This week just might mark a seminal event in my personal wine journey.  Either that, or a huge, disappointing wine bust served up on a bed of bell pepper and pine needles.

On November 4th, I’ll be taking part with a small group of bloggers in an on-line tasting event with Wines of Chile, the theme of which is “Discover Carmenere: The Lost Grape.”  Why is this a boom-or-bust wine moment for me?  Because I have what I would call a troubled relationship with Carmenere.

Of course, I love the idea of this grape, the story of Carmenere – it’s the stuff of which wine legends are made.

Carmenere was born in Bordeaux, and thought to be extinct after outbreaks of oidium and then the Phylloxera epidemic in the 1800s, which wiped out a good portion of the wine grape vineyards of Europe.  Though widely thought to be able to help produce high quality wines, Carmenere was pretty much abandoned in France in favor of varieties that were less susceptible to disease, ripened more consistently and produced better yields.  But, Carmenere was not dead – plantings were transported, from France to South America, along with vineyard workers looking for more gainful employment at the time (just prior to the Phylloxera outbreak).  For almost one hundred years, the vine thrived in Chile and was thought to be Merlot; it was discovered to in the mid 1990s to actually be the ‘lost grape’ – Carmenere.

So now we have a legendary Bordeaux grape long considered extinct, thriving in the New Wine World and growing on its own, ungrafted rootstock.  The modern wine Coelacanth.  The Grape from The Land of The Lost (Sleestaks sold separately).

So what’s the trouble?  Well, in my experience, the tale spun about the lost grape Carmenere is a lot more compelling than the wine that Carmenere is actually producing…

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I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is No, 1WineDude has not become a German Wine Blog.  It just looks that way because October has (primarily) featured German wines and German wine happs.  This is due to TasteLive.com having dedicated the month to featuring selections picked by the organization Wines of Germany (I helped to set this up and might collect a modest “finder’s fee” for that – if I’m lucky).  Also, Wines of Germany keeps sending me pictures of the German hotties who were vying for the German Wine Queen title, and I’m just shallow enough that those caught my interest.

Anyway…

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be your co-host for the wrap-up German wine event at TasteLive.com on October 22, which is open to the public – that means that you can join us in tasting and tweeting about the following wines live from the comfort of your favorite drinking chair!  (TasteLive has partnered with Bacchus Wine and Spirits for those that can’t source the wines locally).

• Selbach-Oster, Riesling, Kabinett, Mosel, 2007/2008
• Leitz, Riesling, “Eins Zwei Dry,” Rheingau, 2008
• Dönnhoff, Riesling, Nahe, 2008
• Darting, Riesling, Durkheimer Nonnengarten, Kabinett, Pfalz, 2008

I’ve had the Selbach-Oster and the Leitz, and they’re both really tasty wines, which probably bodes well for the other selections.  Those of you who have been following along at home with the previous October events featuring German wines know that the selections have all be very good, so I’m really looking forward to the 22nd.

More detail is available on the TasteLive Blog.

Sign up over at TasteLive.com, get yourself the wines, and join us on the 22nd!

Cheers!

Today, I’m closing the loop and following up on the contest to find the next German Wine Queen, who was officially crowned last week in a final gala event featuring the six finalists culled from Germany’s 13 wine regions.  The winner was Sonja Christchurch from the Mosel, who is a recent business graduate and has a day job as a wine journalist (right on!).

It’s interesting to see what the Wine Queen contestants have to go through to get into the finals and then be chosen for the top 3 slots, which includes the following tests:

• A blind tasting
• Describing a wine region (presumably a German one) within 45 seconds (which can’t be easy using long German words that probably take 15 seconds each to pronounce)
• Identify six errors in a film about the Middle Rhine region (this one is my personal fave)
• Stand up to an 80-member jury of wine experts, politicians and journalists

80-member jury?  Are you kidding me?  Masters of Wine candidates don’t need to do something that difficult, for Pete’s sake…

Anyway, you can check out a (very roughly translated) summary of the event here.

Congrats to the Mosel, and to the new Queen.  I may start a petition soon to implement the Wine Queen program in the U.S.  In my spare time.

Cheers!

And just like that… it was all over.

What was arguably the largest publicity-minded event in the history of U.S. winemaking is over, as the reality-TV-inspired A Really Goode Job contest thrown by Murphy-Goode winery has finally come to an end.

I’m extremely pleased to report that 1WineDude.com friend Hardy Wallace of DirtySouthWine.com has been named the winner, and will begin his 6-month post as Murphy-Goode main media man on August 15th.

Frequent 1WineDude.com readers will recall that Hardy was my pick back in May when the contest first started taking off.  Personally, I’m pleased as sangria-punch to see Hardy get the attention, accolades, and the job of his dreams. You can view the entire press release on the winning announcement here.

The entire event garnered a massive amount of publicity (both positive and negative), and saw job opportunities open up to several of the participants as wineries were exposed to the increasing power of social media and Internet-based marketing as a result of the campaign.

What does it mean for the world of wine? It’s good news for Hardy, great news for Murphy-Goode, and even better news for wine and social media as a whole…

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