News, Notes & Dusty Bottle Items Pt. II

November 27 2006

… Jay McInerney should write a blog. His 800 to 1000 words a month in House & Garden, and chronicled in book form with the A Hedonist in the Cellar is as satisfying of an airplane read as you’re likely to find. At turns witty, insightful and smart, you’ll wish you could go drinking with him, if only to share a bottle and hear him wax philosophical about the coke he’s snorted, the bottles he’s drunk and the models that flitted away in a New York society life that plays like Shakespearean tragedy. Unfortunately, I think he’s just capitalistic and just narcisstic enough to not even give a blog a moments notice. Sure, he blogs already on the House & Garden web site, but that’s more a chronicle of what he eats in Gotham, and not what he drinks. House & Garden can be found here.

… I’ve not known what to make of QPR Wines—the newsletter that ranks, by month, a wine by varietal and the best QPR—the Quality-to-Price Ratio. To a certain degree it feeds into the notion that a wines value is determined solely by third-party rating and subsequent price. Though, I do have to admit that ratings play into a ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ mentality that can’t be denied in a Web 2.0 world. The one thing they could do, though, is tell you where to buy the darn stuff. If I’m going to be a value sensitive point’s whore, I should at least know how and where to buy the stuff.

… To solve the dilemma of where to buy wine within contextual placement of a wine reference is Triggit. They have one of the very few solutions that has the potential to be a legitimate business within the Wine 2.0 business paradigm. The Triggit ad window appears when a reader at QPR (hypothetically), or a blog, mouse over a link to a wine. The window displays the merchants who carry that wine and the price they sell it for. By being a non-intrusive way with value-add to help a reader find a wine, this is actually a really valuable service that works the way blog readers want to buy …

The Wineinsiders Podcast is the best wine-related podcasts that you are not listening to. With coverage of rare and allocated wines like Nickel & Nickel, Orin Swift, Silver Oak and Pahlmeyer, this is a podcast that takes you into an audio conversation that is like overhearing a conversation at the tasting room—professional and polished, this is good stuff …

… if you dig the renaissance in bohemian culture like I do, check out the cool D.I.Y you can do with wine bottles at the D.I.Y web site. A table? Candelabra? An incense burner? It’s all here.

… I really wish there was an out-of-print book publisher that traffic’ed in wine related books. I could buy a book onesy-twosy and it would print … none of this out of print stuff on Amazon and the associated premium price … three books that I’ve been looking for that are currently out of print include Waugh on Wine by Auberon Waugh, Understanding Burgundy by Matt Kramer and Red Wine with Fish by Joshua Wesson.

… I think any self-respecting wine lover that weighs in on the relative merit or goofiness of Biodynamic wines should read Rudolf Steiner’s writings … and then decided whether he’s a quack or not. Amazon.com carries a number of annotated books on his theories. Search for Rudolf Steiner …

… Stormhoek isn’t just the best winery related blog, it might be the one of the best wine blogs period. It’s mix of frequency, relevancy, and intimacy that makes for blog goodness.

… As much as I want to congratulate Wine Spectator for their October largesse in offering free access to their site for two weeks, they also, ironically, used that period of time to close a security gap in their site so big you could drive a truck through it. It used to be that the site was subscription only, but if you did a Google search for a headline, you could read the entire article, inside the password protected area for free. Coincidence that their free offer coincided with the closing of this security breach? Um, probably not. But, good business on their part to grab some new subscribers while they were fixing an obvious gaffe. For what it’s worth, I think their online content is worthy of consideration for subscription. It’s more immediate, more casual and more relevant than the boring trifle that is frequently their print magazine.

… did you know that the Japanese love the smell of banana’s? How else to explain the following:

The Hakone Kowakien Yunessun is bringing out a real sommelier to pour a dozen bottles of the Beaujolais Nouveau, produced by France’s Cordier, into its open-air wine spa every day.
We installed the wine spa last year, and did the Beaujolais Nouveau celebration. It was a great success, said Seiji Sanada, an official at Yunnesun. The aroma of Beaujolais is very pleasing, very nice. From the open-air spa, you can see the mountains, leaves turning color and hear the sound of a nearby ravine. It’s very pleasant, he said.

You can read the full article here.

My Dream … opening a winery … yes. My nightmare? Sharing this in a You Tube -style corporate sponsored Lincoln web site. The Content? Not bad. Form and function? Gagbarf.