The Unfiltered podcast with co-host Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape rolls into it’s second season this Sunday afternoon and you are invited to join us.

Instead of recording our Skype call and producing the show for later release, we will be streaming live from Talkshoe. We have invited another group of wine bloggers, writers and podcasters to discuss the burning issues of the day. If you would like a jump on the topics, just head over to our del.icio.us feed and look for “episode 8″ links.

The best part of this arrangement is you can call in and be part of the conversation or you can hang out in our chat-room which I will monitor as we record.

We will start the show at 4:00 pm EDT this Sunday, March 30th.

So if you’ve wanted to be on Winecast, now is your chance.

Call in details:

Phone Number: +1 (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 16856

I’ll also record and release the podcast as usual on the feeds after we are concluded for subscribers.

OK, I’ve got to come clean, dear reader, I’ve been a bad podcaster. For nearly two years now my production has been few and too far between. For that, I’m sorry but things are about to change.

As I thought about my dearth of podcasts one thing was consistent: I didn’t have a “to-do” list.

So that is now in place and beginning tomorrow things will start to become more consistent here from an audio perspective. I have 9 shows recorded and just need to record intros and tasting notes segments. I also have a new idea for a new podcast version that I will try out in the morning.

You will see a continuation of the classic podcast, quick picks and unfiltered along with something I’m calling repost… and I’ve got some new ideas on how to do video (no, Gary will not be challenged).

Thanks for your support so far and the best is yet to be recorded.

One of my blog subscriptions is to Hugh MacLeod’s personal blog, gapingvoid. If you don’t know Hugh, he’s the guy who is behind Stormhoek’s conversational marketing success. I interviewed him and Stormhoek principal Jason Korman last year.

Yesterday Hugh posted some thoughts on his blogging (or lack, thereof) that rang true with me:

clipped from gapingvoid.com So this last week I’ve been telling people I work with, I’m changing the game plan. I’m going back to basics. From now on building “the gapingvoid brand” will become my first priority.

Like Hugh, I’ve let the various demands of commerce get in the way of my blogging and podcasting here. So it’s back to basics with daily posts and more wine reviews. My bi-weekly podcast regime is also back in action, which will be maintained from here on. It’s easy to let this blog slide as it produces next to no income but it’s what the conversation triggers that produces the reward.

Winecast is back in business full-time… thanks once again, Hugh!

After almost three years of podcasting and blogging about wine, it’s time I try my hand at making some.

I’m pleased to announce my new side project in collaboration with the folks at Crushpad: Roussanne 2007.

Yep, I’m going to make a couple barrels, perhaps a bit more depending on demand, of one of the great white grapes of the Rhone, Roussanne. And not just any Roussanne, but grapes grown in the Westerly Vineyard (now known as McGinley) in Santa Ynez’s Happy Canyon area. This is just north of where I grew up and it will be great to get back to my roots and explore what it means to be a winemaker again.

Although I have never mentioned it here, I have made wine over several vintages. My first efforts were from canned concentrates in the mid-1980’s which ended in wines that mostly were poured down the drain. Undeterred, I continued my quest in the obscure vineyards of Oregon, Wisconsin with two vintages of Marshall Foch, Leon Millot, Dechaunac, Aurore and Seyval Blanc. These wines proved to be much more drinkable with some actually quite quaffable. But they were not what I was looking for so I stopped with the 1990 vintage. Although I later moved near the Finger Lakes in New York, I was never tempted to restart my winemaking until I could make wines from vitis vinifera grapes grown in my home state of California.

This vintage my wish has been granted and I will make Roussanne, perhaps blended with other Rhone whites, and podcast and blog the experience with you.

And you can directly participate by joining my Crushnet group and being on my advisory committee. Not only will you help me make all the decisions for this wine from fermentation procedures to aging to labeling, but you’ll also get a one-case allocation of this rare wine. A maximum of 70 members will have the chance to taste this wine in barrel and in the bottle.

Just sign up at Crushnet and then search for the Winecast group and join. Shortly thereafter I’ll approve your membership and you’ll be in for a great ride.

So who’s in?

For listeners who want to stay up with the latest podcasts while traveling, I’ve setup a new iPhone-friendly page and have put a new button to it on the right sidebar.

Since I don’t have an iPhone yet, I hope it works as advertised; let me know… A trip to my local AT&T or Apple Store is in my immediate future to see how it works on the real thing.

A few folks have asked me about how my wine cellar is doing since a fire there some weeks ago. I’m happy to report that it is today back to the way it was when it was first constructed almost 4 years ago. The final touches were put on this morning and it is now a blank canvas awaiting new racks and a Breezaire cooler.

Here’s some pictures from this week I’ve uploaded to my Flickr stream:

The blocks that the fire dept. broke are replaced and wall put back in place…

…next is the vapor seal…

…the cedar panels are in place awaiting some new racks.

I’ll be posting again once the racks get installed and I’ll be in stocking mode. Perhaps we can have some fun with that last bit…

Tomorrow night on Talkshow I will be doing a live edition of the podcast to kick off my return to regular Winecast programming. The theme is the second ‘Listener Questions’ show with guest co-host Bill Wilson from the Wine for Newbies podcast. Join us live online at 9:00 pm EDT/6:00 pm PDT. If you want to participate either download the Talkshoe software or call us at +1 724-444-7444, Talkcast ID: 23964. You don’t have to sign up or download anything to listen to the live stream.

We’ll have to figure out a prize for whoever stumps us wine geeks…

Well, that was certainly not the easy Sunday afternoon server migration… apologies for the outage but all is back on the new server now with some performance improvements to be done in the next day or two… normal blogging to resume in the morning. I’m glad that is over, etc.

I’m upgrading my hosting account this afternoon so the site might be out of commission for a time. Faster load times and better performance will be on the other side…