January 17, 2007
xbox, blogs and wine
[One of the new Stormhoek label designs.]
I was hanging out the other day with two gamer friends of mine who play a lot of X-Box. Though the conversation bent in many different directions that evening, one nugget stuck out for me:
The Short Version: X-Boxers and bloggers aren’t really that different. They’re just trying to connect, just X-boxers use games and the internet, and bloggers use the written word and the internet. The tools differ, but the primal need [i.e. the need to connect] remains the same.
Perhaps this is why in the early days of Web 1.0 there was so much porn, cybersex and flame wars going on. We bloggers are used to seeing the internet in contemporary and/or futurist terms. But these days I’ve started seeing the internet as just a manifestation of something far more primal and ancient.
Of course, being in the wine business, I can see why. Wine has been used as a social object for thousands of years. So seeing the connections between a $10 bottle of South African vino and other social objects i.e. X-Box and blogs, isn’t that far of a stretch for me. It’s all about Human Connection. Love. Everything else is secondary.
Random Thought: As any former choirboy will know, wine is mentioned a lot in The Bible. Funny how they don’t talk about the quality much.
You read “Jesus, knowing that tonight was his last night on earth, offered his disciples wine”, or “King David, being full of internal conflict, drank a lot of wine, and then went home to give Queen Bathsheba a good seeing-to.”
But you don’t read, “Jesus, knowing that tonight was his last night on earth, offered his disciples an unpretentious little Sauvingnon with undertones of blackcurrant and lemons.”
Or “King David, being full of internal conflict, downed a few sips of a delightfully characterful Chateau Le Feuvre, and then went home to give Queen Bathsheba a good seeing-to.”
Why not? Because maybe, just maybe, all that wine geekery doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. If it mattered, they would’ve fit it in there somehow.
I hate to have to quote chapter and verse at you, but you might want to have a look at John 2:10, the miracle of the marriage at Cana …
“And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”
Granted, but they didn’t say “thou hast kept the opulent Shiraz, typical of it terroir, until now.”
Random thought? Puh-lease. There wasn’t anything random about that.
I’m gonna mention my wine venture (almost) obliquely, then a “random” thought about wine in the Bible? You’re like that snake in the Jungle Book! Don’t look him in the eyes, folks or he’ll have you thinking that Stormhoek was the wine Jesus served up at the last supper. LOL! Thank god I took that class with Mark Crispin Miller.
Was I the one you were talking about down there a bit when you mentioned turning off comments?
“And Christ took the cup, passed it to his disciples and said, ‘Do this in memory of me’. And the disciples drank the wine and were worried about the price, as they were but fishermen. So Christ said ‘Do not worry brothers, it’s just a fruity little number from South Africa, only £5.99 at Oddbins’. And the disciples were pleased”
I like the idea Hugh, sounds far more realistic!
Wouldn’t it be quicker to point out the things we do which aren’t about “connection”, we evolved into social-sexual animals (porn + community + TCP/IP = the internet!) it’s hard-wired into us we can’t help it, as much as the Victorians and the fundys tried to beat it out of everyone.
As for wine, “quality” is very much in the eye of the beholder, or a matter of perspective IMO,
Most serious wine geeks would see wine like Stormhoek (i.e. at this price point) as being near the bottom of the stack (i.e. low quality), of course this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t punch above it’s weight, it does!
Most supermarket buyers only spend avg. £3.99 on a bottle of wine so for them Stormhoek would probably represent the top of the stack (i.e. high quality).
In the grand scheme of things, does it matter?, depends if you drink wine just to get pissed or not really.
S
Hugh,
I’m not gonna get involved in the biblical wine debate (though funny) or the gamers are bloggers theory (which is true), I just have to say that the love/hate drawing is by far one of my favorites. That is such a wonderful graphic depiction.
Damn your genius! I fell terribly inadequate now… maybe I just need a glass of wine. Any suggestions?
As ever, my personal thoughts, and trust me this isn’t an anti-Hugh rant. I’m just saying where I think there’s room for something better here, so please don’t think I’m attacking you in any way:
Of all the people out there who I thought would side with the terroir-ists, I thought you would. The love of the work that goes into it, rather than just taking any old crap, putting a nice label on it and then getting Robert Parker to guff over how nice he thinks it is. Been done before, you’re not adding to the industry. I would have thought you might want to try and demystify the process.
Sure the language is bull, but it’s jargon. It’s the wine version of talking about contended DSL lines and traffic shaping. It’s like talking about the particular line of a suit. It’s the nature of the industry. To outsiders, it’s intimidating but part of the joy is getting to the point where you “get it” — that’s the power of blogging, and something you could do in abundance with Stormhoek. Imagine a blog that cut through the bull, and just told it as it is. “This is why Parker likes this wine. This is why our wine tastes like this. Notice that little thing in the aftertaste? That’s the dry summer we had that year, it does that, because…”
That could change the Wine World inside out. I’d figure you’d want to embrace that. Seems not. Hmph.
If you’re taking the wine business seriously, you really need to watch this a few times over, taking notes along the way (if you haven’t already):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411674/
At the end of it, look at the story you tell about English Cut, and then the story you tell about Stormhoek and find the incompatibility. It’s about the passion of the production, but you’re heading down a route in the wine business which is akin to a cheap tailor saying his clients don’t need Saville Row because he has nicer business cards.
Right now, you can get away with the muddle. It’ll be fine. But in a few years time it’ll get unstuck and you’ll be in the middle of nowhere. Passion in production, passion in communication, you can do that. But you’re quickly heading down the unauthentic Mondavi route, and that’s going to get you into trouble. It’ll make you money, sure, but making money from lies is easy? Who wants to do that?
For what it’s worth, I gave up alcohol a few months back. The social myths that it adds to an occasion are just lies. It’s a toxin, it harms your body, inebriates and numbs rather than relaxes, and I found that it was just screwing up my life in weird subtle ways. Since going tee-total, my life is sharper, more in focus, more about others and less about me. More on that here:
http://tinyurl.com/2tes43
Personally, I’ve *always* thought it odd that at the last supper they decided to get off their faces instead of, you know, loving the guys in the room they loved. Perhaps it’s just me. I suppose they didn’t have Starbucks back in 30AD.
BUT the bible DOES say that at the wedding party he attended, he DID save the BEST for last!! that’s about quality!
lol@ “thou hast kept the opulent Shiraz, typical of it terroir, until now.”
ok, how about Song of Songs 8:2
“I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother’s house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate.”
Paul, methinks your idea would work if the bottles were selling at roughly the same price as they suits i.e. $4000.
Hell, it would work at $400 a bottle…
I agree that when we market, we aren’t marketing a product, we’re marketing emotion. If the bible was promoting vanity or pride or being better than joe average, it would talk about the $400 dollar bottle of premium wine.
Didn’t they drink wine because, in those days, water was infested with disease? I know that in t’olden days in England, people drunk only ale because the water made them ill…which is how someone discovered how cholera proliferated from a water pump where the poor people, who couldn’t afford ale, drank. Adam Hart-Davies has a lot to answer for.
And in your charming love/hate design, why do I find hate so much more interesting?
GREAT image, Hugh. It’s always about the heart.
maybe we have developed since then, maybe they didn’t care where as we do now… well some people anyway…
Are you trying to tell us that Stormhoek will give us huge headaches?
LOVE the illustration.…the truth of it.
May be international wine trade was not so developed. Jesus after all was far away in the Middle East, was he not, and wine might have had to travel from Greece or Italy at the very nearest?
Your talk of a brand-free Bible immediately brought to mind American Psycho with it intentionally mind-numbing litany of brands. Two ends of a conitnuum?
In medieval times “wine” was watered down and drunk more than water because it was the healthy choice (water wasn’t so clean back then i guess). Perhaps that’s the kind of wine that Jesus served… I’m not sure that wine “culture” existed then.
As for selling wine with blogging, I just don’t get it. I get blogs, I get wine, but I’m not sure you do… Wine appeals to the senses. Selling wine will work if it appeals to the senses. Blogging about web 2.duh doesn’t. The hole “spirit” of works well for a wiki but does nothing for wine.
I’m a big fan of you’re cartoons and your htbc manifesto and wish you tons of success, but I won’t be buying that bottle of wine anytime soon. Selling it that way makes it specially unappealing to me. But that’s just me.
You can’t talk about the bible and still be cool,
Seriously.
Aww…and we were having such a good time, what with the wine and wit etc. I’ve always thought the bible was sucha rollicking good read. You don’t have to take everything you read seriously, do you?