Best Job Announcement Ever: Wine.Woot Grunt for "Life-sucking position"

Saw this on winejobs.com:

Seeking gullible, starry-eyed plebe for entry-level, total-immersion, life-sucking procurement and sourcing position to feed the insanely popular website wine.woot.com.

What's in it for you? An underwhelming salary, all-but-unobtainable commission structure, hellishly long hours, and scant opportunity for upward mobility. Excited yet? There's more! You'll report to a self-absorbed, demanding boss, and expose yourself to the ridicule of a merciless, unrelenting 24/7 online community dissecting every curated wine selection you’d bring to the table.

Applicant must be wicked smart, Internet savvy, and possess a natural ability to evangelize in person, on the phone, and via the keyboard. Of course, a strong interest in wine and top-shelf writing skills are necessary, too. Industry experience gives you the inside track to what remains, despite all of the above, perhaps the coolest job in the wine industry.

If this still sounds like something you can handle, submit resumes to jobs@winecountryconnect.com and let's procure beautiful wine together.

Check out winecountryconnect.com to learn more about the history of this company.  

Winterhawk Winery: Suisun Valley Juke Joint

If you like wine, if you like R&B. If you live within 50 miles of Suisun Valley and have five dollars in your pocket, you’re crazy if you don’t go to Winterhawk Winery on Saturdays.

It was a sopping Saturday, but Alvon and His All Star Band made it impossible to sit, so there we were, dancing in our raincoats. We got down, down, as Sly would say, in our puffy vests, rain gear and one old guy in an American Eagle sweatshirt, no doubt swiped from his grandson.  

The logo sweatshirt wasn’t the only thing that was incongruously wonderful.  We were some white people, some black people, in the middle of a vineyard, dancing to Motown in what amounted to a very large shed.  

Winterhawk Winery’s Saturdays of soul are the doing of the owner, Don Johnson, a guy originally from Flint Michigan (ah, that explains the R&B). Across from the winery turned dancing shed, he surveys the scene from a folding chair on the office patio, with a couple of dogs, and a lot of women.

The deal is this: for $5 you buy a ticket, taste a bunch of Winterhawk Wines, then choose your favorite for a glass, take that glass to a table, dance to music and eat free pizza, rolled, pulled and oven fired as you watch. Who cares if the wine is good?

It was too cold to really taste the wine, I’ll have to go back when my breath isn’t steaming to try it again. I have bought Winterhawk Chardonnay ($16) in the past and it was good, with pear, apple and butterscotch, not a lot of acid, fine. Yes fine.

But the Saturday experience, now that was fine.  There was no shortage of men who asked us to dance, and who after the dance, courtly led us back to our seats. Their mothers, no doubt long gone, would be proud. But dancing without a partner was OK too. Everyone was having such fun, dancing, "in the moment."

It was very Zen in a Wilson Pickett kind of way.

I did wonder, surveying the grey heads of the crowd, if R&B, like opera, was destined for the AARP slag heap. But later some younger folks arrived and I was cheered to see that soul and wine have a brilliant future, even on a dripping day.

I’ve Got a Crush On You - My February Article in SolanoFit

Lovers and wine have a lot in common. Let me count the ways.

I am drawn to Don Draper like a bug to a bulb, it’s a good thing he’s not real. If you haven’t met him yet, Don Draper is the dreamy Mad Men character, whose appalling lapses in morality diminish his magnetism not a bit. Pinot Noir is the Don Draper of wines, smooth, silky and a mouth full of spice. Nothing about Don is cheap, and bargain Pinot is usually a disappointment.

If your taste runs to muscles and the brawny guys who decorate the romance novels, think about a big buttery Chardonnay.  Some of them are so fat and woody they are a joke (Fabio anyone?) Good ones are structured with hints of citrus, apple and a soft touches of oak, like Aidan Shaw, the furniture designer that Carrie Bradshaw let get away in Sex and the City. Aidan was the kind of guy who would build you a table then make you a meal. Chardonnay is like a steady boyfriend, a wine you can appreciate, even when you drink it every day.  The San Pablo Bay fog kisses the Carneros region of Napa and Sonoma, making it a prime growing region for this cooler climate grape. It’s a short hop over the hills from Solano and a great place to sample Chardonnay.

No lovers wine list would be complete without a nod to Petite Sirah especially since many delicious examples are grown in our Suisun Valley back yard. Despite its name, there’s nothing about the flavor of Petite Sirah that is small. Nor does it have anything to do with Syrah, a wine with which it is sometimes confused. What it is, is an inky blast of blueberries, chocolate and pepper with lip smacking tannins. Have you ever have the hots for a bad boy like Russell Brand? Tony Soprano? Then you’ll say P.S. (Petit Sirah) I love you. 

Buena Vista Carneros Winery Closing

At 2 p.m. Buena Vista Carneros employees at the Duhig Road facility were told that the parent company, Ascentia Wine Estates was moving operations to the Geyser Peak location and that their future employment was uncertain. According to my source (I’d make a joke about that cliche if it weren’t such a sad subject) the CEO said because of the bad economy they would keep the venerable label but the Carneros winery would close, or at least end it’s life as Buena Vista Carneros. 

 
As is so often the case, employees were shocked, none of them saw it coming. The news was delivered after a deal to sell 300+ acres of Carneros vineyards and the winery fell through on Friday. Employees were told that the decision was made over the weekend. The rush to tell employees of their fate, without much detailed information, was necessary because the company that had been slated to buy the vineyards was getting ready to release the info to its stockholders.  

According to a Press Democrat article, Buena Vista was part of a 2008 deal in which Jim DeBonis, a Sonoma native,  and his partners acquired eight Sonoma wineries from Constellation Brands to form Ascentia Wine Estates. Then the economy tanked, wine sales suffered and last year, one of the investors and the wine group's marketing partner, W.J. Deutsch & Sons sued the company, claiming DeBonis had inflated sales figures.  DeBonis was replaced by Artesa's Michael Kenton in January. 

Hilarious Blog: Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising

Hop over to this tumbler blog called Things Real People Don't Say About Advertising and page through the slides. I've traded a few of these kinds of adver-centric comments with some of my ad friends on Facebook, now there's a whole blog of them - and illustrated with stocky-stock photography too! My favorite is "I wonder if my favorite brand of kitchen roll has a twitter stream I can follow." Thank you Bill Israel whoever you are. You made my day!