“All your wine media are belong to us!” And you thought you were safe from me in the wine print world, didn’t you? Not so fast, jerky!

One of the wine biz print publications that is isn’t going totally broke (and in fact appears to be going strong as both an on- and off-line force in wine media) is Wine Business Monthly.  I’m happy to report that I’ve got an article in this month’s issue, sexily titled “Concrete Vat Innovation in Argentina: New troncoconic concrete vat design said to give wine more character and rounder mouthfeel.”

I can just feel your nipples hardening at the mere mention of trococonic vats!

Okay, not really.

But for a lot of people making wine, this kind of tech innovation is a fun (though very geeky-technical) read. Anyway, I’m happy to have had an opportunity to contribute to WBM, and it was fun trying to surreptitiously inject my gonzo style ever so slightly into a piece of technical writing.

The idea for the article had a circuitous route to my conscious brain. After judging in the 2013 Argentina Wine Awards, I had the pleasure of re-visiting Zuccardi‘s estate, and catching up with the affable Sebastián Zuccardi (a fellow judge at the Awards, and one of the winemaking sons of Director José Alberto Zuccardi).

During our tour, after marveling at the nigh-endless stream of trucks delivering grapes to fuel their massive operation, I asked Sebastián if we could get an update on their experimental winery-within-a-winery that I’d first seen back in 2011. Sebastián was pretty eager – and all smiles – in showing me what they’d been up to there over the two years since I first visited (but then, Sebastián is pretty eager and all smiles about most things).

Turns out that Zuccardi had been pretty busy little innovators in that interim, during which they’d been perfecting the design on new concrete vats that Sebastián is convinced greatly improve the mouthfeel of some of their wines. I’m inclined to agree, having tasted the promising results. I took some notes, snapped a few pictures, and asked the WBM editors if they were interested, which they were.

To find out more about the Zuccardi’s long-standing love affair with concrete, and to get your winemaking geek on, go read the WBM article!

Cheers!

This month, as part of my Answers.com gig, I penned a short article offering a selection of Halloween Wines Without the Kitsch. I mention it because, well, 1) it’s Halloween and 2) I like to piss off the people who have a near-apoplectic fit at the mere mention of holiday wine selections. [ Editor’s note: to those people – get over it; a lot more people want wine guidance over the holidays than don’t ].

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the holiday topic is sexy or isn’t almost entirely played out – in fact, every holiday wine pairing article I’ve ever written more or less boils down to “drink what you like, but most of all don’t screw it up by buying bad wine gussied up in cute packaging for the holidays.”

But because that’s too short of a sentiment for a paying article, we have to give it the ol’ college try, and so try I did. Look at it this way: if Halloween provides an excuse for people to explore interesting, otherwise-off-the-radar wine options like Bull’s Blood, or a familiar grape from a not-so-familiar region like Romania (now one of the top twenty wine producers in the world by volume, by the way), or a really good wine with a bad name (like The Dead Arm Shiraz), then I say what the hell, let’s go for it.

In any case, Halloween isn’t about trying to find a bottle of booze with a sticker of a werewolf or a zombie on the label; it’s about enjoying a glass of tasty vino about which you don’t have to think too much so that instead you can focus on important things, such as taking pictures of your daughter in her triceratops costume that you will eventually use to embarrass her right before her wedding many years from now (seriously… this costume below is pretty sweet…). At this point, I should add that one of my daughter’s imaginary friends is her “T-Rex dino husband” who “travels a lot for work” and “lives in a house on the beach.” Which I think bodes scarily somehow for my future as a father-in-law, but I’m not 100% sure about all of that yet.

Anyway… If you want werewolves and zombies, buy a Halloween themed thermos in which you can put that Bull’s Blood while you walk the kiddies around the neighborhood trick-or-treating, okay?

Cheers – and have a spooky, but safe, Halloween!

In the “this is fun, and you’ll learn something, but it’s definitely NSFW!” department, I recently appeared on Playboy Radio’s “Playboy’s Playbook” (which airs Tuesdays at 11AM PT), chatting about all things wine with host Kevin Klein.

Klein seemed to know quite a bit more about wine – and, more importantly, how it should be enjoyed and provide pleasure – than he lets on during the interview, but then I suppose we should expect that kind of comfortable focus on pleasuring oneself (and potentially others) when it comes to Playboy, right?

Anyway…

We chat about my Playboy.com gig, how to superstitiously order wine at restaurants, why wine critics aren’t actually out to totally screw you over, the all-important wine-and-panties connection, and why it’s important to always have a bottle of inexpensive but good quality Cava chilling the refrigerator, especially if you’re single.

You can download a copy of the interview here, stream it at Playboyradio.com, or listen via the embed below; just break out the headphones for this one, because it is NOT safe for within-earshot-general-public consumption (I did mention this was Playboy radio, right?). Oh, and leave the hangups and inhibitions at home before listening, okay?

And before you ask: yes, we’ll get back to more wine recommendations next week. In the meantime, pour yourself a decent glass of Cava and listen to the interview!

1WineDude on Playboy Radio’s Playboy Playbook – Chapter # 33: Wine Wine Wine

Cheers!

A quick round-up of some of my articles from last month’s Answers.com gig, for your tomato-tossing enjoyment.

Continuing the series on getting insiders to talk about what to expect from various varietal wines:

• Cabernet Sauvignon with Cornerstone Cellar’s Craig Camp (Go Craig! Go Craig! Camp dishes on his ideal version of Cab).
• Chenin Blanc with Ken Forrester (the irrepressible and indefatigable promoter of all things Chenin goes to town on all things Chenin).

On the wine book review front:

• World Atlas of Wine, 7th Edition by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson (short version: it’s still awesome).
• Saint-Emilion by Beatrice Massenet, Francois Querre and Emmanuelle Ponsan-Dantin (I wanted to hate it, but instead found myself wishing to book a trip to St. E).

Odds & ends:

• Three things you didn’t know about Port (don’t pretend you knew them all, smarty-pants).
• Three producers to watch in Stellenbosch (because you don’t go to South Africa without getting wowed by at least a couple of wine people).
• Why wine tastes differently at 30,000 feet (we’ve tackled this issue here before, but I wanted to give it the Answers.com treatment, too).
• Why chilling wine with ice cubes is a bad idea (seriously… just… don’t, okay?).

I should also mention that at the very end of the month I managed to sneak in my first contribution to the Why The PLCB Should Be Abolished blog, a smack-down of a shill of an editorial supporting anti-privatization efforts in Pennsylvania. Not a paying gig, but I’m hoping that one will pay in karma points one day when the PA Liquor Control Board finally goes the way of the dinosaurs.

Cheers!