wine(explored) by wine(accessorized)

Yes, it’s true. I’m placing myself on a one-month hiatus from the world of Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. There are two main reasons for it. The first, and most importantly, the reduction of calories in my diet will help in getting myself back in shape. After being behind a desk for up to 11 hours a day, 5 days a week for the past year, I’m seen myself get a bit soft.

When you combine one or two glasses of wine with dinner a few times a week, the bottle or two from entertaining on weekends, and the occasional post-work beer or cocktail with coworkers and friends, you find yourself looking at quite a few thousand calories per week that you’re just tossing onto the pile. I know exercise and being in shape is not for everyone, but pretty much my entire life I’ve been an athletic individual, and it’s time to get back to that.

The second reason is more internal, a pure test of willpower. Since I turned 21 and became allowed by law to purchase and consume wine, beer, and spirits, I doubt I have gone a week without allowing alcohol to pass these lips. Heretofore, I have been able to avoid a daily caffeine addiction, generally getting my energy from vitamins and natural herbs, but I’ve never really considered how much I psychologically crave alcohol.

In my mind, at least, I always turn to comfort food or human interaction when I’m stressed out, but I’ll find out for sure how much alcohol is a part of my life. I’m not saying I’m an alcoholic, mind you, but it will be interesting to see what habits or activities I have that I’ve allowed to become routinely associated with wine and beer.

But what does this mean for the blog?

I’ve got plenty of tasting notes saved up for a rainy day, so finding new wines to share won’t be a problem. I prefer to think of this as an opportunity to try out new themes in my writing. Writing reviews has become a bit stale. After all, I tend to be a verbose individual, and I cannot imagine my readers enjoy sifting through several paragraphs of my mental ramblings in order to find out whether or not they’d enjoy a wine.

So what will we do? We’ll aim for a more interactive approach, something more abstract that invokes communication. I have been inspired by some social media blogs that I read regularly that have mush shorter posts than mine and are generating way more discussion. I’ve gotten away from talking about wine in my focus on my career, and I’ve treated Twitter more as a stress outlet than a genuine discussion board in recent months. What’s on everybody’s mind? I hope to find out.

I mean, really. What can you say about a wine that someone has reviewed? I like it. I don’t like it. I like similar wines. I don’t like similar wines. I will have to try this. I don’t want to try this. There are limits to how much you can engage your readers when you’re essentially lecturing them on what a wine is like. Let’s test the bounds.

And when we return, we will have a bevy of new wines to taste and review. Per numerous suggestions on Twitter, I will return focused on specialty wines, dessert wines, wines from foreign locales (the Middle East, Western Asia), and wines from states here in the US that you might have never considered.

There’s another good reason for this, too. Just imagine the cash I will save. I might even attempt to stretch this past April and buy myself a nice new decanter as a reward.

The Background:

In social media, there’s a term that’s bandied about almost as often as the word “guru”: ROI, or Return On Investment. What are you getting for your time and effort? How are you converting your man-hours to sales or action? How many people are seeing your tweets, reading your posts, or watching your videos, then going out and doing what you expect of them? It’s one of those objective/subjective metrics, as one man’s value is another man’s excess.

In wine, there is a similar metric known as QPR, or Quality to Price Ratio. It’s a helpful thing to have in mind when considering which wines to buy. For a local example, there are two wineries that stand on opposite ends of the price spectrum (as far as North Carolina wines are concerned, at least): Cellar 4201 and Childress Vineyards.

Cellar 4201 charges a maximum of $14 per bottle, delivering an above-average experience on every wine. Their QPR is high.

Childress charges around $10 to $15 for their varietal wines and upwards of $40 for their signature wines. The QPR varies greatly depending on the wine and the price; for example, their Cabernet Franc varietal wine is worth a lot more than the $15 price tag while some of their signature wines may not impress at $40 or even $30.

With this in mind, I want to attempt to put QPR in perspective with a few wines and beers that I have in my collection at home.

The players:

Bud Light: $1.00 for a 12oz bottle (roughly $6 for a six pack) – We all know Bud Light. They have those funny commercials that never seem to make the beer taste any better.

New Belgium Mothership Wit: $1.50 for a 12oz bottle (roughly $9.00 for a six pack) – New Belgium is on the middle tier of craft beer; while not priced at the pinnacle of craft beer, they deliver good value compared to their competition at under $10.00 for a six pack, and they embrace organic brewing practices.

Delirium Tremens: $4.50 for an 11.2oz bottle (roughly $18.00 for a four pack) – You’re getting into the high end of craft beers available to the common consumer with Delirium Tremens (see my review of Delirium Tremens from earlier this week for specifics). You can get a four pack for just under 20 bucks, but, really, there aren’t too many people out there who’d need four of these guys in one sitting. That’d be like pounding two bottles of wine.

Bacchus: $11.00 for a 12.7oz bottle – With Bacchus, a sour ale painstakingly brewed and aged in a Belgian castle, you’re getting into the realm of beer that most people don’t know and don’t care to invest in. If you’re ever lucky enough to sample a sour ale, it’s a unique experience, though an acquired taste, and like the finest wine, it really requires an appreciation beyond the average consumer to justify the price.

Espiral 2009 Vinho Verde: $4.00 for a 750ml bottle – Most Trader Joe’s fans swear by their wine. You consistently get drinkable, flavorful wines at rock-bottom prices with an easy-to-browse, fairly varied selection. The Vinho Verde offers a lightly carbonated, very dry thrill that at least approximates the traditional Vinho Verde experience at a ridiculously low price.

André Lorentz 2003 Riesling: $11.00 for a 750ml bottle – The Rieslings of Alsace are notable for their embrace of the terroir, turning in a varietal wine experience that simply cannot be matched by other regions (except perhaps the northern vineyards of Germany). André Lorentz offers a basic Riesling in these regards that is comparatively affordable and a good value.

Chateau de Monthelie 2006 1er Cru Burgundy: $40.00 for a 750ml bottle – Coming from a good but not great 2006 vintage in Burgundy, the Chateau de Monthelie 1er Cru is a step below the Grand Cru, still recognized as being part of the top 15% of wine produced in the region. $40.00 is a fair price for what generally is a high-quality, mostly consistent experience.

Chateau O’Brien 2007 Late Harvest Tannat: $70.00 for a 750ml bottle – Pressed from a grape that was cast aside for its inability to properly mature in France, Tannat varietal wines have found a resurgence in the terroirs of Uruguay and Virginia, making them a rarity in the wine world. A late harvest Tannat wine is even harder to find, justifying the $70.00 price tag for what is ostensibly a high-quality unique dessert wine experience.

The Challenge:

To put these prices in perspective, consider the following decisions should you find yourself in a wine and beer shop with a given amount of cash:

If you had $12, would you rather have a single bottle of Bacchus, a bottle of the André Lorentz, a six pack of the Mothership Wit, or a half a case of Bud Light?

If you had $70, would you rather have a single bottle of Late Harvest Tannat, 6 bottles of the André Lorentz, or 70 bottles of Bud Light?

If you had $40, would you rather have a bottle of Burgundy 1er Cru, 10 bottles of Vinho Verde, or 40 bottles of Bud Light?

If you had $4, would you rather have a bottle of Vinho Verde, a bottle of Delirium Tremens, or 4 bottles of Bud Light?

There’s no right or wrong answer here… sometimes you want share a single high quality bottle in an intimate setting; other times, you want to furnish enough alcohol for a 12 person tailgate. If you’re doing the latter, investing in premier crus is a bad idea.

What do you think? What makes a good wine investment in your eye? Would you ever spend $70 on a single bottle of wine when you could get six of another?

In a truly amazing stroke of timing, Darren Rowse of Problogger wrote a post titled Take the 7 Link Challenge on the 7-month anniversary of the day I officially joined social media for work (the day I activated my Twitter account). After reading Phil Buckley’s 7 Posts You May Have Missed, I decided that today would be a good day for a retrospective on my own blogging adventures thus far. 7′s supposed to be a lucky number, right?

What posts would I use to introduce these random wine-drinking strangers to my blog?

1. Your First Post: West Wind Wines: A Taste of Blue Ridge Culture was as much a way to introduce my readers to me as to West Wind Farms. It’s one of my longest and most prosaic posts, engaging in some of my creative writing class chops that I had recently finish honing. The fact that I snuck in some personal information as I profiled the winery (I think) made this a proper introduction of me to the blogosphere. I led with my passion, and that’s as good a way as any, right?

2. The Post You Enjoyed Writing The Most: The 2010 Texas – Virginia Wine Summit Part 4: Eye on the Future was an absolute blast for me on multiple levels. I got to research the Virginia wine industry in great depth, which led me to learn a whole lot about it I never really knew. The facts I presented, I thought, made a great case for Virginia to be the next great wine region. I also got to collaborate with one of my favorite wine bloggers, Ben Simons of Vinotology, who represented Texas in the great debate.

3. A Post Which Had a Great Discussion: The Occasional Risk of Buying Local was my first experience with bad publicity. I didn’t think it through too well when I ripped a local producer for a Rosé that I sought out. There were two things wrong with what I did: I didn’t research the wine and I hadn’t established my reputation. I got a prompt response from the winemaker who, though he didn’t exactly defend the wine, did take issue with how I described it. I forget who it was who said it, but they were right (and I wish I’d known that in retrospect): we’re writing about someone’s craft of love, and we should be diplomatic even if we dislike it. Lesson learned (sort of). I repeated some of my mistakes when ripping another wine a few weeks later, though I was much more diplomatic about it.

4. A Post on Someone Else’s Blog that You Wish You’d Written: The Dude’s Guide to Wine Series by Josh Wade of DrinkNectar is a no-brainer. It’s by far the most fun I’ve ever had reading a post, and I keep going back to giggle at the none-too-subtle innuendo. Not only that, but it truly is a phenomenal guide for men who might otherwise be intimidated by wine especially in the context of a date with an intimidating woman.

5. A Post with a Title You Are Proud Of: How NASCAR Drivers do Cabernet Franc demonstrates the rare ability I have to be both clever and concise. Usually my titles are close to a dozen words long as I simply cannot express myself adequately any less verbosely. I’m not entirely sure why, but this blog title always struck me as a favorite. It’s punchy, it’s snarky, it only took 6 letters, and it (I believe) incites a question in the potential reader’s mind: “How DOES a NASCAR driver do Cabernet Franc, exactly?” I had fun, at least. I also think of it fondly because it inspired me to visit Childress Vineyards, my new favorite North Carolina winery. Go there and try the Meritage (the Cab Franc is sold out!).

6. A Post You Wish More People Had Read: DIY Ethics in Punk and the Wine Blog Movement combined my two favorite passions: wine and music. Best of all, I got a guest blogger, Matt Mauldin of Wineheimer, a veteran of both the punk music scene and the wine industry, who offered incredibly targeted insight into my concerns. I also got to vent about the past, present, and future exploitation of my favorite music movement, the much maligned emo genre with Matt to straighten me out on the specifics. Really, I wish that anyone who has ever taken an interest in my blog had read it. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I got way too many TL;DR responses.

7. Your Most Visited Post Ever: The Best Boxed Wine You’ll Ever Buy (No, Seriously!) has received, by far, the most attention of any of my posts, and it’s largely because of Google. It’s a bit of a sucker search, though, because the wine I reviewed was technically not a boxed wine but a Tetrapak. Because of the continued response and interest, however, I decided to conduct my boxed wine experiment, and now I’m receiving at least a third of my traffic each day from people searching for info about boxed wine. Consider that a lesson on studying your keywords and building around them, eh?

If any of my wine blogger mates decide to do this as well, comment here or link me up… I would love to read your personal take on this theme!