneously contribute to reducing your carbon footprint. One couldn’t really say the same for vodka or beer. Who knows – perhaps if the idea of wine not only lowering your cholesterol, but also reducing you carbon footprint catches on: it’ll begin to grow as an industry. I look forward to the day when I can walk into a wine bar and not be the only person under 25 in the room… I look forward to the day when friends will elect to give me wine on my birthday as opposed to a single malt whiskey. It’s coming.

As Gary has his mission to change the wine world one day at a time and has launched his Thunder App on facebook, we’re definitely seeing a positive shift, and Grape Thinking is behind him all the way. Community sites and the internet are perfect for wine – as Below The Line is so much more affordable than above the line.

On that note – many people don’t realize the Grape Thinking team offers a premium and insight driven service to wineries and restaurants who want to know the best way to leverage a credible web presence to create awareness for their wines, drive traffic through their sites and ultimately – increase wine sales. So for any our more recent readers from wineries or restaurants, if you’d like to set up a consultation then write to me.

Just one last thing: remember that if you ever need a reason to drink wine, you can just say that you’re doing it for the environment.

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Renewable energies, recyclable supply chains, organic growing methods, and healthy lifestyles are the wave of the future. We won’t just be driving hydrogen powered cars and have our electricity generated from photovoltaic solar panels and off-shore wind farms. Every aspect of human nature is going to change… our habits, our routines, and even our thought processes… systematic instead of linear. Waste management and recyclables will be integrated into every imaginable human system to promote efficiency and productivity, foods will be organic and healthy lifestyles will be promoted, and most importantly, our planet will be cherished instead of cut down, polluted, and destroyed.

And what’s a better place to help start this movement than wineries? They’re some of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing locations in the world (just look at the rise in wine tourism) and they create a product that is doctor recommended as good for your health, with red wine having the magical anti-aging component Resveratrol. Check out an old post about this: The Human Elixir

Aside from just being a Green evangelist, (although this revolution will absolutely make the world a healthier, happier, and wealthier place), green technologies and green marketing is something that wineries should certainly partake in. Not only will investment in green energy sources and eco-friendly farming methods make your winery more profitable and your product that much more natural and tasty, but having the ability to market yourselves as a Green winery will make you more attractive to your consumers.

When Al Gore released his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” last year, the trend tipped, making it more than a movement for treehugging hippies and Greenpeace activists. It’s now a movement that everybody is starting to get behind (other than Exxon and other special interested oil companies) all because of the overwhelmingly positive potential of its impact on our world. We’re hopefully about to enter another Golden Age of human civilization and wineries can help lead the way. It makes sense.

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As Friedman points out quite regularly, we are inescapably connected to the rest of the world, no matter what we may think. As soon as a company starts a website or begins exporting, they’ve gone global. One thing that Friedmans’ ‘electronic herd’ is beginning to flock to is sustainable resources in every shape and form. The wine industry has been a little slow on this, and I must commend pioneers like Fetzer, who have announced the first solar-powered vineyard. My first prize however goes to my own countrymen, who have long championed bio-diversity on a grand scale with an ever increasing membership through their Biodiversity and Wine Initiative.

As eco-consciousness and eco-tourism begin to flourish, it would be a welcome change to see the market reward the producers who have gone done so much to adapt their farming methods to modern standards so as to promote the future of our planet. It’s just a pity that most of them haven’t found a better way to communicate their message to the public, and to create awareness. The time will come when eco-wines wont just be a novelty, and such practices compulsory. However its up to us as the consumers to lead the charge.

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