It was the best of wines, it was the worst of wines…
I recently had the opportunity to taste a couple of wines that really made this quote pop into my head. I literally tasted the first wine, we really impressed for a $15 wine, and then was hammered back down to earth by the second.
I decided to try two wines from the same winery: San Simeon Chardonnay 2002 and Maddalena Vinyard Syrah Rose 2005 from the Riboli Family Wine Estates.
Here is a camera-phone picture of my new cubicle as I’ve re-joined the cubicle nation as a Sr Manager of Cisco Systems. I’m a habitual start-up person with a wide range of skills (if I do say so myself) but navigating a huge company is a skill unto itself.
To ease that transition I am using my DeLong’s Wine Grape Varietal table. As you can see its prominently displayed on my pod’s wall (Cisco is very egalitarian when it comes to offices I must commend them for that). This is a must have when you work in an environment where interaction with others is necessary (often in startups you’re doing less coordination and politic’ing and more content generation). Why is it a must have? Wine is a common thread among a wide variety of people. I’ve learned that through this blog over the last couple of years. With this setup in my cube, I have a constant source of conversation starters. In the three weeks that I’ve been here I’ve had casual conversations with multiple people of varying wine levels and have concluded a few with “we should go for a glass of wine one night…”.
Connecting on a personal level through a common interest is not the easiest thing in huge companies like this so I have to send some thanks to DeLong for creating this excellent conversation starter!
Enjoy the Wine Life
Vivi’s Wine Journal turns two years old today! Its really been a tremendous amount of fun for me and my wife, Kelly. We’ve met a very large assortment of people with a shared passion for wine over the last two years as a direct result of our blog. Wine producers, retailers, distributors, artists, press folks, the list goes on and on.
One of the greatest joys has been growing up with the entire wine blogosphere. What started out as an interesting way to enhance our wine knowledge and share what we know with a world that consisted of 20-some-odd blogs has grown into a community of wine lovers whom I communicate with regularly and to countless wine blogs with great information, recommendations, and even some new sites have spawned around the wine blogosphere.
We’ve seen wineries start blogging and wine startups spawn documenting their work. Its all great stuff.
Tonight Kelly and I will crack open our last bottle of 2003 Ballentine Zinfandel Port in celebration, on of my personal favorites, and toast the wine blogosphere and all our new friends. Sometimes its not easy to keep it up but almost everytime I start to get a little down on it I recieve an e-mail saying that Vivi’s inspired them to try wine, start a blog, look into a particular product, etc… and thank me honestly. Its very gratifying to know that what we write about helps people out.
With that, CHEERS to the wine blogosphere!
Enjoy the Wine Life!
It seems that the Wine Magnet idea is getting new life and a new PR campaign from another company. I posted a pretty indepth article on this concept along with some testing done that refutes its claims.
With this incarnation, a “physician” claims that what differentiates this one from the old “Magnet Clip” is that it operates as a pourer and adds a hole to the process to speed up oxygenation. I’m getting tired of these useless gadgets but someone must be buying it because there are not one but TWO versions of the same bologna. Check out my last post to understand why I’m so skeptical.
Vinography had an article speculating about how warming a glass of wine in the microwave isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If you believe that even in the slightest then you CANNOT believe this device works. A microwave is 1000W of electromagnetic power coursing through your wine for 20 seconds or so. A magnet on the neck of a bottle is milliseconds of magnetic fields on your wine.
Anyway, they got TONS of press through an associated press article that got picked up absolutely everywhere. Good for them, a sucker is born every minute and a fool and his money are soon separated, etc. etc. etc…
Enjoy the Wine Life!
Joel Vincent 