I was first initiated into the innovative world of Wine 2.0 when I attended their NRO event at Varnish last November. What I found was an extremely thriving movement of loosely knit and mainly younger wine aficionados, producers and entrepreneurs that were expanding upon the path set down by the original Wine Brats…they also tend to throw a party with a little more enthusiasm than your average wine event!

With those thoughts in mind, I geared up for some serious wine-drinking, networking and, well, partying last Thursday night. I was keenly aware of how the night would unfold and so I decided to BART and cab it to the event, held at the 3rd street warehouse of Crushpad in San Francisco. Crushpad is a custom crush facility, meaning that they provide equipment, bonded space, reagents and even fruit for boutique wineries and amateur winemakers, alike. They are one of the most well-known companies where winemakers can go to make their own wines with as much or as little hands-on participation as they might choose. I’ve been hearing about them for years and have been rather intrigued by their facilities, so I was quite happy to check out the space when I first arrived, just before the event opened.

I just received an email from RadCru announcing a live chat (text, audio, video) with the winemaker and owner of Tobacco Road Road Cellars. The chat takes place today, March 26th, from 2:00 - 3:00pm EST.

If you’re interested in getting in on the chat, go to www.tobaccoroadshow.tv. It looks like you’ll need to create an account and once you do, you’ll be able to participate in the chat by asking questions.

View Tobacco Road Cellars wines on WineLog »

Wine.Com has taken the esoteric and somewhat archaic direct wine shipping laws into their own hands. At the very end of last year Wine.Com, took direct aim at competing online wine retailers by engaging in their own “sting operation” to flush out competing retailers that flout the direct wine shipping laws. Wine.com claims to spend millions in an attempt to satisfy these laws for their own business needs.

This was first reported in the Wine Market Report 12/27/07, where they actually published some of the letters that Wine.Com wrote to state governments detailing these non-law abiding retailers, complete with order confirmations and receipts as evidence of the wine that was shipped illegally to Wine.Com’s “sting operators” in each requisite state. The Wine Market Report was immediately credited and re-told by Alder Yarrow in his venerable Vinography blog on 01/04/08 and the report itself, was archived at the Specialty Wine Retailer’s Association (SWRA) site here.

Since Alder’s post, the issue has exploded across the blogosphere and into more traditional print magazine sites…

I had the rather outstanding opportunity to go to my first Wine 2.0 event last Thursday, their “New Releases Only” wine-tasting at Varnish, a wine bar and art gallery in San Francisco. I’ve been to Varnish a lot over the years since it opened to grab a break from working at the Wednesday happy hour party Qoöl at 111 Minna Gallery around the corner. As a nice aside, it also doubled as a great way to spend the night of my 30th birthday. So, I grabbed my friend Alberto from Minna and we headed over to the party.

Wine 2.0 is, essentially, a wine industry networking group that intends to push wine into the open source and social networking new world that is “Web 2.0.” Really though, that’s kind of a stuffy description for what is a really cool and vibrantly active group of young wine entrepreneurs and aficionados. I kind of think of them as the next generation of “Wine Brats,” but taking a different sort of approach than that organization (though Wine Brats is still going strong!). Despite this younger crowd pushing this movement, I was happy to see a widely diverse group of 200+ patrons that at the event that were all over the age map.

In one of the most surprising developments in the wine world since Ravenswood Winery infiltrated NASCAR, I recently found out that Maynard James Keenan of the hard alternative, industrial-tinged rock bands Tool and A Perfect Circle (and the new band, Puscifer) has started his own winery and vineyard [info courtesy of Rasputin Music’s Infamous, Incredible Newsletter].

The endeavor has actually been going on for 6 years, meaning that Keenan is already producing wine from his own vineyards in the Phoenix, AZ area.

Keenan has named his winery Caduceus Cellars, after the ancient Greek symbol of commerce (and somewhat inaccurately for medicine in North America). His estate vineyards are named Merkin Vineyards (no comment on that name, look it up for yourselves!).

Read on for more!

A friend recently gave me an article from Sam’s Club Source^TM, the Club’s signature magazine for members, about their new private label organic wine, Greener Planet^TM.

Bob Paulinski, the club’s chief wine merchant, has collaborated with Hugh Ryman to create the line. It is made exclusively with organic grapes and will be sold at Sam’s club. Their first release is the Shiraz-Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon Languedoc-Roussillon priced around $12 per bottle. They plan future bottlings with organic grapes from Italy and Spain.

Could this move be in response to Costco’s relationship with Cameron Hughes Wine? As I see it, yes. Costco and Cameron Hughes Wine have seen tremendous success in selling their value priced ‘Lot’ wines to the Costco membership, with a majority of wines selling out in the first few day of their release!