"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" said a very wise John Lennon and that's exactly what has happened with me. My life has kept apace, even as I've made plans to be a respected wine writer. By most standards, 2011 has been a very good year. I was a three-time finalist in Wine Blog Awards, earning notice in the Best...

In the increasingly close quarters of our global village, Europe is responsible for bringing at least three different substantive and prodigious professional wine journals to market over the last several years. Each is written by a ‘Who's Who' of wine experts. Meanwhile, stateside, the U.S. has experienced an explosion of pithiness with ama...

You've never heard of Campbell Mattison: He's a young, urbane Australian wine wordsmith who forsakes the academically erudite and plaintive wine writing style of legends past for a muscular writing style that is jocularly loose yet incisive, showing every bit of the wunderkind talent of his global English-language contemporaries, Jamie Goode and N...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… The Wine Spectator Affect When I received my November 15th issue of Wine Spectator on October 11th, featuring a cover shot of Tim Mondavi and an feature article on him and his estate winery Continuum, I captured some online research reference points so I could have a basel...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… The Power of Intent in Biodynamic Wine I wrote a heady post in September about Biodynamic wine. The story is too complicated to summarize here (link to post), but one of the things that I touched on (and that interests me on an ongoing basis) is the notion of "intent" in ...

The problem with sleuthing out good wine under $10 is the recommendations usually come with provisos like, "This is pretty good for the price," or "This isn't bad for the style of wine." Rare is the time that a wine recommendation for vino under $10 is just, "This is a fantastic wine." Who can blame the wine recommender for their caveats and writ...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… Rex Pickett If you're not reading Rex Pickett's (author of Sideways and Vertical) blog, you are officially remiss. Pickett is a gifted writer who cranks out perfectly incubated long-form posts with turns of phrase that are both wry and rich, offering insight into the mach...

While it has been cited that we're living in a "Golden Age" of wine writing, what is interesting to me these days is NOT the subject of wine writing. My interest is in a broader understanding of the consumption of the wine writer's output – self-identified wine interest by consumers who are seeking out wine information. This is a seismic sh...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… Naked Wine and Occupy Wall Street It's not hard to notice the parallels between the natural wine movement and Occupy Wall Street - both are valid causes sorely lacking coherence and a rallying point that would move them from fringe head-scratcher to mainstream momentum. &...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… Words aren't enough I give to thee…the worst wine ad of all-time and that's without delving into the ponderous name of the wine or, why, inexplicably, the back of the laptop in the photo has a big sticker for Ass Kisser ales… …In the main visual, three p...

In the global village, Americans like to boast that a war has never been fought on our shores; we protect our interests in other people's backyard. Yet, there is a daily battle being waged on American turf and its combatants are vying for the hearts and minds of domestic wine consumers. The conflict I'm talking about is marketing and advertising f...

Australia, a wine darling in the U.S. for most of the past 20 years, fell prey to Newton's Law of Motion and the coloring of the bruising from the tumble down, in addition to being black and blue, is also yellow and black. Aside from grappling with a myriad of structural industry and world currency issues, the Aussies have also had to grapple with...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… The Green Card Cometh I would be remiss if I didn't offer a public congratulation to Johannes Reinhardt, winemaker at Anthony Road Wine Company in Penn Yan, New York in the Finger Lakes (FLX) wine region for earning his green card. Not that he's waiting for my congratulat...

I'm aware that there are at least three strata of consumers who use wine reviews (and likely many more). 1) People that calibrate their palate to that of a critic so they can make very informed purchase decisions. These people are few and probably most closely aligned with Robert Parker or niche critics like Allen Meadows of Burghound or Charl...

By a country mile as the crow flies over a buried cow horn on the vernal equinox, Biodynamics is the subject I'm most interested in amongst a myriad of conversational issues that compete against each other in the wine business. Yet, I've never been able to square with Biodynamics – the benefits or the bunkum – until now. When Stu Smi...

Every year, and sometimes more frequently, I write a post about what's happening in digital and what's coming next, looking through the lens of the domestic wine business, based on my work in digital marketing outside of the wine business. This is that post. Most everybody reading this understands the value of digital marketing (or "engaging" to u...

Cyril Penn does a fantastic job as head editorial honcho for one of the wine industry's two principal trade magazines – Wine Business Monthly (the other is Wine & Vines led by Jim Gordon). WBM's editorial filter is an influential arbiter of prioritization in the industry and a bulwark against noise and distraction. Given that, I was sur...

In the rolling hills of Tuscany, the Frescobaldi family has been making wine for 30 generations and some 700 years. Yet, it was only in 1995, when the family aligned with the Mondavi's, America's first wine family, that a cross-continental collaboration was borne in Montalcino, an area within the Tuscan region famous for its Brunello, a 100% Sangi...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… The Devil's Cut I'm a sucker for the clever and unconventional, I admit it. One such bit of cleverness isn't even wine-related, though it is oak barrel related. Most wine enthusiasts are familiar with the, "Angel's Share." It's a term that denotes the wine (or spirits) ...

All opinions are valid, but not all opinions are correct, particularly if they're based on incomplete thought. Lately, this is what I've been thinking about as our national media de-camps into political ideology which itself mirrors our politics. We're in a period of time in which demagoguery has dangerously replaced the usual rhetoric. It defie...

It weighs in well over five lbs. measures nearly a foot in length and contains over 2500 pages. Bed time reading? Only if you have the energy to wrestle the massive tome into bed. While it's odd to consider such a book in an age where reading the newspaper is quaint, magazines are building their proverbial bridge to cross the digital divide an...

I'm not even 40. Yet, every year (and since the recession more than once a year), I get a stroke of contemplative melancholy that lasts as little as a day and often longer than that. It's not depression, nor is it even a crisis in the, "Buy a two-door red car and a pair of hip jeans" kind of way, but, more importantly it's about, "What the hell a...

http://www.goodgrape.com/images/uploads/A_Fly_on_the_Wall_-_Jon_Rimmer man.pdf Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… American Wine Consumer Coalition I am excited that Tom Wark - Man of Action - and also the Executive Director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, is taking the initiative to build the no...

I recently took a look at the search terms that people search for in Google that lead them to this site. In doing so, I suppose it's a good thing that I don't pay much attention to the back-end reporting on my web site lest I turn this place into a blog focused on wine accessories and Trader Joe wines. Below are the top seven archived posts on Go...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass… H.R. 1161 Now that the din of the debt ceiling debate is quieting down to a dull roar, it's timely for wine consumers to direct their attention back to other matters of great political import – like, say, wine shipping rights. Last month, two excellent white papers ...

Generally speaking, I do very little public housekeeping here, but It's time for some remodeling and I want your feedback. Despite winning some awards and receiving significant positive feedback about the design of this site, I haven't materially changed the look or the function of Good Grape since November 2006. Times have changed a lot in the...

Within the span of 24-hours this past weekend, I had a conversation with an Australian wine marketing representative who described her role as, "The toughest job in the wine business," and word spread about a wee wine accident Down Under. In a story that was picked up by Time, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post and most major news outlets, it seems 461 c...

My Dad, Lawrence F. Lefevere, died on Saturday, July 9th and was laid to rest on Wednesday, July 13th. He was young, just 64 years old. The last 10 months (to say nothing of the last couple of years), have been hard. My brother, sister and I carried principal responsibility for ensuring appropriate care for my Dad as he slid into full vascular ...

The domestic wine world loves authenticity and transparency – especially consumers. This is a common refrain albeit more ideal than reality. This point has been underscored for me recently with David Darlington's new book, An Ideal Wine: One Generation's Pursuit of Perfection – And Profit – in California. Darlington spends mu...

Constellation Brands, the 2nd largest wine company in the U.S. behind E&J Gallo, has turned a nice trick. Since May, their PR activities and the ensuing media coverage (across a diversity of topics) largely encapsulate the trends in the domestic wine world if not the larger American business environment. I pay attention to Constellation Bra...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass … Deb Whiting / Red Newt Cellars Over the last several years, life has been good for Red Newt Cellars in the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. Dave Whiting's wines have been winning an increasing and persistent amount of critical acclaim, including universally high praise ...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass … Wine Wars Mike Veseth, author of the respected wine blog, The Wine Economist, and author or co-author of more than a dozen books, is a professor of International political economy at the University of Puget Sound in the state of Washington and he's released his first wine...

So, there's this thing called the Wine Blog Awards which is sort of a hybrid of the Oscars and the People's Choice Awards. The awards combine a juried review along with popular voting and recognize English language wine blogs in a number of categories like, "Best Writing," "Best Business Blog," "Best Wine Reviews," "Best Overall," and so on. Ther...

Odds and ends from a life lived through the prism of the wine glass … Crossover Hybrids When wine coolers were introduced in the 80s they broadened the appeal of the good grape at the same time that wine was undergoing a revolution of interest amongst Yuppie Baby Boomers, creating a more egalitarian perception for the nascent west coast win...

Today marks what would have been Robert Mondavi's 98th birthday, a day before Father's Day, which is symbolic in its own right not only for the paternal leadership Mondavi provided to the wine industry, but also the lessons he imparted upon his children, the heirs to his legacy, faithfully carried on. On a recent visit to Indianapolis, at an Itali...

Lord help the wine traditionalists if it is true: Technology entrepreneur Seth Preibatsch suggests that the next decade of digital innovation will be about the, "Game Layer." The "Game Layer," is a dynamic that was introduced to the wine world last week when, within a day of each other, VinTank, a Napa-based digital consultancy, and Snooth Media e...

When The Oregonian wine columnist and first-time author Katherine Cole says in the preface of her book (Voodoo Vintners: Oregon's Astonishing Biodynamic Winegrowers) that its, "An examination of an inscrutable topic" I wondered if that was a caveat that she bolted on after the fact, a veiled warning to readers that she felt incomplete in her examin...

Other emerging regions are getting the publicity, but Niagara is delivering the goods. Our neighbors to the north, about an hour and ½ from Toronto (as the crow flies around Lake Ontario) and just 45 minutes from Buffalo, NY are seriously delivering world-class wine. Prior to a recent visit to the Niagara wine region in southern Ontario, m...

A little over a year ago, Tom Wark (PR whiz, wine shipping advocate, blogger at Fermentation and founder of the Wine Blog Awards), and I had an email exchange in which I noted that there seemed to be a, "Been there, done that" sense in the online wine writing genre. My contention was that the genre hadn't advanced enough and was, "Running to stand...

Weary from HR 1161 and national wine politics? Don't look to Oregon for respite. There, its silly season for local politics and it's wearing the patience of the well-intentioned causing furrowed brows as an assault against reason takes place. By nearly universal account, Ed King, founder of King Estate in Lane County in the southern Willamette V...

Forget the incongruity of having an elephant garbed in an Indian motif representative of a California Riesling. No, that's the least of the situation. It's the trunk that jumps out mostly … the elephant trunk that is about 2/3's longer in proportion than it should be with a snout that looks like a hand from a dead body being dragged by a zo...

The funny thing about business models is that when start-up businesses position around new market dynamics they do one of two things: They paint the exact picture of their business for casual observers (and competitors) in Manet-style realism or they don't, leaving the mind's eye to make Monet-style impressionistic leaps. Perhaps this is why Phil...

On an entirely too short visit to the Smithsonian American History Museum in Washington D.C. a decade ago, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw a set of George Washington's wooden teeth. Ditto when I saw the pocket pistol that General Robert E. Lee carried in the Civil War and a corkscrew from Thomas Jefferson. What enchanted...

One of the more interesting aspects of the domestic wine world over the last fifteen years has been the phenomenon of the "cult" winery. You can count the true "cult" wineries on two hands. Denoted by critical success, reputation, limited volume, inelastic demand with wait lists, and profitable aftermarket value, you can almost name them off the ...

I'm fond of a quote from comedian Patton Oswalt where he suggests, "Pointing out that stuff sucks is not edgy or dangerous anymore. Everyone knows what sucks. What's better is to find the stuff that's amazing and hold it up." With that in mind, here is a random assortment of things that I've been enjoying recently because they don't suck—so...

With the New Year and winter's recalcitrance toward resolutions now giving way to spring and new life, I've been contemplating a wine-related information makeover. Perhaps not so much, "Out with the old, in with the new" as simply an editing of the wine-related information I consume, which is to say: There's a lot of it and I need less of it. It...

A reader (Gabriel from Portland) playfully chided me recently and said, "You never ask for comments." He's right, I don't ask for comments. But, I surely do appreciate it when people do comment. Talking to yourself can be lonely. With Gabriel in mind, instead of doing my traditional op-ed and declaration of opinion as fact, I'm going to lay out...

Here in Indiana, basketball is as core to the fabric of our regional identity as wine is to California and they have more in common than you might think. It should come as little surprise that Indianapolis and the entire state of Indiana is much abuzz about the hometown underdog, the Butler University Bulldogs, making it to the Final Four not just...

We have a winner. Thanks to all who entered the contest by leaving a comment and those who chose to double their odds by also tweeting. A couple of words about this contest and protocol: First, it brings people out of the woodwork. I learned there is an entire social media niche that enters contests. Hopefully, if entrants are not a regular ...

At some point in a wine enthusiast's journey, for reasons practical or aesthetic, there comes a time when a refrigerated wine storage solution jumps onto the wish list. If you don't have a wine cooler (or, even if you do) you're in luck because I'll be giving a Kalorik 21-bottle wine cooler away to one lucky commenter to this post, a $300 value. ...