Religion is losing us because it invokes disagreement and violence, and encourages negative characteristics such as laziness, procrastination, and moral confusion. We have a more unified understanding of the world around us with both scientific and artistic ways of thinking and being. We understand Einstein’s theories, we live for music, we are bio-inspired… we are a very intelligent generation and we love life. And with this one life we’ve been blessed with, why not use it connecting with each other and making positive change? This is the essence of the millennial generation spirituality.

Having grown up on the Internet, running our lives through social networks, and using our PDAs as a ubiquitous connector to the cloud, we’re innocently cultivating a true sense of connectedness among each other. Technology is becoming much more than silicon chips and software algorithms… its transcending the boundary betwewen art and science and influencing a unified spirituality.

I find when millennials connect, no matter the color, nationality, ethnicity, culture, language, or any other label, we tend to feel much more in touch with each other. We know that we’re all experiencing a similar since of technological spirituality in our lives, and thus feel our similarities greatly outweigh our differences. We see ourselves as global citizens above anything else and are becoming in touch with the force that connects us all. Call it whatever you want, energy, divinity, technology… I call it love.

Some see love as a human emotion that you feel for family and friends. However, love is so much more. It is gravity, breath, chance… it’s that divine infinite energy beyond the quantifiable reality that we perceive on the surface. ‘For example, a house has a set square footage, a car has a specific make, model, year, and color… all physical objects are limited and can be measured. And yet the deeper layer of existence has no specifications. It is inherently infinite.’ This is what love is, that feeling we have inside that we can’t explain, we can’t define. This is a real force that technology is helping us cultivate in our hearts. It’s something greater than ourselves and as a generation, we feel it. Call it the millennial generation spirituality… the millennial zen.

We don’t look at this selfishly or arrogantly though. We feel it’s a gift given through the use of connected technologies throughout our lives, and we believe anyone has the ability to tap into it. You have to let go of your personal ego, national ego, cultural ego, religious ego, and incorporate technology into the spiritual growth of your life. Become motivated to connect with something greater than yourself and to benefit others and the world around you.

“When the power of love exceeds the love of power, the world will know peace.”

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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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Now this story struck a chord with me because from time to time in a winocentric situation people may sidle up to me and ask in hushed tones how wine can smell of apples, or blood, or cigars, and essentially the ultimate question is ‘are people putting apples/ blood and sweat into the wine?’ Whilst making wine may be a lot of blood sweat and tears, it is only so in a metaphorical sense. One has to really sympathize with this question because people often speak with such authority about wine that it makes people scared to ask obvious questions. Essentially the MIT story just demonstrates that the aromas inherent to a plant are at a biological level – and in trying to find what we smell, we’re doing some detective like nose-work and trying to gain a greater understanding of what is in the glass. Part of the guess work done is in being able to come up with linguistic descriptors on which to hang your hat. So in essence – the linguistic descriptor used to describe e-coli is ‘shitty’ whist we use ‘minty’ to describe Wintergreen, and all that MIT has done is swap the shitty with the minty.

At this juncture I insert a widget from Last FM which contains music similar to that of Feist… because I’ve been reading a lot of reviews about her – and one of the great things about music journalism is the attempts to describe a musicians sound, or voice. Essentially how does one describe a medium in words that should ultimately be heard? Feist has alternately been described by various reviewers as either sounding like ‘carved steam‘ or ‘crushed mirrors in a satin bag‘ – now there’s nothing in Feist’s genetics that lends to sounding like crushed mirrors in a satin bag… but its a fan-fucking-tastic description that really opens her up to the imagination. In this vein one could describe Eddie Vedder as ‘rusted razor blades slicing sandstone’ even… and though you may not know what that means it certainly makes you want to listen. Together with online reviews and recommendations, you may perhaps want to listen to Feist – apps like Last FM will also tell you who else she sounds like. So if carved steam doesn’t help… if one perhaps said Regina Spektor meets Cat Power, that may be more helpful. Following that, you may also be interested to find out she plays with Broken Social Scene… and so on down the rabbit hole.

This is where wine and music meet – at the point where words fail us in personal, private internal experiences – and we sometimes have to turn to a reviewer to help us explain or to a friend to get recommendations of what else tastes similar. Grapethinking and its team are on a missions together with many other bloggers to help explain what wine and technology mean to young people, what it means to us, and how we’d like it to change. So if you ever come unstuck, and perhaps are lost for words to describe something or need a bottle of wine that tastes a certain way – then don’t be shy, and give us a shout…

Also – don’t forget its Mother’s Day… so if you haven’t got a gift and need an idea go to about.com

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