At Christmas we always make standing rib roast for our dinner. Almost every year this means a Cabernet to match with the meal. Sometimes it’s from California, other times from Chile, but most times it’s from Bordeaux.

This year’s choice is a Château Camensac 1995 that I have been cellaring for a few years. I can almost smell the pencil lead now… hope it’s not corked

A big thank you to all who donated this year and to Pim and Alder.

Happy Holidays!

There’s just about an hour to go on A Menu For Hope III and there are still a lot of great wine prizes up for your donation. Sorry I didn’t get to that guide this morning, but the following could use some love:

WB07, WB09, WB10, WB15, WB22, WB08, WB12, WB14, WB16, WB17

For the decoder, click here. You’ve got about an hour from now…

$56,661.70 raised as of now; most excellent. Thanks!

I attended a tasting last night in St. Paul where about 20 wine lovers gathered to taste barrel samples with the winemaker. The young wine, a Pinot from Wentzel Vineyard, showed a lot of potential for being an interesting wine once it’s blended and bottled late next year.

Nothing about this gathering was out of the ordinary except in the way the attendees came to be invited. We all are members of Alan Baker’s Rat Pack at Crushpad who are part investor, part collaborator and part customer; welcome to the world of micro cult wines, Wine 2.0 style.

So it occurred to me that this kind of “high-touch”, online communities who form into occasional face-to-face gatherings, is an element of Wine 2.0 that I haven’t yet touched on. Everyone in the room was there to taste some of “their wine” and talk about how it is being shaped by the winemaker; a really interesting example of wine education and collaboration facilitated by the internet. These kind of gatherings will be more common as the lines between “professional” and “enthusiast” are blurred by places like Crushpad.

More established wineries can also benefit from the synergy between online communities and real world gatherings through blogs, podcasts and even old school groups like wine clubs. All they need to do is plan an event and show up with some wine to taste and an educational attitude. Examples might be a blending session with the winemaker or barrel tastings. The sales will come after customers become “part of the family.”

That’s high-touch from a Wine 2.0 perspective.

I’ve just checked the donation page of Menu for Hope III and almost $45,000 has been raised so far. As awesome as that is, I’m still surprised that there are many wine prizes with very few donations. My prize, for example, only has 2 donations right now so if you put down just $10 you’ll have a 33% chance to win about 25 hours of my time writing posts or doing podcasts about anything in the world of wine you want to know more about for all of 2007. I can assure you this will be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You can check out the complete list here and I will be posting again in the morning with a buyers guide for each wine item. Donations close at 6pm Pacific time tomorrow night, so there is still time to support this worthy cause.

As this meme about Wine 2.0 has made it’s way around the blogosphere, it has always been an international discussion; as long as you speak English, that is. So through the magic of trackbacks and keyword feeds, I’ve been tracking the discussion in some Italian wine blogs. Through the use of Google translations and my rudimentary understanding of Italian, I’m able to get the gist of most of the discussion.

It’s good to see a popular blog like Aristide post a nice write-up on Bottletalk and WineLog. Judging by the comments, it would seem there are fewer folks drinking the “Wine 2.0 Kool-Aid” in Italy than us English speakers. I also found a blog called “Vino 2.0” which seems to have been created after I started my writing on the subject here (Grazie for the Second Life coverage, Giusy).

I love the discussion no matter which language it’s written in.

In my holiday shopping this year, I’ve noticed a huge range of gift cards in drug, discount and grocery stores. Along with the ubiquitous iTunes cards are offerings from The Gap, Chili’s, Pizza Hut and several other well known brands and chain restaurants.

So why shouldn’t wine be on this list, as well? With sites like WineQ, Bottlenotes and Openmarket Wine now on the scene and more launching early next year, I expect to see something like this next holiday season. It would make a great stocking stuffer for the wine geek on your list.

Last evening’s Wine 2.0 chat in Lingr was quite interesting and, to me at least, more productive than last month’s Second Life experience. Although we taxed the Lingr servers with almost 20 chatters at peak times, the venue worked well enough for us to better define what Wine 2.0 is all about. If you want to check out the discussion, the archive is available here.

Like a lot of technology geeks, I get easily distracted by the programming and site design of places like WineQ (very cool Ajax, guys), Cork’d (love the use of microformats), Vinorati (parlez-vous français?) or Scrugy (wow, every wine blog, forum, etc. in one place). But during the latest chat, Alan from the Ratcast and Crushpad made a couple points that are still banging around in my head today:

“I think user generated content will push its way into major pubs in 07 due to the demonstrated power of the communities we are growing online.”

“I love that you get wine filtered through cultural refernces from non-professionals who have a life outside of wine.”

So it’s not about the technology really, as El Jefe said during the chat, tech is the facilitator of more meaningful connections between consumers and producers. So if you boil Wine 2.0 down to it’s basics, it’s about communities of interest using the internet to share their passion for wine.

I’ll be rewriting the earlier minifesto over the holiday weekend to reflect these and other learnings from the session. Thanks to all who participated. Another meetup is planned for sometime in January, this time in Campfire. Details will be posted as they are finalized.

I’ve been tasting a lot of Spanish wines lately and really liking what I’ve found. After I reviewed Bodegas Abadia Retuerta’s Rívola a few weeks back, I was offered this sample by the winery’s U.S. importer. Since Tempranillo is also the wine of this evening’s Wine 2.0 virtual meet-up, I thought it would be appropriate to post my review.

Bodegas Abadia Retuerta, “Selección Especial”, Estate Grown, Castilla y León 2003 ($25/media sample) - A blend of 75% Tempranillo, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Merlot.

Very dark garnet with a purple rim. Aromas of black cherry, spice and vanilla. The wine has concentrated black cherry and currant flavors with black pepper, spice and nicely integrated tannins with a long finish. A nicely balanced and elegant expression of Tempranillo that I find delicious for current drinking but will reward another 4 or 5 years of cellaring. Like it’s little brother Rívola, this wine shows quite a bit of oak upon opening which nicely settles down into a supporting role once aerated. Decant before serving.

14% ABV
Natural cork closure
Score: 90

Buy this wine online

Twenty-four months ago I installed Wordpress, downloaded Audacity, plugged an Xbox karaoke mic into my laptop and hit record. What came out was the first episode of Winecast and the first podcast about wine. Since then, I’ve produced 69 more full length podcasts and 5 Quick Picks shows. Not a lot of content in the scheme of things but still a decent body of work, I think. I’ve also been joined by scores of other great wine podcasts in these last couple years.

After briefly considering calling it quits a couple months ago, I decided to dive into the wine blogging and podcasting waters even deeper in my third year. Not only will I return to my weekly frequency for the classic podcast, I will also make Quick Picks a regular mid-week feature. I’m developing another podcast right now that may or may not come under the Winecast banner, so 2007 will be a great year for this podcast, and, I hope, it’s host.

Thanks to all who supported the show this year and for all your comments. The best is truly yet to come…

PS: If you already like what I’ve done, you could also Digg the show