jamie goode's wine blog

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Vilafonte, the premium South African wine venture that's a collaboration between Mike Ratcliffe, Phil Freese and Zelma long, has a harvest blog, where I spotted this interesting recent post on evenness of ripening. Vilafonte take their viticulture seriously; I suspect we won't be seeing much gr*****ss in their wines (not the 'g' word again...!).

I've linked to the Vilafonte blog in the list on the right. It's good to see wineries taking advantage of the power of the blog to communicate in fresh ways with their customers and fans. They also have a podcast, which the Vilafonte team describe thus: "The Vilafonté harvest blog has now gone one step further with the introduction of the world's first ever harvest podcast show. This is a world first for a winery and will redefine the boundaries of communication between the winemaking and the consuming of fine wine. It is an exciting new frontier. This is a daily audio harvest report which is recorded by the Vilafonté team and which is available for listening online. What makes this different from a pure audio file is that people can subscribe to the podcast and automatically receive the file on their computer. Anyone with an iPod or similar playback device can then sync with our podcast and listen to our daily harvest show on their iPod on their way to work or at leisure."

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4 Comments:

At 1:51 PM, Anonymous Keith Prothero said...

Vilafonte are excellent at marketing which is not surprising with Mike Ratcliffe being involved.
I have tasted the C and M recently,and whilst both are very nice wines,there is no way,in my humble opinion they are worth their price tag.
Of course the wines are aimed at the US market,in which so many consumers believe if the wine is not priced high enough it cannot be any good!!

 
At 3:07 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

I haven't tasted C and M, Keith, so your views are welcomed. I had an appointment to meet up with Mike on my recent visit to SA, but there was a mix up and he wasn't in the country. Shame. Agree with your comment about selling wine in the USA.

 
At 6:11 AM, Blogger The Vilafonte Team said...

Hi Keith and Jamie
It seems like this would be a good opportunity to present a tasting in the UK. Perhaps we could do it as a comparative tasting. Keith, which wines at the same pricepoint would you like to bring? I think that it could be fun.
Jamie ... you keen?

 
At 2:26 PM, Blogger Jamie said...

I'm keen!

 

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