At Vinisud, I had the pleasure of introducing an alternative wine tasting for the Outsiders.

The Alternative Tasting

Basically, we just did a fun wine tasting where we encouraged people to describe our wines with images that Louise Hurren had picked out for our tasting booklet.  Forcing people to think about a wine with images instead of words gets them to think outside the box instead of falling back on the oft repeated tasting note vocab like rich, balanced, and a laundry list of fruit.

Furthermore, it empowers novice drinkers to review wines without worrying that they’re using the wrong word.  The experts can make us feel inadequate about language sometimes, but they pretty much have no dominion in the land of photo reviews.

Why was this tasting on the Pavillion 2.0 space?

This tasting was held at the Internet space of Vinisud and there’s a good reason for that!  The reason for the prominence of the tasting note is largely grounded in the limitations of print media.  Limited space means we talk in pure descriptors without any conjugation.  But the Internet doesn’t pose the same challenge.  We can have infinite words and infinite photos in full color.  And heck we can even use moving pictures, music, and other media that were previously impossible to include in printed wine journalism.  The Internet provides us with a path to escape the tyranny of the tasting note!

So I did a little presentation on this topic to get everybody thinking outside the box before we got to drinking outside the box:

All the slides are available on slideshare with relevant links to related articles in the penultimate slide.

Results

I’d say everybody had a blast.  Including a lot of wine journalists (showing once again that even they can be fed up with tasting note format).  I originally wanted to do a tasting with music and video and all sorts of crazy stuff.  Thankfully, our group’s organizer Louise had the good sense to rein it in and focus on photos.

We had less than an hour to run the event so it was good to keep it simple and focused.  We got insanely good feedback about the event and it has already spawned several requests for similarly styled “alternative tastings”.  We also got several good ideas from our tasters who offered up ways to evolve the program and make it even more interesting.  Doing physical touchy feely tastings, doing musical tastings, tasting in darkness, drawings instead of photos, and so on.

In terms of tasting notes, I think we all received a wide range of notes.  I got everything from Lego man to Dutch masters.  I got several of the He/She picture that makes me wonder if I shouldn’t change my look.  Some of the outsiders noted that certain age groups tended to pick certain pictures (the more daring ones) more frequently than other demographics.  I’m sure we’ll compile more on this at our next meeting.

Everybody had fun tasting and I think this sort of event gets people to think and talk about wine in a new and stimulating way without feeling overly stuffy or pretentious.  A success!

Michel Smith spoke at the Université de la Vigne et du Vin in 2011 in Ferrals-les-Corbieres.  This is a synopsis of his talk and my reactions to it.  This is one post in an ongoing series about the Universite de la Vigne et du Vin.

Michel Smith had a list of suggestions and requests.  He thinks that winemakers who follow this advice will inevitably become better communicators and more interesting subjects for journalists.

His list was sort of numbered but I had trouble separating things (this presentation was after lunch ;D ) so I’m just going to list everything together as it appears in my jumbled notes:

• Prendre conscience de son espace; you are somewhere but not anywhere
• have a geographic, architectural, historical notion of where you are
• you don’t have to be born in a place, but if you choose to live there, you should familiarize yourself
• faire connaitre, faire savoir
• osez forger une histoire, dare to create a story, how did you come to this place, what was it like before your arrival, how will you change the place, how will the place change you?
• cherchez une coherence, seek coherence, a sensical, simple story, don’t overcomplicate
• be aware of presentation but don’t overcomplicate
• no gilding the lily
• quality assurance, make good wine or else nothing else matters
• be open to meeting your client
• be open to meeting anybody
• be open to your neighbors
• regroup, become a part of the community
• participate
• communicate together
• don’t talk shit about your neighbors, especially to journalists
• never send a bottle to a journalist without a little note that says hello, also include price and mention any side projects you have going on (Interestingly, I asked Michel about his own winery the other day and he responded with all this information and took the time to have a conversation with me. He practices what he preaches!)
• if, as Berthomeau said “le vin est delocalizable”, terroir is not. Lieu, terroir or whatever you want to call it is permanent and irreplacable.
• don’t recite your story, share it.  live it every time you tell it
• speak of wine as if it is a child, unique and special
• remember that journalists are just people, treat them like you treat other people and they will appreciate it; no red carpets, but a little human friendliness and hospitality, the same you would afford to anybody you’re going to work beside

 

Christine Ontivero spoke at the Université de la Vigne et du Vin in 2011 in Ferrals-les-Corbieres.  This is a synopsis of her talk.  This is one post in an ongoing series about the Universite de la Vigne et du Vin.

First off I need to apologize to Christine Ontivero for laughing aloud during her presentation.  I should have shown more restraint.

Ontivero is an attache presse working out of Perpignan.  And she came on this day to explain what a typical wine press agent does.

She tries to craft engaging stories (rather than copy/pasted letters about how a winemaker won a gold medal or is really passionate about his terroir).  Every winemaker says his wines are great or the best, and that will never impress a journalist.  That’s not a story.  It’s just an advert.  Instead she tries to get people to send a story that really shares a special moment related to wine.

She also alerts winemakers when they can send in samples and reminds them of important dates like when Bettane & Desseauve are about to taste in the area or when the RVF comes.   Also, things like promoting the foire au vins in all the supermarkets… all that really starts back in the spring when they’re scheduling the wines for the fall.

Christine thinks you can’t share stories on media like twitter or facebook (as you can imagine, this was when I laughed), and she has a great distrust for blogs.  For more information, you can read her blog.