Blood Into Wine: Maynard James Keenan

Once upon a time I wrote for the (now defunct) Taste Magazine. I was working on an article about celebrity-branded alcohol, although that article got scrapped when I took over the Wine Academy column for the magazine. In the process of researching that article, I somehow managed to get in touch with the publicist for Maynard James Keenan, and eventually, I interviewed him. It’s just as well my article got scrapped, because my recording of the interview wasn’t very good. It was so bad, I have yet to be able to clean it up and use it. (Since then, I’ve improved my recording equipment.)

For those unfamiliar, Maynard James Keenan is the front man for rock bands Tool, Puscifer, and A Perfect Circle. Until I met Kevin Keith, I had no idea who he was, so don’t feel bad, and I think that Maynard actually preferred my lack of knowledge of his music during the interview. If there is anything I got out of that conversation, it’s that he doesn’t like being called a “Rock Star.” Well, that and Maynard James Keenan is the most intense person to whom I have ever spoken. I believe that he does everything with the same intensity – be it music or wine, which should tell you something about his wine.

When Kevin and I went to Arizona in 2007, we visited Cornville, AZ as we drove south towards Phoenix from the Grand Canyon. It’s off the beaten path a bit, but Cornville was an absolute delight for us as wine lovers. We started at Page Springs Cellars, where it just so happens that Maynard had worked with the wine maker to learn everything he could about wine. At the time, Page Springs Cellars was also selling Maynard’s labels, Caduceus Cellars and Merkin Vineyards. (Our Photos from Arizona Wineries) We have several Maynard-created wines in our wine fridge.

When I interviewed Maynard, he was working on launching Arizona Stronghold, a winery in the southern Arizona ghost town of Jerome. (A lot of grapes are grown in southern Arizona.) Last summer, an article in Decanter.com alerted me that Maynard and his winemaker Eric Glomski have officially launched the new winery.

Turns out, the process of creating Arizona Stronghold is the basis for a new documentary called Blood Into Wine. It premieres in Arizona (of course) on February 19 (full list of theatres is after the jump – mostly West Coast I’m afraid). But the DVD will be released on May 4. Check out the trailer. Even if you don’t like his music, how can you resist a documentary like this? It’s got music, wine, and a lot of humor, I think.

Blood Into Wine arrives in select theaters on Feb. 19 with a Phoenix-based premiere at the W Hotel Scottsdale.

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Better Off Bottled?

CNN Money reported today that restaurant wine lists are huge rip-offs. I think we all knew this. But just in case you weren’t clear on the facts:

Restaurants mark up cheaper bottles by an average of three times the retail price, while the prices of higher end wines are typically doubled, says Ronn Wiegand, a master sommelier who runs the industry newsletter RestaurantWine.

Last week, I got to eat at the wonderful (and amazingly expensive) new restaurant Sage in Las Vegas’s new Aria / City Center complex. My friend and I picked a $44 bottle of Argentinian Malbec off of the wine list, and proceeded to enjoy two bottles, but I was aware that the bottle probably retailed for around $15. We made a decision to “not think about it.”  That said, we both felt we got off lucky with the $44. Mixed into the French listings was a bottle of Domaine de la Romanee-Conti La Tâche, which was listed at over $9000. Per bottle. Ouch!

The CNN article continues, with tips about wine by the glass:

Think that’s rough? Prices for wine sold by the glass are tripled or even quadrupled, Wiegand says, since restaurants have to account for the chance that they won’t sell the whole bottle before it spoils.

I hate ordering wine by the glass, but occasionally, that’s all I want and I bite the bullet. If I’m with a group though, or if Kevin and I actually want the same glass, I’ll tend towards a bottle. Back when Tonic was Twist, I would always order a bottle of the Gruet Sparkling Wine from New Mexico as opposed to just a glass. The difference between an ~$14 glass and a $40 bottle seemed negligible when people were sharing. I recently noticed that Tonic still offers the Gruet on their list, so if I can ever tear myself away from cocktails, I might resort to the full bottle again.

Many restaurant wine lists have a sweet spot – that spot where you can find several bottles of wine in a similar price range that is actually affordable and not so far off from the retail price to give you a heart attack. At Sage, we found that spot in the Argentinian section. At the Wine Cellar at Las Vegas’s Rio, that spot was located in the Spanish wine section. So if you have to shop by price, look for the sweet spot.

Cheers to 1WineDude’s Joe Roberts
for tweeting this tip!
Dollar sign used under Creative
Commons from OldMaison

The Moerlein Lager House is Coming

As I pulled into the driveway last night, I heard this news on the radio. It made my night!  After all, we love our wine, but we're equal opportunity beer and cocktail folks as well.

We love our German beer here in Zincinnnati (see Oktoberfest and Hofbrauhaus). So why not open a biergarten / brewpub featuring one of Cincinnati's original German brews? Christian Moerlein will be opening a 15,000 square foot restaurant and brewery, complete with outdoor biergarten, down on the Banks.

The new multi-story brewpub will be built on top of a parking garage across from the Great American Ball Park.
The restaurant, to be called the Moerlein Lager House, will seat 500
inside and 600 in the beer garden.  It will span the block on Main Street between Mehring Way and Theodore M Berry Way, in stumbling distance from the ball park, really.

According to the Business Courier, "Preliminary designs for the two-story building include a green roof,
balconies and terraces with views of the river, Roebling Suspension
Bridge and the ballpark."  I fell in love with green roofs in Vancouver, so I'm pretty excited about just that one small detail on its own.

The new restaurant will also offer brewery tours. It's slated to open in 2011.

I can't imagine the place being anything but packed all the time. When I lived in Maryland, my friends would go to the store looking for Moerlein beer, which just baffled me at the time. After all, I'd grown up with it. Moerlein is nationally known as a maker of craft brews and, combined with the ball park, will be a huge hit for tourists.

Twist to reopen as Tonic Union (UPDATED)

Random Wine Tidbits

Lots of quirky little things going on in the greater wine industry right now:

• I wish I'd known this. Here I just spent 3.5 days in Chicago and didn't visit the Art Institute. They have an exhibition running through September 20 called "A Case for Wine".  Trust me, I'll be heading back to Chicago before this exhibit disappears.

Continuing the celebratory summer mood initiated by the historic
Modern Wing opening, this exhibition marks the first time a fine arts
museum has explored art through the vine.

Wine has played a role at the Art Institute of Chicago almost since
the museum’s inception in 1879. A major European expedition to acquire
classical antiquities for the fledgling collection in 1889 resulted in
the purchase of several pots originally used for serving and storing
wine. In 1890 the Art Institute made its first serious foray into the
realm of Old Master paintings with the purchase of 12 Netherlandish
works, including Jan Steen’s Family Concert which shows
guests drinking out of distinctive Dutch wine flutes while listening to
music. In 1927 the Art Institute purchased half of the Jacques Mühsam
Collection of European glass with funds provided by Julius and Augusta
Rosenwald, providing the museum with superlative examples of
wineglasses from the 15th to the 19th century. This cross-departmental
exhibition presents nearly 300 wine-themed objects, including selected
loans from other institutions and private collectors, tracing this
beloved libation’s surprisingly significant role as a stimulus and
source of artistic endeavor from ancient times through the modern day.

• You know those oh-so-popular Crystal Light (and similar) powders you can add to your bottled water? You can now get your wine in powdered form. A Swiss company called Katadyn, which makes powdered food for hikers, wants hikers to have access to wine. It's not actually called wine either, as it isn't made from grapes. It is simply flavored to taste like wine (in particular, Italian Chianti). Italian winemakers are all up in arms, but really … how good could this taste?

• Starbucks is going to try to return to the old-school style of coffee shop, which means offering beer and wine. They're just trying this at three stores in Seattle to see how well it will work. If it succeeds, look to see a glass of Cabernet offered beside a fancy Coffee on the menu. Of course, Starbuck's is still closing around 1,000 stores, so if it does take off, there may not be a Starbuck's near by to take advantage of it.

Dream Job: I Need Your Help to Get It

What a week!  First the redesign, then the Cincinnati.com news. Now I've got one more bit of news, but this one requires YOUR help. A lot of your help.

You don't have to donate anything except about a minute of your time to click on something safe. I think you'll get a chuckle out of the whole thing too.

Murphy-Goode Winery is offering a 6-month, $60,000 position to someone who wants to promote the winery via social media. They'll even provide you with a rent-free home in Healdsburg. Seeing as how I'm a wine blogger and a social media consultant, it seems amazingly up my alley. I want this job. Really bad.

In order to get this job, I had to create a 1-minute video. I thought about embedding it below, but really, I want to drive you to the site to vote. You get a screen cap instead.

So many people seemed to just sit and talk about wine. I think wine is part of the job, but understanding social media and marketing is more important. So I tried to tell a story, and I used the Wizard of Oz to do it. Of course, it's also an excuse to dress up like Dorothy.

WinemeDineme readers will notice a guest appearance by Julie as the wonderful Glinda the Goode Wine Witch. The video was shot at Harmony Hill, so my HUGE thanks goes out to Bill, Patti, & Evan for letting us traipse through the vines and borrow their dog. Kevin, his brother Steve, and Steve's girlfriend Sarah round out the cast. Filming was done by recent foodie blogger, Bryan.

I created an accompanying web site at http://www.rainbowgoode.com.
It's fun because it hosts the extended version (after all, it's hard to
tell a story in a minute) and the blooper reel. The blooper reel still
makes me laugh. Dogs are fun to work with ..

On the RainbowGoode site, you can view the various ways I'm trying to market the video, trying to drive votes. I am using every bit of social media I think is relevant – from my LinkedIn groups to this blog, from Facebook to Twitter. I picked up some Google AdWords and grabbed some bit.ly URLs. I'm amazed at the things that were available still.
I'm also not discounting traditional media, sending press releases to everyone I can think of. Want one?

I'd love to make the Top 50 folks, and hopefully, the Top 10. At the very least, maybe I'll land a social media job of some sort from all this effort. But in order to do any of that, I need your votes.
The contest ends June 19, so vote soon, vote often, and tell your friends!

… That’s Fit to Print

Today I've got two big things to announce, so we'll start with the new partnership. I'm happy to say I've entered a partnership with Cincinnati.com and the Cincinnati Enquirer as one of the first members of their blogging network.

Julie and I met some folks from Cincinnati.com when we spoke several weeks ago at a Cincinnati Women Bloggers session. Cincinnati.com has been really reaching out to embrace social media in the last two years, and from my perspective, a partnership seems like a great way to drive new traffic. Julie and I will both be featured on the Living, Blogs, and Food pages. We've got other big ideas cooking with Cincinnati.com, so it should be an exciting year.

Now, in case you're worried, I haven't "sold out" to the Enquirer. You'll always find me at wine-girl.net. There's a badge over in the far right column of the site showing that I'm in their blog network, but that's it. That's the only change, except hopefully we'll see more readers and get some more conversations going in the comments.

For readers who are new, you can check out my policies and disclaimers.

•  I'll always let you know when I get a free bottle, meal, or class.
• Getting something free doesn't always mean I'll give it a good review.
• I reserve the right to delete your comments if you are rude or crude or are a spammer.
• I will still write what I want, when I want. Cincinnati.com isn't handing out story ideas or anything.

This is a fun new adventure. I look forward to meeting new readers and continuing the dialog with my loyal readers.

Changes are a-comin’

Just a quick note to let you know you might be tripping over construction tools around here over the next 6 weeks or so. As we have time (outside of the "real" jobs), we're going to start re-designing this blog with the help of some of our talented graphic designer friends. We might even move to WordPress. Don't worry though – as long as you're getting here via wine-girl.net, you'll find us no matter where we are.

Our first two changes are rearranging the column layout a little (sort of like rearranging the furniture) and upgrading our happy face scale to have a little more depth and dimension.

Cheers!

Paella at Every Place

Remember that awesome birthday party I had where Hector, from Paella at Your Place, came to create amazing paella at my home?

Well, you can have some too. This Friday, Hector will be at Liquor Direct in Fort Thomas from 4-8 pm, cooking up a tasty paella right there in the middle of the store to accompany a Rioja tasting. Just Friday though – he won't be around on Saturday, so gather ye rosebuds paella while ye may. As always, tastings at Liquor Direct are free of charge.

Can't make it on Friday? On March 26, Hector will be dishing up a seafood paella to accompany a Spanish Whites tasting and class at The Party Source. Cost is $20 (includes a $5 gift card) and includes several wines, paella, 2-hour wine education session, and most likely some of that addictive Vermont sea salt butter.

Jim Beam Changes Bourbon

With the announcement of Red Stag, a black cherry flavor infused bourbon, Jim Beam has done something that really should not have been done. I let cans of Beam and Cola slide. I even turned a blind eye to cans of Beam and Ginger Ale as some people prefer to mix their drinks. In fact, if Beam Distillers had decided to can the Black Cherry directly into the cola they might have had a product targeted at consumers who would want to drink something like this.

Sadly, Jim Beam makes some very nice bourbon drinks, Booker’s and Basil Hayden both jump to mind. This marketing ploy needs to stop before we have as many different flavored bourbons as we do vodkas.

My friend Jeff made the following simple 5 year plan for Jim Beam to regain the trust of bourbon drinkers:

Step 1: Discontinue this line.
Step 2: Apologize to loyal bourbon drinkers
Step 3: Don’t do anything this dumb for 5 more years.

If you disagree with Beam’s direction on this, please contact Jim Beam on their website here: http://jimbeam.com/contactus.aspx

- Kevin

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