Comments on: xbox, blogs and wine

By: Sue

Sue — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:50:25 +0000

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?

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 08:38:44 +0000

You can’t talk about the bible and still be cool,
Seriously.

By: Kat

Kat — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:22:46 +0000

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.

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 02:23:30 +0000

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?

By: Shefaly

Shefaly — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:21:51 +0000

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?

By: becky

becky — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:09:22 +0000

LOVE the illustration.…the truth of it.

By: Rik

Rik — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:35:14 +0000

Are you trying to tell us that Stormhoek will give us huge headaches?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:20:04 +0000

maybe we have developed since then, maybe they didn’t care where as we do now… well some people anyway…

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:00:37 +0000

GREAT image, Hugh. It’s always about the heart.

By: Jill

Jill — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:47:52 +0000

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?

By: Kimber

Kimber — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:36:06 +0000

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.

By: hugh macleod

hugh macleod — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 22:25:01 +0000

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…

By: lydia

lydia — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:53:45 +0000

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.”

By: nakedpastor

nakedpastor — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:31:38 +0000

BUT the bible DOES say that at the wedding party he attended, he DID save the BEST for last!! that’s about quality!

By: Paul Robinson

Paul Robinson — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:22:48 +0000

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. :-)