I do not own a tablet computer.

I also do not own a smartphone (many of you who have seen me at events in 2012 can attest to teasing me about the miserable state of affairs of my “dumb” phone, which now goes by the nickname “Jurassic Cell” and employs technology so ancient that it was, I think, left by the Apostles and rediscovered before being sold to me by Verizon several years ago). The closest I’ve gotten to the tablet craze is lugging around what I refer to as my iPod, which is an Apple iPhone 3GS I received from a 1WD reader for free, the phone portion having been disabled. An avid reader, I still “process” e-books on my first-generation Nook (and, even more tellingly, still love it; e-ink FTW!).

By my rough calculations, this all puts me squarely into “old fart” tech territory, a status a share with about 0.0023% of the First World’s population. It might actually make me retro-cool, but probably makes me more anti-cool than anything else. Whatever -  invested the several hundred bucks I haven’t spent on that tech, you beeaaatches!

Anyway, the entire world continues to go tablet crazy, to the point where there are now people who are looking to sell the iPad they bought just six months ago in order to purchase the slightly more upgraded same generation iPad announced by Apple last week. And now that Apple has joined Google, Nook, and Amazon and has entered the 7-whatever-inch tablet market (news you will already have heard, unless for some reason you’re dead), it’s been nearly universally agreed that the small tablet format (bridging the “gap” between phones and larger tablets and/or laptops) has officially arrived in terms of price/quality ratio.

What the hell does any of this have to do with wine?

A small bit, actually, but an important one for any people out there wanting to seriously up their personal Wine IQ…

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Last week, I wondered aloud (on twitter) whether or not anyone out there cares if a winery uses cultured yeasts instead of wild yeasts.

The feedback from the twitterati is included below after the jump (if you chimed in already via twitter, your response may be listed for all of the 1WD faithful to see – don’t say I didn’t warn ya!).

The short (and grossly oversimplified) answers to the question, by the way, seem to be "Yes!" for wine geeks and "No, who cares as long as the juice tastes good!" for the majority of people, based on the twitter responses that I received.

The topic of wine yeasts, and why they seem to touch off a hot-button reaction among wine pros and the geekier of wine aficionados, requires a bit of a primer, because to most wine drinkers, this is gonna be some pretty esoteric shiz.

During my last trip to Napa, I stopped into Chimney Rock for some barrel samples tasting (that’s samples of wines from barrels, not tasting samples of barrels) and spent a few hours geeking out over all things wine-related with the affable Elizabeth Vianna (CM’s winemaker who last week was promoted to GM).  Elizabeth is open, honest, and easy to get along with, and she’s not shy when it comes to expressing her opinions.  And yet, when she was explaining the winemaking process behind each of Chimney Rock’s wines, she became almost apologetic when she mentioned that they – gasp! – inoculate their wines with cultured yeasts! 

Imagine, the audacity!  The HORROR!!!…

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She Said “Freeze!,” He Said “Wow. Really?!?”

In this (long overdue!) episode of 1WineDude TV, I (briefly) interview (the very tall) Marnie Old, Philly’s first lady of wine and co-author (with Dogfish Head’s extreme beer maven Sam Calagione) of He Said Beer, She Said Wine: Impassioned Food Pairings to Debate and Enjoy: from Burgers to Brie and Beyond.

Marnie and I dined earlier this week at downtown Philly’s excellent Osteria, where Marnie deftly navigated the Italian-heavy wine list to match lesser-known selections with our crazy-good fare (the perks of friendship – Marnie’s been at the forefront of the Philly restaurant scene for years). 

In this interview, Marnie talks about her new book Wine Secrets: Advice from Winemakers, Sommeliers & Connoisseurs, and shares a (very!) inexpensive tip from the book for preserving open bottles of wine – and it’s one that I guarantee most of you haven’t tried yet!

Interview after the jump. Enjoy…

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The March issue of Sommelier Journal is dedicated to the topic of wine education, and (as always) is well worth a read for wine pros and serious wine geeks alike.  It contains a great follow-up article by Master Sommelier Tim Gaiser on the current status of the wine certification landscape, so the issue got me thinking (as it always does) about repercussions beyond the world of professional wine service, and into the worlds of wine writing and passionate wine enthusiasts.

And it got me thinking that YOU probably should get a wine certification.  it also got me thinking about the remote area of Shompole in Kenya, where even in a place where you have to buzz the runway in a small Cesna to scare zebras off of it before you can land, they saw value in the WSET certification (more on that in a minute).

Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re a passionate wine enthusiast, a wine professional, or a wine writer (or any combination of one or more of those).  Actually, according to Alexa.com stats on my blog, chances are you’re a female between the ages of 25 and 44 with a decent amount of disposable income, living in the U.S. and surfing this blog from your work computer (shame on you!).

Anyway, I am growing increasingly convinced that wine certification suits 1WineDude.com readers, and is growing more an more applicable to a larger and larger audience of wine lovers.  And I’m gonna give you three reasons why YOU should get a cert.  And No, I don’t work for any of those certification bodies.

I know what you might be thinking, which is something along the lines of “Why do I need a certification to be an expert on how much I like or dislike what I shove into my mouth?!??” And the answer of course is that you don’t need a certification for that.

You need it for other reasons.  Hear me out before you shut me out – first I need to take you to the hot salt flats of the Great Rift Valley in remote Kenya…

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