Category: WineLog

Jon Newman Wine Dinner at Morton’s Recap

newmanwines_smThis post is mostly for folks who attended the Jon Newman Wine Dinner at Morton’s in Philadelphia last night. I’ll recap the wines we drank, but also talk a bit about Newman’s talk and the guest author Jeffrey A. Cohen.

Here are the wines: (or search for the tag newmanmortons2010)

Rigol 1897 Brut, Cava, Spain

Kingsford Manor Sauvignon Blanc 2009

Kingsford Manor Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

Mockingbird Hill Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

All of these wines are current selections from Newman Wine and Spirits and so good QPR (quality/price ratio) wines. That’s Newman’s style; he’d rather “impress someone with an $11 bottle of quality wine” than a more expensive wine.  That fits right in with my wine buying/drinking philosophy.

Jon stayed apolitical in his talk, but did poo poo the PA Liquor Control Board (where he used to be chairman) for not allowing direct shipments in state.

He was a little sceptical of the rave reviews of the 2009 Bordeaux, wondering over the fact that Robert Parker and others have declared three different vintages this decade (2000, 2005, and now 2009) as “the best ever”. Are they really getting better and better at making wine over there. Perhaps. Jon talked about how he asked a wine maker over there (he might have pointed someone out by name, but I forget) why people are willing to spend $800-$1000 for a single bottle of first growth Bordeaux. The answer was basically that that wine is a status symbol… a way for rich folks to impress.

Meanwhile, Jon is focused on those $10-$20 bottles of wine.

He talked about the surplus of good wine that is available, in California in particular, and how the bad economy has lead to folks “trading down” to lower price points. People who used to buy $30-40 bottles are buying in the $20 price range. He said that consumers who step down like this, tend to stay there once they realize they can find good wine at those prices.

Especially in this market, there are great wines out there at lower prices. If you expand your options to regions like Spain, South Africa, and South America, you can especially find some good values. And if you get in the loop with folks like Jon or other services like Cinderealla Wine and Wines Til Sold Out, you can really get some great deals.

Another thing I love about Jon’s view on wine is that he’s all about “what can I drink now”? He said at the PALCB, they would survey customers about how long they stored the wine they were buying. The average response was not 1 year, 1 month, 1 week, or even 1 day… but 2 hours. I myself have probably held less than 10 bottles of wine for longer than a couple months. All of those wines were either gifted wines out of our price range or otherwise sentimental wine that we were saving for special occasions. It’s mostly in and out in our wine fridge. So reviews and buyers like Jon who focus on “what can I drink now” are valuable to drinkers like me.

Finally, I wanted to turn you all onto Jeffrey A. Cohen, a former Philadelphia trial lawyer and entrepreneur who’s writing fiction full time now. He’s a funny mafioso looking dude, a childhood friend of Newman’s, who introduced his debut book The Killing of Mindi Quintana at the dinner. It’s a story of a lawyer turned vigilante against one of his own clients. We all got copies of the book at the dinner last night, and I’m looking forward to reading this as soon as I get a chance.

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1 Wine Dude on Cahors Malbec

While I struggle to get my hands on a single bottle of the stuff to drink, 1 Wine Dude is actually in Cahors France (for the International Malbec Days festival going on) tasting and pondering on the Cahors marketing push.

The dude concludes (emphasis his):

Ignoring the discussion of whether or not enough Cahors wine in the tier is produced and exported to the U.S. to provide the ammunition for such a push, from my vantage point it looks like Cahors will be going head-to-head against Argentina in that tier, only with higher prices, more confusing labels, less market awareness, and (arguably) a less newbie-friendly taste profile.

The whole article is worth a read. So read it.

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Our Office View

We just moved recently, and one of the things I really liked about our old place was how our office was setup and the view of “the duck pond” across the street.

So when picking the apartment we wanted at the new complex, the view was very important. It’s amazing to think that this kind of scenery is just 5 miles from the Limerick nuclear power plant. Actually, the radiation is probably what’s causing these trees to grow. Or more likely the trees were planted to hide the power plant behind it.

In any case, I’m glad that they are there. I’ve always dreamed about sitting at a computer, writing the great american novel, and gazing out at the trees in thought. Well, I’m not writing a novel (yet), but at least part of the dream lives on right now.

Here are some photos I just took. It’s raining out there and a little dark. If I was more patient or a better photographer, I could have gotten some better stuff. The photos don’t do it justice. I adjusted the levels a bit to make the green pop, which is why the desk looks kind of brown. Some top secret shots of WineLog work on those screens too.

Office View 1 Office View 3 Office View 2

What I’m Up To

Been very busy lately. Looks like it’s going to be like this until after the wedding.

When you work for yourself, you can do things like take the whole month of May off. However, you have to work like a dog February through April to make it happen. It’s probably worth it though.

InvestorGeeks
InvestorGeeks, which is now donating all profits to charity, has made it’s first donation to a blogger who will be riding for the Arthritis Foundation this fall. If your feeling generous, take this direct link to donate to Steve’s cause.

In other InvestorGeeks news, I was interviewed by Kristin Friedersdorf, of WallSt.net (look for the “recent episodes” list in the right sidebar). I talked about my investing philosophies and shared some of my lessons learned trying to start a blog network with InvestorGeeks.com.

WineLog
On the WineLog front, our potential features list is growing faster than we can knock stuff out. There is a lot of work to be done there. Still, there is time to drink a bit of box wine. I had some Hardy’s 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, and it wasn’t bad.

One exciting bit is that we’re nearly finished helping Ryan Opaz become the most prolific Wine Logger ever. We are importing his 600 or so wines and tasting notes from out of CellarTracker. We’re about halfway through his wines. It’s a crazy process that we’re trying to streamline and automate as much as possible. In the future, it should be fairly easy for anyone to leave their current wine tracking software and join the dark side over at WineLog.net.

I’ll throw this out there right now. If any competitors are working on similar importing schemes and trying to get data out of WineLog, just let me know. I’ll seriously help you as much as possible. If people want to take their data to another service, I want to help them. Perhaps more, I don’t want any developers wasting their time doing stuff that would be much easier for us to do. I know our system probably looks as confusing to others as you-all’s stuff looks to me.

Fatness
I didn’t weight myself today. I’d guess somewhere between 220 and 222. Kim and I took our car for inspection and ended spending the whole day over at the car dealer waiting for new tires to get shipped in. We took a nice 1.5 mile stroll to a nearby Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Then a nice 1.5 mile stroll back later for lunch at Pizzeria Uno.

So a decent workout there with all the walking, but I doubt it made up for the extra calories I had today. (ham and cheese omelet, hashbrown casserole, sourdough toast – “ranch chicken” salad, two sausages on rolls for dinner with chips = about 3500Calories at least.) I’m getting a bit too content, and even fat blogging isn’t motivating me. I’m going to have a day of reckoning at the gym tomorrow… really going to beat myself up. ‘should be fun.
Peace.

WineLog is Being Spun Off

There are some really exciting developments in the business side of WineLog.

Kim and I are filing the paper work to create a new LLC for WineLog. (Right now WineLog is an entity under our Stranger Studios company.)

We’re not selling the company. We’re not abandoning it. Kim and I will still be the major players behind the company. However, we are bringing in someone with a lot of experience building successful startups to act as our CEO and focus on the high-level vision of the company. This will let Kim and I focus on the development, marketing, and community building. The end result will be that WineLog will grow quicker and be better positioned to take advantage of the business opportunities available to us.

I can’t name names right now, but there will probably be some kind of announcement at the WineLog blog in a few days.