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Last night I revisted my favorite wine film “The Secret of Santa Vittoria.”  The second viewing was better than the first and the wine I enjoyed during the viewing tasted sweeter than ever.  Killer Juice Cabernet Paso Robles in the 3 litre box.  ”Its not a great wine, but eh…..its not bad!”  The movie totally fit this wine perfectly.  

The movie is set in Souther Italy and is a lighthearted tale about rural italian life and Nazi occupation of Italy post-Mussolini “the tyrant.”  It was common for the Nazi’s to steal all the Italians wine and the Italians had no way to defend themselves.

I highly suggest this movie to all wine lovers.  The acting and theatrics of this movie are stunning and I guarantee you will want to hop the next plan to Santa Vittoria after seeing this 1969 film.  

Here is a sample of the movie

June 30, 2008
Tonight I laid in bed for about an hour before I realized there was no way I was sleeping a wink.  Tonight was not my night for sleep I guess.  However, it is now 2:21 am and I have seriously discovered some of the coolest things for my mac book that will definitely add to my productivity in the near future.  

Safari 3.1 Opening new links in a new tab and NOT a new window automatically
I have been using Mozilla Firefox religiously since I first heard of it a few years back.  The Tab feature is glorious.  In one web browser window I could tab it up with everything from email, news, and anything else I was working on.  I now use a mac and after attempting all browsers from Opera, Camino, Shiira, Seamonkey, and good ol’ fashion Firefox for Mac, I ultimately liked Safari the most….but when you click a new link it always opens up a new window.  Of course you can command click it every time but come on!  And to no avail in the prefs Apple apparently hasn’t had 12 million requests yet for this feature because you can’t adjust this…they must only be at 9 million so far.  
After reading up on some forums I found this magical piece of code that makes my life sweet.  

Open source mac software for just about anything…its free and legal and it kicks ass!
 I love new features and fucntionality and I like Free.  Once more, I like if the free things kick ass.  Here is an awesome site for really making your Mac killer.  From word processors, podcasting, web browsers, and financial software, this site has a bit of everything.  

Pandora as an application, not a browser window…..so you don’t accidentally close it like I do every ten seconds!

Pandora.com totally rocks, great music streams, solid variety, and commercial free besides visual ads.  However, I am a clumsy web surfer and sometimes my speed at which I modify my tabs or windows exceeds my ability to preserve my current Pandora song.  I find myself always closing the tab mid song and thats a bummer!  Well after a google search I found that Pandora now offers a desktop software (in beta) to make it run as a windows program or Mac application.  This is totally rocking.  Go to Pandora and pick it up!

Cheers,

Lloyd 

June 19, 2008

I came across some very insightful workout videos this morning. It’s all about multi-tasking right?

Don’t forget the late night toilet bowl heaves!

Lloyd Benedict

So maybe you have heard of Gary Vaynerchuk…maybe not either way you need to know more about him and the impact he is making in the US wine scene. Get a bead on him by watching this video.

Some things to note. This video is already out dated. Gary now sees over $70 million in sales through his store in NJ and recieves a modest 80,000 views a day on his show WineLibrary TV.

People who believe Gary is not impacting this industry are dead wrong. Gary in one year, has broken down many barriers to entry for the US wine scene. More Americans will drink wine due to his efforts. His stance is simple, Real, Authentic, and Transparent. RAT is what Gary lives by and I firmly suggest wineries adopt a similar approach.

“The Gary Factor” Broken down into three simple points:

1) He is straight forward, honest, and passionate. Gary maintains an extreme ethic, to never be false, accept bribes, or operate with alternative motives.

2) He knows his shit. Gary has been opeating the largest wine retail operation in the United States for nearly ten years. He has tried thousands if not hundreds of thousands of wines and is an expert in Descriptive Analysis. See information about Ann Noble, I went to her seminar and she is the only other expert in Descriptive Analysis, I know of.

3) Gary is accessible. If you email Gary he will return your email. This is an actual response I recieved from Gary a few months ago, “LB whats up my man! Matt pls sched something with LB when I am up in WASH!
LB MS will make it happen, lunch b-fast something…” Not perfect English but who gives a rip, this guy is totally there for his community. He devotes every second of his day to ensuring his community is fed well.

But don’t take my word for it, let Gary tell you why he rocks!

Gary on “cutting through the noise!?”

Gary on how to please everyone

Gary Vaynerchuk is on the rise, catch the wave, and ride it and have fun

Cheers,

Lloyd Benedict

Lloyd@AmericanWinery.com

I ran across an article briefly describing a new packaging for wine. WineSide, from France, is apparently producing “test tube” sample sizes for wine. The sizes offered are 6cl for whites and 10cl for reds which for us non-metrics, means about 2 to 3.5 ounces. Although these packages are not a full glass size yet, they do provide enough wine (more than you might get in a tasting room) to know if you would like to buy more. I foresee the application of these new micro-bottles of wine to be far reaching.

Firstly, shipping five samples of five different wines to try would be a cinch and cost effective. A customer could choose a sample pack before making a larger wine purchase to ensure they will like the wines. The cost of shipping the samples would probably be in the five dollar neighbor hood, (if the $3 adult signature fee was waived) and a seller would sell them for cheap hoping to convert a larger volume sale of wine after the customer tries the wine.

Secondly, these “wine tubes” could be the wine industry’s solution to the “problematics” of the 750 ml bottle. When you and your significant other crack a bottle of wine, you are making a commitment to four large glasses of the same wine. Yeah, you can “save” it sometimes with vacuum sealing gadgets and what not and crack another bottle to try something else in the same sitting, but what a pain in the ass! When you want a beer, you crack A beer, and you don’t have to drink a whole six pack. I imagine these little tubes could carry a chicness to them that a wine bottle brings but you could for example start the evening with a glass of Columbia Valley Rieslng, move to a Willamette Valley Pinot, and end with a rich, steak suiting, Napa Cabernet. You could have three seperate glasses from three separate wineries,regions and varietals, no spoilage and each bottle was just as fresh as the next! Other attempts have been made to deal with this issue such as canned single pack sparkling wine, or small little gallo bottles but these tubes are sexy enough to catch on! What do you think?

Single Serve bottles, Canned Sparkling Wine, and Boxed Wine, alternatives to the 750 ml

Hi, Lloyd Benedict here. Founder and CEO of AmericanWinery.com based out of Walla Walla, Wa. This is the inaugural post of what will become one of the best wine blogs around, focused on demystifying the publics perception of wine. In all honesty I am not the first, and won’t be the last, to venture out with this motive. What exactly does “demystifying wine” really mean? The “Demystification” of wine has been pursued by many minds in many mediums. By far the most influential personality in this subject at this time is Gary Vaynerchuk from WineLibrary TV. His ability to blend an absurd amount of knowledge about wine and his sportscaster-like delivery brought me to tears in laughter the first time I heard Gary describe a particular wine as poopy, over, over, and over again. But he was right on, and told it like it was. I have come across skunky, poopy, compost pile wines all the time and I refuse to blanket them all as “earthy” or with “soil nuances” when there are better descriptors.

Winemakers cringe when they hear those terms that truly rip apart the norms of wine tasting. I light up and get excited because it means somebody was tapping into years of sensory analysis and has had the “fig leaf” removed, to reveal a library of true creative expression.

SpitWine.com is dedicated to all wine lovers dedicated to getting deeper than the norm when it comes to tasting, trying, and casual wine consumption. Love wine, spit wine.

Lloyd