However, it is a constant struggle because of bills like the House Resolution 5034, which if passed will shut down direct to consumer shipping of wine. All the big wholesalers are supporting this, obviously because they sense the system recognizing their lack of real value in the supply chain. Thus, it keeps them in control and keeps all the margin in their pockets. They say its for safety reasons to prevent kids from buying alcohol, but we all know that’s absurd. How many underage kids are buying wine online? Yeah, the big wholesalers just genuinely care about the health and safety of people… I guess that’s why they are pioneering research proving the health effects of red wine and promoting healthy moderate drinking habits to maximize the health benefits. Oh wait, they’re not?

Free The Grapes is doing great things to maintain and further open the direct to consumer channels.  Check them out and support their cause to help the direct channel open up.

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Wow, what an excellent conference! A game changer. I have to thank my friends over at Village Green Energy for hooking me up with a free pass. I’ve been so passionate about this movement as long as I can remember… ever since 6th grade when I messed around with electromagenetic fields and plants. Early education for me was all about ecology and environment, and that followed with rigorous economics in college, which I didn’t quite understand about myself until now. Having not gone into banking with my degree and now seeing the state of the economy I was like shit… but David Suzuki put it so clearly… it’s (eco)nomics. I can’t believe I never recognized that. I automatically associated economics with the greedy, short-sighted mentality of Wall Street that focuses solely on the bottom line and exploiting the market for cash and egoic status. Yet you realize the bottom line is not the statement of cash flows or the balance sheet… it’s the fuckin planet. Ecology + Economics = Sustainability. This conference was absolutely buzzing! People were feeling alive and connecting and touching each other like I’ve never seen in my life. We all knew the green revolution is ready and about to change the world in a big way.

The keynotes were superb with Al Gore, Jerrry Brown, and David Suzuki really leaving a moving impact on me. Nobody was afraid to go deep. Sure there was plenty of talk about clean tech innovations or green building or policy changes.. but more so people were incredibly open about spiritual and conciousness based changes that are going to take place around the world to solve this crisis. Sarah Susanka even brought the crowd to tears with her moving presentation. It’s so much bigger than green or solar or oil… it’s about enlightening the human race that we are one and we share the same spirit with each other and with the world as a whole. I found it to be quite the religious experience to be at this conference. A few others being recently when I went into the wild of Alaska for a few weeks and when I saw the Dalai Lama speak in Bethlehem, Pa.

Aside from the heavy stuff, there were tons of innovative companies doing everything from cutting edge solar installs, to green acrhitecture consulting, to new age battery storage, smart grid stuff, efficiency software, New Resource Bank (which is exploding with business during this banking crisis… lol gotta love it!) and sooo much more. You had builders, utility reps, entrepreneurs, mad scientists, engineers, and everyone was so open and loving and connecting. I was blown away… it took me 3 full days to digest it all.

There were also brilliant seminars and panels, the best one for me being the State of Investing in Clean Tech, where partners from KPCB, Foundation, Sigma, and DFJ (all the big Menlo Park firms) talked about what companies they’re investing in and what technology is working… and yet something was different. These are VCs and of course money is there first concern, but with this clean green movement we are finally going to enter into a phase of social… or better yet eco-capitalism… where we benefit the environment and the social welfare of all while making a shitload of money and creating a shitload of jobs. This is an unprecendented opportunity in economic human history. Create a concentrically cyclical supply chain and pass the prosperity around the world. I was inspired by the VCs stories of how they’re going green in their own lives and their deep personal commitment.

A few themes from the conference to leave you with:

1) Nature to the grid baby – energy, health, architecture

2) Ecology + Economics = Sustainability (Eco-Capitalism)

3) Sky power will fuel the earth

4) The only thing special about humans is our foresight… our ability to see and shape the future. So lets use it.

5) A new connected conciousness is emerging that will limit the individual ego that has evolved and scorched our earth with fragmented, disjointed, greedy agendas. The only chance at eternal life is if we live together as one.

6) Be the change you want to see in the world!

In my humble opinion, these are unprecedented and magical times in the history of our race and our planet. There’s no better place to be then right here, and right now.

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First of all, labels mean absolutely nothing, so when you go to buy wine don’t even look at the front label ignore it, there is more useful information on the back like a good importer. In this era of opulence and visually stimulated purchasing, Louis Vutton and Cadillac, take a more refined and dare I say classier approach. I am reminded of the movie Tommy Boy with the late great Chris Farley. Tommy is selling Callahan Break Pads; one of his retailers says there isn’t a guarantee on Callahan’s box. Tommy says you can put a guarantee on shit and its still shit, same thing with wine – creative picture means the winery spent all the money on a design and not the juice. Like a guarantee vs. the actual product. There can and often will be a cute picture on the bottle but the juice, more times than not, is still absolute Swill (a colloquialism used to describe wine not worth drinking).

Best quality indicator – a good importer. While there still are names in wine worth buying anytime you see them there are also many wineries out there that have sold the names to bigger corporations to take advantage of consumer’s name recognition. Cakebread is a great example of a wine that once was a great wine for a good buy and now its just expensive and not much to talk about, one can find better for half the price. Importers on the other hand like Robert Shadderdon, Kermit Lynch, John David Hendrick and Neil Rosenthal, use discretion when picking wines to promote and have built up a strong reputation based on their names.

In closing, to all those wine creators, make sure your brand is innovative, but when it comes down to it, build a rep for finding kick ass juice… easy enough

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The problem with board members who rely on econometrics and statistics to forecast company growth and decide who the CEO should be is that they have become too focussed on the profit, and have completely forgotten value. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, who summed up the crisis we’re in quite well: beware the man who puts a price on everything whilst not knowing the value of anything. The sub-prime mortgage is a result of a bunch of spin-doctors who tried to put a price on things without caring about value.

Blackberries, Smart-phones, spread-betting software and all the other plagues of today’s world have made the average business proposition a mile-wide and an inch deep. Very little in today’s business environment adds actual value, carries real substance or does anything beside enrich the very people who push them.

Take cell-phones for instance… its in Motorola’s best interests to sell you something that is highly desirable but only lasts a year, to ensure that you are a repeat customer. Now, there may be nothing wrong with that, but in a world where 1 million cell-phones are thrown away on a daily-basis in an environment that is already destabilized and polluted, perhaps we should forsake profit in the name of sustainability. Doesn’t is turn your stomach to think about the land-fill that will one day be home to all the Guitar Hero 3 guitars sold this past Christmas.

I think the ways and the reasons of and for doing business need to be fundamentally re-appraised. Guitar Hero 3 does not give any value to society, the consumer or the environment. A real guitar on the other hand is a piece of art that can be handed down from generation to generation. Another product with inherent value is wine. Wine farmers have the environment and eco-systems in their best interests, and sustainability is at the heart of their business. The jobs created along the supply chain enrich communities, and its production enlivens a century’s old tradition of pairing wine with food in the company of friends and spreading good will. The contemporary wine-lover is a person who inherently appreciates value and whom Oscar Wilde would hold in high-esteem. Long-live the love of wine!

Story of Stuff

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For more reading see: Champagne – A New Year Tradition

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