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    • World Cup of Wine

    Posted in Culture, Design, Events, Lifestyle, Marketing, Passion, Technology, Wine by Ruarri on August 4, 2007

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    The World Cup of Rugby is just around the corner and will be upon us in September. Now I know that American’s don’t really give too much attention to the amazing sport: but this year is perhaps a year to change your mind. As you may or may not know - France, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Italy and New Zealand over and above being awesome regions for the production of wine - are also the world’s top Rugby players. In the rest of the world outside of America, we genuinely mean ‘world’ when we affix the term ‘world’ before a sports tournament - and thus watching one of theses series’ is about more than sport: it’s about international unity, global community and solidarity. This year the tournament is taking place in France (it only happens every four years) and so - for any of you curious globally oriented wine lovers out there, nows a chance to get yourself south-africa.jpgto France, participate with the rest of the world and get a taste of some great wines and some of the global culture too. For those of you unable to go - fear not - the World Cup of Wines , which is a virtual live wine-tasting taking place on September 1st, 7:30pm-9:30pm at the Virtual Wine website, where they’ll be pitting the wines of Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Argentina and South Africa against one another - so switch on, pull up a chair, get some wine and pick a side. The folks at Virtual Wine have done some pretty cool events in the past, which shows that this could pretty easily become a trend in the future of world wine tastings.

    However - with the intent of drawing some attention to the of my passions - travel, wine and rugby - www.grapethinking.com in association with www.tastevine.com will be hosting our very own Wine World Cup for the month of September.

    For every day in September myself and a handful of the wine blogerati (volunteers welcome) will be doing one review on one wine per day for each of the six countries. That’s 180 posts in total (and a lot of wine to be drunk.) I’ve already got 16 bottles which I will begin opening this weekend to start my reviews. At the end of each week we will decide on a winner - and at the end of the competition there will be one country and that comes out tops.

    TasteVine is working on planning a few live wine world cup events in the south, which will be an opportunity to taste 6 wine regions at once, and an enormous variation in style, flavor and taste.

    In addition we’ll be awarding prizes (details to follow) to people who make comments and having a random draw for people who subscribe to our blog during the duration of the competition.

    I’ll be giving regular, brief updates of the goings on the the actual teams who are playing - and all in all this is a blog event which hopes to spark interest in global culture and give us all a good excuse to go out and try a lot of different wine!

    The first post for the World Cup of Wine will appear at 10am EST on September 1st. We’re accepting reviews before then - and will be sure to feature any reviews we receive. Get tasting and may the best wine win!

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    Comments (12)

    Comments

    1. Stacy Said,

      I’m so looking forward to the Rugby World Cup, however we will be drinking beer with it rather than wine - sorry about that. But I am looking forward to your tastings as well. I never put wine and rugby together and feel perhaps I have been missing out?

    2. nina Said,

      why did you leave out france? anyway, good idea!

    3. nina Said,

      oh, i overlooked france somehow.
      but you left out other wineproducing countries like romania, portugal and the usa.

    4. Ruarri Said,

      You’re right - and people are welcome to taste wines from there.

      The USA does have a Rugby team - but its not a national sport, and most of the team members are foreign born.

      I will be sure to include Romania and Portugal though!

    5. Grape Thinking Wine Blog - Lifestyle, Wine, and Culture Said,

      [...] So without much further adieu I’d like to introduce the Grape Thinking’s Tuesday contender for Wine Blogger Wednesday: Te Henga Unoaked Chardonnay 2006. This wine has made me realize what a serious competitor New Zealand is going to be in the World Cup of Wine, because it shows the sheer scope of wine-making ability the vintners in New Zealand have - and with that, all of their wines are of a superior status, making them very hard to compete with in the white wine and Pinot Noir category. I think South Africa has a chance because we do Reds really well. But of course there’s France that does both red and white like no other - but heck, lets get back to WBW for now. [...]

    6. nina Said,

      i doubt that the eagles agree to your characterisation ;-)
      and i forgot georgia.
      i’ll try to get a hold of some drinkable (ie not so sweet) georgian wine, as for romania i’m not sure if there is any ;-)

    7. James Said,

      France is in there (a superb Sav Blanc from Domaine Gayda) but no English wine - yes we do make wine in England but are much better know for our Rugby team - current World Champions but not betting that will still be the case after this World Cup…

    8. Ruarri Said,

      I do realize that most all the teams produce wine - and I welcome reviews from all the countries included who produce wines. The top six countries I mentioned are countries that both make wine at an international level, as well as play Rugby, regularly, at an international level.

    9. Ruarri Said,

      James, thanks for stopping by - we’ll be watching your event with enthusiasm.

      Just to let you know that we’ll have 5 cases of wine up for grabs for our top contributors. Our contributors will all be democratically scored by our readers using a rating system that will be in place on http://worldcupofwine.com/ come September.

      I try a little English wine from time to time at the country market that comes to Richmond on weekends… and if English rugby was similar to English wine, Twickenham would be put to better use as a vineyard.

    10. nina Said,

      i’d gldly try english wine, but it’s impossible to get any in germany.
      unfortunately german rugby is somewhere down there, together with spain and belgium… but we do have excellent wine!!

    11. GrapeThinking | Wine, Culture, Lifestyle Said,

      [...] So without much further adieu I’d like to introduce the Grape Thinking’s Tuesday contender for Wine Blogger Wednesday: Te Henga Unoaked Chardonnay 2006. This wine has made me realize what a serious competitor New Zealand is going to be in the World Cup of Wine, because it shows the sheer scope of wine-making ability the vintners in New Zealand have - and with that, all of their wines are of a superior status, making them very hard to compete with in the white wine and Pinot Noir category. I think South Africa has a chance because we do Reds really well. But of course there’s France that does both red and white like no other - but heck, lets get back to WBW for now. [...]

    12. Show the world that Israeli wines are world class « HaKerem: The Israeli Wine Blog Said,

      [...] More information on the WCOW is available here on Grape Thinking. [...]

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