wineporn

Three #Winestagram Accounts to Follow

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Of all the social networks, Instagram is by far my favorite way to learn about wine — and probably more importantly, the people in wine. It can be super fun to ogle at bottle shots (I’m certainly guilty of posting many of those) or follow winemakers during harvest, but it’s the accounts that teach me a little something or show off a creative way to look at wine, that I really appreciate. Here are  three of the accounts I’m currently crushing on. Leave me a comment with the accounts that make you happy.

@thevintnerproject

Beautiful photography and profiles of winemakers.

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Marcel Lapierre was the driving force behind biodynamic practices and minimalist winemaking in Beaujolais in the 1980s. He was a third-generation farmer, who began working alongside his father in 1973, growing grapes and making wine from their then 17-acre estate. The twist in his story was his introduction in 1981 to Jules Chauvet, the forerunner of France’s "natural wine" movement. With Chauvet’s teachings, Lapierre rejected excessive wine manipulation that was taking hold in the region and combined some of the traditional techniques already in place at his estate with newer organic practices. His goal was to let nature and the vintage be expressed without chemical inputs. To Lapierre, a winemaker's responsibility was to guide the grapes unsystematically and with discernment. A philsophy that his children, Mathieu and Camille, have embraced since taking over winemaking duties in 2010. Lapierre passed away at the end of the 2010 harvest —a poetic farewell for a man that forever changed our perception of Beaujolais

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@freshcutgardenhose

An artist takes tasting notes from mobile app Delectable and turns them into funny often literal cartoon sketches.

@ladies_in_wine

Curious about the women who get their hands dirty in the business? This account introduces you to them.

A Photo Interlude: Vines In Trentino, Alto Adige

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While catching up on wine news today via Google, I stumbled on this Vice piece on how climate change is impacting the wine industry. It’s not a new story, but it’s always a good reminder at how the elixir that lubricates our meals, or our interactions with friends or becomes a healer in stressful times, is so closely connected to the earth.

But despite the getting-close-to-apocalyptic topic, there’s a stunning image half down the page. Clicking on the Flckr photo credit led me to  Mathias Liebling’s page, where I discovered another photo he posted (It’s worth clicking over to it so you can see it in its original size). 

Instantly, the vibrant rows of vines, with the lone vineyard worker, took me to a  happy place and provided a tiny reminder that there’s so many things bigger in this world than us. A rare moment of zen, if you will. Enjoy!  

(Photo of a vineyard in Trentino, Alto Adige, Italy by Flckr user mathias764)

A New Kind of Wine Crush!

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Here’s some wine porn you don’t see everyday! It’s even government sanctioned! That’s because the U.S. Marshal’s Office has released images from the day they demolished more than 500 bottles of wine from Rudy Kurniawan’s private collection. If you don’t know Rudy, he’s been all over the wine news for the past several years and was recently convicted in federal court for counterfeiting high-end wine (we’re talking bottles worth thousands of dollars/bottle). Fortunately, the bottles destroyed were deemed to be counterfeit or unsellablle by experts. So the government did what they had to: brought boxes, cases and pallets of bottles to a landfill in Creedmoor, Texas. They then let construction equipment do its best. Here are a few of the photos courtesy of the U.S. Marshals. You can view the full album here. (Also, thanks to Dr.Vino, where I first saw the news via twitter.)

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(All photos courtesy of the Office of Public Affairs for the U.S. Marshals. See the entire album here. )

Here’s the official statement from the U.S. Marshals:

More than 500 bottles of wine found to be counterfeit or unsellable are destroyed at a landfill in Creedmoor, Texas, Dec. 10, 2015. The wine was from the private collection of Rudy Kurniawan, the man convicted of fraud in federal court in 2013 for producing and selling millions of dollars of counterfeit wine. The U.S. Marshals were responsible for destroying the counterfeit and unsellable wine and selling the authentic wine. At the destruction, the wine bottles are crushed by a crane, and the glass is collected for recycling on site. The liquid contents of the bottles are collected and composted. The cardboard and wood from the boxes and pallets are also recycled or composted.