Wine Life Today|Adventures and opinions on wine, technology, and marketing

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I’m a huge fan of niche social networks.  I think Facebook is nearing complete uselessness unless it is the center of you and all your friends’ social lives.  Why?  Too general.

On the other hand, Ning.com has taken the tact of making really good social networks easy to put up.  Effectively commoditizing the social network (as it should be) and forcing there to be a real purpose for the social network.  Families, Alumni groups, soccer teams, music lovers, fan pages, you name it and Ning probably has network for it.

This is actually the ideal model.  Niche social networks mimic real life more closely.  You don’t have 1 social group do you?  You have work people, college buddies, soccer team friends, neighbors, and only sometimes so these lives intersect.  So why would there be only one social network?

I created OWC as a way to redefine a trade organization.  Update it.  Rather than a stuffy, meet once a year/quarter and have a newsletter organization, I wanted the wine world to benefit from meeting each other 24×7x365.  I wanted to have an organization that could teach and evangelize and lead by example.

What I’m learning is that there is no replacement for offline meetups.  Thats not to say new connections aren’t being made and value isn’t being created.  On the contrary, that is happening in a big way!  What I’m saying is that even with an online community there is great benefit to getting together on a regular basis.  Just being out and giving a couple of presentations over the last couple of weeks helped me put faces to names and voice to faces.  Not only that, the online community benefits as well - there was a huge traffic increase since my talks and a pretty big membership serge.

So, I wouldn’t say this is a surprise but a confirmation.  Social networks are a compliment to organizations, not a replacement for interaction.

By the way, Social Networks are a feature, not a business.  Much like I said about tasting note sites…but thats for another post…

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This weekend was the Inertia Beverage “Direct to Consumer” Symposium. I had the pleasure of presenting one of the larger sessions called “Marketing on Social Networks” and basically took it a little more horizontal and spoke more on “Marketing in Social Media”.

I think the presentation went well but a few things we are very certain in my mind as I start to evangelize and encourage people to participate via the OpenWine Consortium social network - since marketing in social media is a sociology problem and not a technology problem, wine companies have more of a head start then they think. Sure there are a blizzard of tools out there, but what is happening is that these technologies are moving in a direction that allows the skills that every wine brand already has offline - building a community around their product and getting to know their customers - to leverage the Internet to build that community on a much larger scale. Thats the basic synergy with Inertia’s business model. Once that broader community is established beyond just the tasting room, the final step is translating the connections made into a wine sale. Without the technology to do that, a winery is pretty screwed.

I really wanted to wineries to feel a little more comfort then they seem to be. Two main reasons - 1) online social stuff is happening and fast, but its not replacing everything tomorrow and 2) There are ways for wineries to benefit even though they are wearing many different hats already (and many don’t involve sitting in front of a computer 25 hours a day). This is where my talk and my co-presenter - Gary Vaynerchuk - differ. Always one for a bit of hyperbole (go figure) Gary says - email is dead (for some and many millenials, yes, but not completely), you have to be on every network all the time, and you can’t control your brand (which I agree with but influence is different from control). Ah yes, and he believes that there is no role for PR anymore with the new technologies - a point we differ on, its changing but PR doesn’t stand for Press Release so having built billion-dollar brands I can tell you PR is vital to a strong brand. Without PR there would be no Gary Vaynerchuk. PR is the art of image shaping and influence and there is alway a role for that. Most people have to outsource it, but others control it themselves (GV obviously controls his own PR). Anyway, long discussion.

Overall it was a good talk and hopefully we can get calmer heads to prevail and really help wineries to move forward with online strategies rather then just use “the sky is falling” discussions.

Well, now the in-laws are gone, daycare is back on (they had a week off for vacation after the 4th), so I have to try to get back into the groove!

Cheers!

So yes, its finally here. I apologize to all those who’ve graciously met the deadline that I went and slipped! Tell you the truth, I am only NOW getting my own chance to take a breath and relax. I started last night, after my daughter’s second week. She’s an angel, healthy (well, healthy lungs THATS for sure), and Mom is doing great as well. The house is just about done, had to tweak a few things for the city to approve the construction (if you don’t know the background, my contractor abandoned my project - a home addition for the new baby - just before the holidays and my Dad and I had to finish it ( good thing Dad know’s what he’s doing!!!). So that’s done.

The OpenWine Consortium is now humming along with 530+ wine trade people networking and socializing and familiarizing themselves with using a social network online with great effectiveness! I’m getting all sorts of good feedback and seeing business connections and personal connections (the wine trade is a tight knit group) being found and/or being rekindled. That brings a smile to my face! That too was alot of work. Not necessarily the programming, I found a great platform to run the site, but getting the right elements of the wine trade to use the site and tell their friends. Now there are CEOs, Wine makers, fellow bloggers, importers, tradeshow producers, you name it and they’re all there using the site to the tune of hundreds of absolute unique visitors per day staying an average of 11mins each (according to Google Analytics). It surpassed this site (which has healthy traffic) in the first two weeks! And we’ve only just begun. I’m signing up corporate sponsors and getting ready to do some great things for the industry. Very exciting.

Ironically, I was pressuring myself to get this post done and that’s the most stress I’ve felt in about a week! But that’s Type-A Joel being Type-A Joel. Reading through the entries made me calm down a bit. In fact, like many of the entries, this very write up made me stop and think about “smelling the roses”. Its like I tell my wife (a SUPER Type-A), you need to somehow get “Relax” as an action item on your priority list. If writing something for this topic was that action item (which it seems it was for many people) then I’m really glad I picked this topic!

The entries have been a real pleasure to read.

So for my entry, I actually grabbed a bottle of Enkidu 2005 Russian River Valley Syrah that Agent Red of WineSpies.com gave to me as a gift at lunch the other day for the new addition (to the family, not the home) and read on with great enjoyment!

The Enkidu is the product of what I think is a fairly new winery in California. It had a DEEP purple, ink-like quality. The aromas were nice and an delicate with a little pepper, black cherry (cherry coke as my wife described it), and some smoke in there I could swear. Smooth and very well balanced (you weren’t going to get the heat from the alcohol in this wine!) the black cherry comes through nicely with a smoky pepper finish. The Wine Spies have a the stuff on their site so if you can get it shipped to you I highly recommend it! Secretly, while it was a gift I think he knew I’d be back on the site to get a case lickedy-split! Great stuff!

So on to the entries.

Let me start with one of my favorites. I don’t know why but when I read this it made me feel pretty cozy. Claudia at ChronicNegress chimed in with a Trapiche Oak Cask Malbec 2005. Now, this whole entry - from its brevity to the simplicity of her relaxation, to her slightly off-beat name, just made me smile. She also lists my Alma Mater - MIT - in her Friendster profile. On OpenWine Consortium, which she has recently joined, she describes herself as a “Negress of some distinction”. Love it! She suggests kickin’ this Malbec with “flannel pajamas, burrito leftovers and split pea soup with Tabasco as food pairings to savor.” Why? Cause that’s how she rolls…

Dr Debs, from Good Wine Under $20, is the unspoken inspiration for this theme. A little while ago she wrote a post about wine and her childhood that made me think of my little girls. I relish the fact that those things that I remember so fondly about home and translate into making my life and home so comfortable (you know, a memory of Christmas morning or playing soccer with Dad) are now what I am imparting on my little girls. Deb posted about how fondly she recalls the nights with wine on the table in her parents home and how drinking it to this day brings her back to those warm memories. It would fill my heart with unending joy if one day one of my girls wrote something that nice about something I may not even be paying attention to right now but that they are going to carry with them into adulthood as a fond memory. Its one of the small, odd reasons you become a parent.

So that became the inspiration for this theme. I wanted to hear more experiences and what better way then hearing how everyone integrates wine into their lives in a positive way (who knows, maybe one day your little one will remember your relaxation and wine routine as well). All that being said, its apparently a contest between Deb and I on who is going to give more love to the other because as I was inspired by her post she one ups me on her entry by dedicating the wonderful 2001 Clos de l’Oratoire des Papes Chauteuneuf du Pape in honor of the birth of my daughter. If you read the post, yes, its true, I Twittered (or Tweeted?) the birth of my daughter Alex from the labor and delivery room of the hospital. Up until I had to be “hands on”. While I think Twitter is the hallway conversation of the Internet and sometimes valuable conversations are lost never to be acted upon, I thought it was kinda cool doing that …demented and sad, but social… Thanks Deb.

Joe at 1WineDude gives a great mini-history of Chauteuneuf du Pape, his comfort wine, but also tells the story of his choice. Turns out his younger brother had a struggle with a congenital heart defect that nearly took his life. CDP floods his soul with the feeling of relief as it was the wine they all shared when they finally knew he was going to be alright. Joe, thanks for sharing. This really is what this topic is about and you brought in the backbone to this Meritage of a tasting theme. Thanks brother.

Along those same lines Catie, the Walla Walla Wine Woman we all wove and winner of the wine illiteration contest, has the best quote:

Now you might think this seems odd, but everytime I taste Waterbrook Melange it tastes like Autumn in Walla Walla. And don’t ask why or what Autumn tastes like, but there must be something about the taste that seems to trigger a special moment or event in that time frame.

Check out her Washington (state) selection Waterbrook Melange, produced in the Walla Walla Valley.

Erika Strum of StrumErika.com goes with a Gnarlier Head 2005 Dry Creek Valley Old Vine Zinfandel which she attributes some of the “relaxation” to the high alcohol content. I disagree, unless you get lit off a glass or two. In which case we need to watch out when the Strum sisters hit Vegas again!

Michelle at Wine-Girl gets into the groove by starting with her comfort food - for her Mac and cheese or chicken or dumplings - and she seems to be having a heck of a time herself so I’m glad this posting made you sit down and reflect Michelle! Carol at PourMore analyzes her comfort foods as well to arrive at a good QPR, accessible Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel and she catches on to a theme through out a bunch of these submissions - comfort wine should be easy enough to add to “relaxing” experience…unless judging a wine competition is your idea of relaxing then easy isn’t a bad way to go!

Sean at Interwined video submits a tasting of California Bordeaux blend 2000 St. Clements Bordeaux blend (Meritage) which he uses to get comfy and cozy on those cool London evenings. Nice job on the video! After my software crashed I wish I just video taped this round-up!

Diane at Loveswine gets into the spirit of things with a really comforting sentiment. She has her Calgon moment (Calgon was an old bath soap brand that had a relaxing commercial that chimed “Calgon, take me away!” probably 20 or so years ago…man I watch too much TV) with a a bottle of Taylor Fladgate 10 year old Tawny Port. I can definitely picture this scene - “I fill the glass to the brim and slip into the tub. Aahhh. I’ll stay there for half an hour, and sometimes I’ll call to my husband to bring me a little more. The nutty, caramel flavor and stronger alcohol work like charms for me.” That’s what I’m talking about. Did I mention my new home addition includes a 72″ spa tub with German fixtures. Why 72″? Because I’m 6′ 3″ and Diane and I have similar rituals!

Farley at BehindtheVine goes for a flight of Sparkling wines with the support of fellow sparkling wine lover Michael at FoodandWine who kicks in a Avinyo Brut Reserva Cava, while Kori at WinePeeps dives into a good wine (2002 Peter Lehmann Shiraz) while picking up a book he’s been meaning to read for while.

Marcus of Doktor Wiengolb tries to get us to think about which kind of comfort we’re looking for with some extensive, well wriiten notes on cozy Grenache and Luxurious Chauteuneuf du Pape. Lia Huber takes that concept one step further exploring several wines with several situational relaxation postures - First day of summer, gathered around a fire, on a picnic, eating crab, with a winter braise, or just eating pizza on a weeknight Lia knows her relaxation wines! Now this is in stark contrast to Alex from Leeds in the UK who say that if she were to relax it would be with Château de Goëlane Bordeaux Supérieur. Alex, take my advice - you’ll save two hours of debugging code for 30 minutes you take to enjoy the wine life! When you’re going to that vineyard in the sky and taking your last breaths I’m pretty sure you’re not going to say “I should’ve commented my code better…”, but you might say “I wish I had finished that last bottle of Enkidu 2005 Syrah that’s in the cellar….”

Ryan and Gabriella go down the path that Marcus started and suggest that “comfort” of wine suggests the characteristic of the wine and therefore there are several that fall in that class. That wine that is just plain good and allows you to enjoy what makes you happy rather than think about the intricacies of the wine are what you’re looking for. Nice post, definitely worth a look. Roija brings Hank from Honest-Foods back to a time when he was first venturing into wine. When things seemed simpler as each and every bottle he opened (from Roija) was solid. I think we all have a similar memory. Its runs like that which spark our collective passion and we end up spending the rest of our lives in pursuit of more runs of that nature! Hank breaks out a nice 2000 Herederos del Marques de Riscal Riojo Reserva which sounds like something Ryan would enjoy because, according to Hank, “It lets you do the thinking; all it does is listen.”

John at CorkDork has his take on on a similar idea. While not necessarily advocating going with the straight forward, he wants to simplify the wine choice to enhance the experience. To that end, you’ll find John relaxing with a wine he knows will be consistently good so its more a matter of what you want that good wine to go with rather than worrying about if the wine is good in the first place. I can get with that logic!

RichardA at Passionate Foodie gives a counterpoint to that opinion. Reflecting on his favorite comfort wine is actually what relaxes him. Thinking about the complexities and the sheer artwork of his Pleiades XVI without the pressure to write up a note or judge it for any competition is what recharges his soul. Tim Elliot of Winecast.net agrees and chooses the muscular yet balanced Ridge Vineyards, Zinfandel, Lytton Springs, Dry Creek Valley 2004 as it takes him back to his early journeys in wine.

A few entries roll in that get straight to the point: Andrew at Rougeandblanc goes for simple, uncomplicated with good QPR 2003 Royal Oporto Douro Porca de Murça Red, Dale from Drinksareonme is more than ready for the ultimate relaxation time - summer - with his 2006 Charles Krug Sauvignon Blanc, Catherine at Purple Liquid just gets back from France and perks up with a glass of 2004 Chinon Domaine de la Noblaie Les Chiens-Chiens, Sharon the Bloviatrix is new to wine (be sure to head over and welcome her with tips!) so she submits a recommendation she received - Jean-Marc Burgaud Morgon Cote du Py Vieilles Vignes 2006, all while Joe in Montreal warms up the cold winter nights with 2000 Penfolds Bin 389 by the fire (great picture of the Penfolds in a snow bank!).

Jeff at GoodGrape (my American Blog Awards Graphics arch-nemisis ;-), goes for something that he feels the need to defend a bit, but I think if he reads through this he’ll realize that the are many that go with straight forward and easy when they relax and you really don’t need to defend it! His choice? 2005 V. Sattui “Crow Ridge Vineyard” Zinfandel. I mean, even Dave at Winections agrees and goes for a “fruit bomb” that is so straight forward that there’s no need for analysis, he just likes it!

And yes, Jeff beat me out for ABA Graphics last year. I’m just having a bit of fun. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m a stalker.

Turns out that when she’s not boiling the ocean, Megan of Wannabewino is knockin’ back her favorite varietal. She had to go with a whole varietal because of he tendency to boil the ocean… just kidding - who says there are no inside jokes embedded in WBW write ups. She chose it because it (Zinfandel) evokes good memories, puts a smile on her face, and almost always puts her in a good mood.

Don’t worry because Jill of Domain547 is right there with you Megan! In fact, she goes even broader detailing why the pursuit of wine is in and of itself the fulfilling adventure.

Jim Eastman kicks back in Ohio, listening to Nina Simone, with a very unique selection - a wine from Wollersheim Winery in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin who produces a Prairie Fume off-dry white wine made entirely from seyval. He explains what Seyval is and the fact that its hard to find outside of Wisconsin, USA!! My wife’s from Green Bay so I’ll have to give this one a try personally. You can’t tell a CA brother he can’t find a certain type of wine! Now I HAVE to find it!

David McDuff relays how a bottle accidentally cellared (i.e. you know that one you threw in there a little too far back and 10 years later, when you’re reorganizing, you stumble across it?) can lead to a very rewarding and comforting experience. Its not something thats re-occurring but a serendipidous addition to the “comfort wine” theme. Very interesting read.

Marta from RecentlyConsumed is making me jealous - a great blog design, a great pairing of three great wines with three bad movies, and the ability to enjoy them all, as she puts it, in “a night of comfort between cynical newlyweds enjoying their pre-children freedom”. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re cute, you’re young, you’re still in “that phase” of marriage. Thanks for reminding me… ;). In all seriousness, nice addition to the comfort stories and definitely a blog to check out! And contrary to what others might tell you, when you’re with the right person you MAKE the time to remember “that phase”. In fact, this post is one that makes me say “yeah, I’m gonna do that!”, so personal theme objective achieved!

So thats it. I have to say, I am really happy that the topic was so thought provoking and for all those that had to sit back and take a moment to realize how much wine is actually a part of your life and your relaxation all I can say is I hope you take more occasions to Enjoy the Wine Life!

Cheers!

Got a recent WineQ shipment but I’ve been a little delinquent in parlaying my latest finds (and posting them to my account). In case you don’t know, WineQ is a site that allows you to create your own wine club in Netflix style. More and more social aspects are being added that get me really excited, but more on that later. For the sake of full disclosure, I’ve worked with them on their business plan and funding plan as a consultant but beyond that, I’ve been creating my own club for over a year now and absolutely LOVE to see the box with that little green sticker waiting for me to open it.

Anyway, the latest tasting note is Barreto Cellars’ “Vinho Tinto”. According to the site:

Barreto Cellars is a Central Coast Winery dedicated to producing premium-quality wines featuring grape varietals from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). Having relatives who migrated to America from these regions, we have a strong connection and desire to develop wines utilizing these varietals, a number of which are grown in small amounts in select vineyards throughout California.

Vinho Tinto is a winner. Big and bold from the deep purple color straight through to the nutty/pepper finish, this wine is one you’ll enjoy if you are a CA style wine drinker. Cedar and cherry on the nose with a FULL bodied cherry and almond taste (my wife argues with me on those tastes but thats the great thing about a complex wine!). The crowning achievement of this wine (IMHO) is that all this CA goodness was accomplished with Iberian varietals! Bravo!

This retails on WineQ for $17.99 which is a complete steal for this wine.

Enjoy the Wine Life!

Thats right. I said it. Although it may not be what you’re thinking.

Can you guess what’s wrong with tasting note web sites? Exactly, none (and I mean N-O-N-E) have reached anything close to critical mass of users to make their notes useful. Why is that? Well there are too many wines every year to have multiple reviews per wine. So every wine tasting note site tries to get their hands around an unbounded number of wines and create a tasting note site that is actually useful. NONE have succeeded and even the biggest are only useful for organization purposes (CellarTracker) not for looking up wines.

One approach with promise is Snooth, but they’re actually smarter about it. Its not about tasting notes, its more about personalizing wine selections for you and if there are tasting notes to help then great. I actually like that concept. They’ll bring in a gambit of ratings and notes and attempt to normalize them and match a wine to your liking. This is (obviously) not a tasting note record keeping site but it leverages that function.

So what’s this about “Freebasing”? Well, if you haven’t heard, there is another approach to gathering data out there and they’re gaining steam. Freebase is a massive database that is completely open so that a site can use as its database as a backend. Then anyone can query this DB and get at that information or submit information and contribute to the collective. Also, tags in that information make connection automatically regardless of the original source. The best explanation of this is here, at Tim O’Rielly’s blog (the guy who originally coined “web 2.0”). Its an instance of the semantic web (what some call “web 3.0”). The advantage? Since a tasting notes are not a business but a feature, if all the sites created real business plans with tasting note functions as a part then there wouldn’t be a need to hide the notes in an isolated database. Sure, protect your user DB but submit your notes to Freebase. Gary V can go on ranting and raving with the Vayniacs, Snooth can continue making educated selections for you, WineQ could add value to their custom wine clubs. These are all sites that don’t depend on notes as the core of the business. One thing I won’t get into is this aspect (and the power of Freebase) - if Winehiker were to create an application that was a database of trails in California and some wines he experienced there, then Freebase would automagically create a query result for any other application that connects wines related to the notes Winehiker made about his travels and the wines on each of those trails with other wine notes submitted from these sites. You would start to see a world evolving of things connected to wines and trips and tastes that you’ve never imagined before…but thats a whole different post!

Anyway, Freebase allows sites like these tasting note sites to be built and while they individually create communities for whatever purpose they are all adding to Borg collective known as Freebase.

There is one other approach – creating a micro-format that makes a standard format that allows any note written out there be crawled and scanned into a DB automatically…what-ever. Thats never going to happen unless Microsoft, Apple, and every other user interface company decides they want to support MicroFormat for wine tasting notes. Chances of that happening? Pretty much Zilch…

It would be far easier for other sites that have note functionality to migrate their DB to Freebase, effectively merging all note DBs, and write database calls to the Freebase API rather than their own MySQL “Silo” of information. You think CellarTracker is cool? Imagine every note ever entered into a site on the Internet, regardless of the site, being available to Snooth or WineQ or any other site that wants it!! I’m an Alpha member of Freebase and I can attest that its difficult to explain the potential impact of this site, which brings me to the practical, marketing side of my brain – I’ve seen too many technologies that were just too far ahead and couldn’t survive until the world caught up. I hope Freebase doesn’t go that route…

Every wine note site in the world should be Freebasing!

Enjoy the Wine Life!

Tooling around with new tech tools as I usually do, I just found one of the more useful tools that Typepad has created a posting client for my smart phone (Nokia e61). While most bloggers either don’t have a mobile blogging device or bring their laptops with them, I have a nice little phone with a 2 Megapixel camera. It’s been great for email but no way of blogging.

Well, that changed today! With this client I can write quick notes and get them up here. This whole post is written via Nokia e61. I don’t anticipate writing long posts in the future but I couldn’t resist doing this one. Now I have an easy way of capturing my first impressions and (with this phone) including Pics!

Enjoy the Wine Life!

Well, my blog is growing up so fast…>sniff sniff<…

First, let me apologize for the bit of a hiatus. There’s just alot going on. I have development working on Wine Life Today, working on things with our friends at WineQ, a couple of major intiatives at my day job, construction at our house, and the best news of all…we are expecting another little addition to the family! So as you can imagine, I’ve taken a brief hiatus from my normal blogging but I have a backlog of great wines to review including a wine AND recipe combo from Wolf Blass!!!

So thanks for everyone’s support, well wishes, requests for more posts, and everything else. That past three years have meant alot to me in my wine adventures and I owe a great deal of that to the community that supports this blog.

Keep the notes coming and as soon as life gives me a chance to take a breather I’ll be back on this microphone tasting, pontificating, and just generally yapping to all the wine lovers out there! Stay tuned!

Yes, this is about the Cork’d acquisition and its my analysis as a tech industry vet thats been in and around deals like this for over a decade.  Now before you all fly off the hook and start jumping on my throat, hear me out.  I am 100% in favor of Web 2.0/Wine 2.0, technology, and anything else that has to do with exposing as much great wine to as many people as possible.  However, lets take a look at the Cork’d acquisition because its very revealing.

First of all, Gary V., congrats – this is a good acquisition for you and your retail business.  Very forward thinking.  You have a lively “Vayniac” community and a thriving retail business.  This functionality you’ve acquired is very very smart.  Its a robust technology that will serve your community very well and it was put together by some thought leaders in the Web 2.0 world.  Now your existing community can really do some great things including the notes and sharing comments and Twitter and all the rest.  I actually thing that this can position you as a real challenger to the “Wine.com”s of the world.  You’ll actually have a useful wine e-commerce site thats more than a wine clearing house.

That brings me to the thesis of this post.  This acquisition is actual proof that a site based SOLELY on tasting notes and hoping to attract alot of users is, in reality, of little value (financially).  What Gary did was acquire technical functionality to enhance his pre-existing community – savvy move by Gary but what amount do you think the 20,000 pre-existing registered users brought to the deal?  Gary’s got a community and following already.  There’s a remote chance that some of those Cork’d users may actually buy from Gary so there’s that value but what that amounts to is a mailing list that Gary can promote to.  That’s worth about $10K and you can get much better qualified list from a magazine publisher.

Cork’d had (and has) some very advanced technological features and, like I said above, the synergy with Gary’s site is to help create fanatical WineLibrary customers.  Gary’s business is retail.  It pays the bills.  At the end of this, Cork’d was a short cut for Gary to build the features he needed for his site without paying for a custom contract to re-create.  Gary made a “build versus buy” decision.  In this case, its a simple decision for Gary – How much to get a gaggle of engineers and pay them to re-create Cork’d for me, add some percentage on top of that and offer that to Cork’d.  Any decent private equity guy/gal could do that calculation for you.

Do the 20K registrants of Cork’d add any value to that equation?  Answer is a resounding “NO”. 

So if I may be so humble, if you’re working away on a site that collects tasting notes and is attempting to create a community with a business plan of marketing to that community and creating ads for them you need to be careful.  Step back, do some deep analysis, write a business plan and flesh out exactly what your goals and missions are before you spend a year on creating custom functionality for a real business person.  If you can create the site on your own and you don’t have a business plan written they you’re better off consulting because you’re obviously a talented programmer.  Your opportunity cost of spending all your time on a site like Cork’d is going to be painful when you could’ve been billing $100 per hour for your time.

Enjoy the Wine Life!

So I had a semi-defining moment this weekend. I was in Vegas for my annual “guy’s weekend” with some buddies. It started off as a way to get golf in with some friends and, now in its 7^th year, has become a way for us to get together as we’ve moved to different areas and don’t get to see each other much.

So there were two big things going on this weekend:

1. Wine Spectator Grand Tasting
2. Oscar De La Hoya versus Floyd Mayweather “Fight of the Century”

I didn’t know either of those were happening before I showed up. More importantly, for item number 2, Jay-Z was having an after-party at a new part of Tao called Tao Beach. As much as I like the Grand Tasting and don’t get to go too often, I was WAY more interested in figuring out how to get into the Jay-Z after-party.

(pictures at the end)

Read the rest of this entry »

And here is the shipment I was thanking WineQ for before.  My wine club shipment is exactly that – MY WINE CLUB.  I put these on the list a while ago and here they are.

Can’t wait to try them.  So the only question left is:

I Q, DO YOU?

I’ll try to post some tasting notes on these beauties soon.

Enjoy the Wine Life!