Get out the vote

I’d be a lousy politician – I completely forgot to campaign. Sometime in January I posted about the CityBeat Best of Cincinnati competition. If you didn’t vote then, go ahead and vote now. You can vote for your favorite everythings in the city (including best blog – so pick me please!) To vote for this particular blog, just go to the link, scroll down to Public Eye, and you’ll find My Wine Education under the Blog section. Of course, you’ll also find some of my best friends in the same category. You don’t have to vote in every category – just the ones that interest you.

There you go. Vote for me and do it before the end of the weekend!

Contest Winners Announced!

We have winners!

Thanks to the awesome generator over at Random.org, we have three winners for the Stanley Steemer Red Wine Remover. Carla (1), Arlene (6), and Liz (8), I’ll be getting in touch with you via email to arrange getting you the package.

If you ladies would be so kind as to comment back at a later date and let us know how the product works out for you, that would be fantastic as well.

Congratulations!

Another Contest: Red Wine Spills

I love white furniture. I have white couches, white and glass tables, white rugs, white chairs … and I also talk with my hands. Considering how much wine I drink, this is a problem. Obviously, I Scotch Guard everything in sight. But that’s only my first line of defense.

I’ve talked before about Wine Away, which I’ve always used for effectively removing my multiple red wine stains. However, there’s a new red wine stain remover on the market. I haven’t tried it yet (as I luckily haven’t spilled anything recently), but Stanley Steemer now offers a Red Wine Remover. It is supposed to work on red wine and other tannin-based spots, such as berries or tea.

The good PR folks at Stanley Steemer sent me four bottles of the stuff. One of those bottles is for my next red wine stain. But the other three? Those are for you!  Kelly, the nice PR rep, actually packaged these up as lovely Christmas presents, so I’ll be giving you the stain remover in style.

What do you have to do? Same as usual. Just leave a comment in the Comments section of this post. I’ll use Random.org to pick three numbers and you will each get a lovely packaged bottle. The contest winners will be announced on Thursday, Dec 17.

There is a catch. I can either mail them to you or give them to you in person, but I will be out of town for 10 days over Christmas. You might have use your Stanley Steemer Red Wine Remover for that New Year’s Eve party that you know you want to host.

Cheers!

Photo by Gromgull
under Creative Commons

We have a winner!

We have a winner in our DVD Giveaway Contest!  I used Random.org to pick a numbered comment and the winner was number 7! Number 7 is John, so I’ll make sure to get in touch with him as soon as possible.

Stay tuned. I have another giveaway to run and I’ll be announcing it a few hours. It’s the holidays – I like to give away stuff!

Congratulations John!

Image by theunquietlibrarian
via Creative Commons

Contest! A DVD for Your Holiday Stocking

I knew I needed to celebrate the launch of our awesome new design with a contest. I need to give back to you guys, but I’m not exactly allowed to give away alcohol. Then I received in the mail two (yes two!) screener copies of Mondovino the Series. I received these free of charge from DVD producers Kino International. One is for me to watch, but the other is for you!

Now, I just got these DVDs in hand. It’s  a newly released, four-DVD set containing 10 hours of video, so I haven’t had a chance to watch – or review – this yet. It’s going to take some time.

But you can beat me to it. If you’re interested, just leave a comment below with a message about why you’d like to get your hands on this screener set. I’ll use a random generator to pick the winner and announce next Thursday. Make sure you include your email address in the appropriate field of the comments. (Email addressses are not tracked, shared, or used for anything except to tell you that you won.)

So, what is this DVD anyway?
Mondovino was a documentary released in 2004 that was fairly controversial. It really pushes the “small is better” theory and is not kind to larger winemakers, including the Mondavis and Staglins. According to Decanter.com,

“Many feel that in his portraits of Michel Rolland, the de Montilles of Burgundy, the Frescobaldis, Mondavis and other great wine families he relies on sophisticated editing to get his point across.

Rolland in particular is singled out for demonisation. Using multiple replays of a single shot of the wine consultant laughing in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, the director contrives to make him appear a malevolent presence.

Similarly, clever cutting canonises figures like Mas de Daumas Gassac’s Aime Guibert, or turns the Staglins of Napa into cliches of insensitive Californians.”

The original movie was one of only four documentaries nominated for the Palm d’Or at Cannes. The director, Jonathan Nossiter, turned that one film endeavor into a 10-part television series that supposedly is a more in-depth “investigation into the wine world, and more ‘intimate and detailed’ portraits of wine families” as compared to the original film. He covers everything from California to France. The series originally aired, from what I can find, on BBC Africa and BBC Food.

But I want you to keep in mind that this film raised the ire of many in the wine industry, as well as receiving a lot of praise. It’s often been called a one-sided documentary, and it does, in essence, charge Mondavi and Robert Parker with turning wine into a commodity such as coffee at Starbucks. This was filmed over four years at the beginning of the decade as well, and I’d like to think several things in the wine industry have changed over the last 5 years.

But the point of a documentary, even if you don’t agree with the filmmaker, is to make you think about, and consider, the subject.

If you’re interested in learning more, leave a comment telling me why. Maybe you’ll be the lucky random winner!