We’re looking for some cool young people from around the world to join the Grape Thinking team and become global liaisons for us. This will involve writing posts, discussing the cultural unifying power of wine, and coming up with solutions to creating a sustainable world. You can write posts on Grape Thinking, put up reviews, and even help us incubate our projects. The perks of being on the Grape Thinking team are expense paid travels, free wine, and becoming part of a team that wants to help bring the world together. Ruarri has been doing an awesome job of rep’ing South Africa and the UK. Now we’re looking for people anywhere else in the world that would like to be a part of this — France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Argentina, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Norway, Romania, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Brazil, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China, Greece, Portugal, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Israel, Indonesia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Morocco, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Peru,– just to name a few… We love wine because it’s in virtually every country around the world and is a true unifier. So anyone anywhere interested, contact us.

Most of the players in the United States Rugby side probably wouldn’t know where to point if you asked them to indicate Tonga’s position on a map, and thus it must have been quite satisfying for the small island to serve a cold can of whip-ass to the world’s only remaining superpower yesterday when the shamed Eagles lost 25 points to 15. The USA’s dismal performance in the Rugby and Soccer World Cup all serve as a startling reminder of the tremendous lack of interest in world affairs on the US’s part - and that when it comes to world sport, environmental protocols and UN resolutions, the US is not a team player. Of course it is not only in sport that the US are beaten by small and obscure nations, it would seem that recently the score-board in War hasn’t been to flattering either (think Vietnam, Somalia and Iraq where most of the soldiers who have been thrown into wars there probably couldn’t have found the country they’re fighting in on a map before they were stationed there.) Perhaps the lesson in all this is that aside from at a bit of geography in high-school, it would perhaps be good foreign policy to try prime the pumps of worldly curiosity within the Nation. I dare say that there’s no better way to get to learn a little geography and some history than by drinking wine and having a love of food. Imagine people switching off the mind-dulling and hate spewing Fox News, and switching over to the Food Network for a cooking show in Tuscany, a wine tour in Syria or a cuisine pilgrimage to Morocco. Perhaps we could do away with some of the demonization of the Middle-East if we were to explore their culture. Hell, how’s this for an idea: instead of trying to destroy the rest of the world, how about enjoying it! What a crazy thing that would be, enjoy and don’t destroy. There is after all such a thing as soft-power, which is where you win wars not with bullets and rifles, but with culture and ideas.

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Damn, this is getting tough. Great lessons to learn at a young age though. You think that you just put it out there and stand behind your positive cause and it magically happens… not quite. In light of Jeff’s post over at Good Grape yesterday, we would like to exhaust our struggles. In pushing for fund raising and our distributor alliance to come through, we’ve lost a little wind in are sails. Things just don’t move as fast as you’d like and you ultimately get to a point where you’re doing a hell of a lot of talking, and not much walking. Thus, the reason why I, for one, haven’t even written a blog post in 6 weeks. However, we’re back and ready to rock and we feel this thing coming together. At Grape Thinking, we’ve got some great client prospects and I know as soon as we seal up internal organizational issues, things will tip. We’re also working on creating a cool review aggregator for wine, food, recipe, and lifestyle reviews. Trying to get everyone pumped up about the World Cup of Wine too. Huge kudos to Ruarri, Jake, and Brad for busting their asses to make that happen and spark our aggregator. We’ve also hooked up with Doug over at Blog Soop, who’s aggregating restaurant reviews and doing it in an intelligent stylish way. Hope to join forces down the line and fuel the Taste engine. Ok, enough talk, time to start bringing some positive value to this industry.

What a great Wine Blogging Wednesday theme this month - naked chardonnay. We’ve got to agree that when Chardonnay gets into its birthday suit and loses all that oak, it sips more comfortably.

I’ve always marveled at how differently Sauvignon Blanc shows from place to place, but took for granted that this continental difference may be so obvious because Sauvignon Blanc, tart that she is, rarely ever shows up not naked.

Chardonnay may be a bit prudish in this regard - but when one begins trying the unoaked variations of chard it becomes apparent that you don’t need to be fat with oak to have body.

One of my contenders for this month’s WBW is the Brampton 2006 Unoaked Chardonnay. Its amazing how beutifuly chardonnay’s figure shows in the absence of oak - and now instead of cloying butter and plump fat wine - we’re getting a fresh seductive aroma of fresh melon, white peaches and ripe pears with abundant floral overtones. The wine is incredibly clean and medium bodied on the palate, bowing out with a long finish that closes with a note of what I can only describe as fresh bread - which must have to do with its time on the lees.

This WBW will no doubt be a lesson to the overly protective wine makers out there, reluctant to allow their Chards to go out into the world without dressing down a little bit. Get rid of the oak and let the fruit flavor’s flow!