The World Cup of Rugby is just around the corner and will be upon us in September. Now I know that American’s don’t really give too much attention to the amazing sport: but this year is perhaps a year to change your mind. As you may or may not know - France, Australia, Argentina, South Africa, Italy and New Zealand over and above being awesome regions for the production of wine - are also the world’s top Rugby players. In the rest of the world outside of America, we genuinely mean ‘world’ when we affix the term ‘world’ before a sports tournament - and thus watching one of theses series’ is about more than sport: it’s about international unity, global community and solidarity. This year the tournament is taking place in France (it only happens every four years) and so - for any of you curious globally oriented wine lovers out there, nows a chance to get yourself to France, participate with the rest of the world and get a taste of some great wines and some of the global culture too. For those of you unable to go - fear not - the World Cup of Wines , which is a virtual live wine-tasting taking place on September 1st, 7:30pm-9:30pm at the Virtual Wine website, where they’ll be pitting the wines of Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Argentina and South Africa against one another - so switch on, pull up a chair, get some wine and pick a side. The folks at Virtual Wine have done some pretty cool events in the past, which shows that this could pretty easily become a trend in the future of world wine tastings.

However - with the intent of drawing some attention to the of my passions - travel, wine and rugby - www.grapethinking.com in association with www.tastevine.com will be hosting our very own Wine World Cup for the month of September.

For every day in September myself and a handful of the wine blogerati (volunteers welcome) will be doing one review on one wine per day for each of the six countries. That’s 180 posts in total (and a lot of wine to be drunk.) I’ve already got 16 bottles which I will begin opening this weekend to start my reviews. At the end of each week we will decide on a winner - and at the end of the competition there will be one country and that comes out tops.

TasteVine is working on planning a few live wine world cup events in the south, which will be an opportunity to taste 6 wine regions at once, and an enormous variation in style, flavor and taste.

In addition we’ll be awarding prizes (details to follow) to people who make comments and having a random draw for people who subscribe to our blog during the duration of the competition.

I’ll be giving regular, brief updates of the goings on the the actual teams who are playing - and all in all this is a blog event which hopes to spark interest in global culture and give us all a good excuse to go out and try a lot of different wine!

The first post for the World Cup of Wine will appear at 10am EST on September 1st. We’re accepting reviews before then - and will be sure to feature any reviews we receive. Get tasting and may the best wine win!

Apartment Therapy is one of the most updated and relevant sites I’ve encountered of late, and their blog-roll alone is enough to keep you informed. Now, insofar as adding finishing touches to one’s apartment - there’s nothing better than a well stocked wine rack. If you’re having guests or inviting a date - nothing is more impressive than being able to offer a drink to your visitors.

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When I first read Tom Friedman’s ‘golden arches theory’ it just struck me how beneficial trade relationships and liberal democracy are to international relations. If two countries, no matter what their differences, are doing trade with one another, and benefiting from the relationship then there’s really a huge disincentive to go to war. We’ve already explored the fact that wine reduces your carbon footprint - but imagine a world where wine made the world more peaceful…

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One of the songs in the brilliant broadway musical ‘Avenue Q‘ is entitled ‘the internet is for porn.’ And today I discovered that that may well be true. Food Porn that is.

Food Porn promotes porn paraphernalia, food porn movies and they even have an array of food porn photos. For the dedicated Wino or Foodie however - the site has an excellent application called Food Porn Watch.

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Good wine making often comes down to getting the blend right. It’s interesting how wine can often serve as an apt metaphor for life and culture - especially in regard to blending in this case. So much of America is still so racially divided - and seeing as America serves as a role model to so many countries, a more integrated America will make for a better world.

One of the things that struck me on going to Atlanta in May was that its a city where the blend of race, culture and lifestyle is one of the most balanced I’ve seen anywhere in the world. In fact I didn’t feel any tension, and from people I spoke to I got the impression that a cultural shift is underway and the east coast is leading the way.
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