Inside each one of these blue-red-purple Shiraz skins lies a heart of colourless (clear) juice. Getting it out and making the world’s most different white wine without the dye in the skins making it red is a Nico Vermeulen speciality. In a few months you’ll be able to taste and see the proof of the pudding.

Making red wine from red grapes is like taking the brown out of chocolate.

Nico Vermeulen has made a study out of what makes red wine red. And now he knows how to take the red colour out.

Why does he want to do that? Because Shiraz Blanc has a unique taste in the way that every grape variety has a different flavour. As soon as you make the wine with the red skins, the whole taste profile changes.

Shiraz Blanc is crisp and racy, filled with light and bright fruit flavours, like kiwi and litchi. Blows your mind away.

How does he do it?

He has to squeeze the red Shiraz grapes to get the juice out. Normally, the dye in the skins then colours the juice pink, just like pink Zinfandel.

The secret is in the squeezing. You can get clear juice if you know how to squeeze.

In two and half weeks time, the pickers will come into this vineyard to cut the bunches off.

I will keep you up to date on the process and its progress.

When the Shiraz grapes are in the press and the squeeze is on, Nico will throw a few baskets of orange-skinned Viognier grapes on to the top of the pile, because Shiraz and Viognier go together like ice cream and hot chocolate.

Stanley Louw, the Shiraz vineyard owner, points out the direction of sunrise in the mountain-blocked valley. This vineyard was chosen because it get 4 hours less direct sun every day in summer, perfect for making white wine

1. It’s time to learn how to take smart risks.
2. Learn from your mistakes quickly – siting an example of Warren Buffett.
3. Get out quickly when you sense something is wrong. Something that Felix Dennis (of the book “How to get Rich” – not to be mistaken with any of the Kiyosaki books) suggests.

Smart risks are still risks that we take, but are not random attempts to come up with something dramatic. To take a smart risk you still need to know what you are trying to do and at the same time you’re sensitive to the course that you are following so that you can quickly respond when it or an aspect of your product becomes a lemon.

This implies:

• Trying stuff because experience tell’s you it should work without the years of research and focus groups etc that most large corporate’s invest in before they come up with something “new”.
• When you see something going wrong, identify it and get out or even better,
• Fix it and move on.

But for corporate’s where this agile culture is aggressively discouraged it is difficult because:

• The sponsor is rarely directly involved in the work.
• Management of the outcome is often decided by committee.
• The motivation to succeed is often driven by the wrong incentive – deadlines and short term incentives – and the ultimate recipient (consumer, end user) is often disappointed with the final result.
• The Risk Management Committee and executive often stamp out any likelihood of innovation – preferring the conservative.

Could you imagine if companies flaunted focus groups in favour of evolving products with our help. If companies actually tried to get things right through incremental experimental, simplicity and continual improvement.

Would we be in this financial global crisis right now? Companies often spend millions on long term developments that finally tank because the business case was blown or simply because noone can remember why they are doing it. Sometimes these things are perpetuated because noone has the cajhones to stop or even reevaluate.

This is obviously a little harder to run with in the wine industry because the chances you take on a varietal take 3 years to produce enough of a harvest to even make wine with. And if it tanks then…it’s more than an oops. But this is where experience counts the most – you kinda know what works, you have your finger on the pulse and are able to make these decisions based on sound logic – and more than a little risk.

Most of the great entrepreneurs have failed many times before they succeeded. Where is this pioneering spirit now? Time’s are tough, but the best time to change that stiff corporate thing is now. I am not saying “throw caution to the wind”. I am saying pull your best together and see what they come up with. Spend where it will make a difference.

Try, fail, learn and fix – FAST!!! And be remarkable.

Thanks to Kev for the inspiration.

I always fall for it. I try my best. I try to estimate when we will start picking. Because the weather always looks different, every season, every year. I try to estimate how it will affect the new crop. This year winter hung around longer. At least so I thought. And spring was cool. And we didn’t have the December or January heat wave that often comes with a bang. “Harvesting will be at least two weeks late this year”. That was me on December 23. Two weeks later the red grapes had mostly turned colour (from green to red) the way they do around then. “We’ll probably be around one week later than usual this year”. That was me on January 20.

This was this morning’s picture. Picking the first grapes of 2009. You can see our team in the Guava Pinotage block, just after sunrise today. Tractor in the background, ready to take the grapes to the cellar. Once again it was in the first week of February, which is when we pick this block of vines every year. This time  it was Friday.

So much for my predictions. And all of that cool spring and summer stuff. See if I remember next year.

We used to wonder why we never get casual visitors calling in at night. We used to live in the city. Our door was always open. Pals of our kids kind of lived at our place. Friends in general were always calling in and our biggest problem was knowing what to do with the empty wine bottles that wouldn’t get the neighbours eyebrows to rise. The doors at the farm are always open too, but we’ve come to understand that we live just too far away.

This was some initiation. Little more than 24 hours earlier, some had still been in New York. Jet lagged on arrival in Cape Town at the southern extremity of the African continent, they had been ushered to a welcoming party where they had to meet the local support team and eat African food for the first time. Even the most intrepid explorer would just be looking for a bed and recovery time. But these guys and gals discovered that the hazards of time zones bring more than travel fatigue, there’s just no time for sleep.

When the Cape Town crew were tucking themselves into bed on Sunday night, our world explorers were finding the coffee and getting down to work. Bloggers have to publish.  Just when US readers are finding a comfy position in front of the screen and settling down to read the important opinions of the day, everyone in Cape Town is deep in slumberland. Except for the hard-at-work ‘US bloggers in Africa’, pulsing out wisdom.

Then came the rigours of day one. For 40 000 years the San people had the whole of the Southern Cape area of Africa to themselves. Today, they  are limited to a 2000 acre estate where they celebrate their ancient way of life and this was Base Camp One for the travellers. Fortunately they didn’t have to do much more than sit, watch and eat. But then came the lumbering bus and a meandering bumpy ride into the African mountains to find Stormhoek in its hidden valley.

That’s where the footslogging came in. Stormhoek’s mountain roads couldn’t accommodate the giant blogger bus. So everyone had to demount and slog up the pass to the shade and cool drinks of the Stormhoek home. Before anyone had a chance to get a breath or dream up a descriptive phrase, the whole crew were led off into the vineyards and asked to try to tell the difference between the Merlot, the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Pinotage vines, when they appear to be identical green bushes with impossibly small green grapes.  To add to the confusion, the sun circles the sky to the north and the vines are convinced that the season is early-summer, even though it is December.

Then came the obligatory wine tasting. Many people like to compare a wine with the one that came before while they are standing up. Our American bloggers found that this work came more easily while they were laid back in the familiar comfort of a chair. This was like being home and taking it easy. But the hard work wasn’t finished. There was another another long walk back to the bus. Then there was a night-time bus trip enlivened by the nursery-rhyme magic of the conjunction of Jupiter and Mars with the moon in the pitch black sky, followed by dinner.

Finally, at around 11, day one ended with bed for the Cape Town people and midnight blogging for the American explorers.  

Day Two’s hazardous schedule involves satellite rocketry and another lumpy, bumpy ride, this time in a tiny, propeller-driven plane. The destination is deep-sea diving in the icy waters on the coast in the heart of the Namibian desert.   

Hey, couldn’t you guys have spent the day here in the peace and quiet of the Stormhoek valley?

And to everyone else too, take a moment to reflect and give thanks for what you have – wherever you are. I read Noble Pigs post this morning and realised that even in the midst of a global economic melt down and other very real issues closer to home that there is always something to be thankful for…

Thanks to everyone out there who continue to support us.

Recently I had a chat with our good mate and all round legend Matt Buckland and he was telling me about a fab event being organised by himself and Brand South Africa’s International Marketing Council (IMC), with a little help also from the great Dave Duarte.

Basically the idea is to expose some great Bloggers from the USA to the wonderful stuff we are doing online over here in deepest darkest Africa and help promote brand South Africa. The guys and girls from the states will be joined by a couple of SA’s finest and the whole journey will be documented on each individuals blog as well as them all being aggregated on www.weblogtheworld.com with some videos being kindly made by www.zoopy.com.

As a starter any local bloggers and digital citizens are invited to attend and meet up with the touring US blogger “delegation” this Sunday 8pm, at Asoka Bar in Cape Town. Space is limited so be quick and Put your name down here to attend.

The full line of peeps is listed below.

• Renee Blodgett and Ray Lewis – down the avenue
• Zadi Diaz – ZadiDiaz.com
• Mona Gable – The Huffington Post
• John Gartner – Matter Network
• Chris Morrison – VentureBeat
• David Sasaki – Global Voices Online
• Eliane Fioret – Ubergizmo
• Graeme Wood – The American Scene, The Smart Set, TheAtlantic.com

Was so inspiring I just had to post this. His speech was made in front of 125,000 people in Chicago’s Grant Park.

We wish him all the best. What a jolly nice chap.

First and foremost big thanks to everyone that has been responding to the Christmas post we put up on Monday. Within a couple of hours my inbox was exploding. First prizes to be grabbed up were from twitter (had over 40 responses within 3 hours, so by far the fastest form of online word of mouth) second came all the blogs we had our first ten within around 5 hours, then came Facebook at about the same time and to be honest we still have prizes left for Podcasting and Video casting so guys and girls now’s the time to whip out your Flips or use a mic and give something new a go (All you need to do is mention Barringtons or Stormhoek).

On a totally different note I just read about possibly one of the finest events all year on one of my favourite sites, Cherryflava (see video above). In a post today they mentioned Movember. Basically this is a guys thing (unless you are of the fine rare lady’s that can grow a girl mo) were gentlemen from around the world are encouraged during the month of November to grow a moustache (Mo) and raise cash for men’s health issues like Prostate cancer and depression. Girls that lack sufficient Mo hair growth can register to help by supporting your Mo men with admiration and donations on the Movember web site, and guys you can register and grow your Mo, send in pics of you and your Mo, organise Mo party’s and donate to the cause.

Am thinking we should maybe try organise a Mo party in Cape Town, will bring the Stormhoek, suggestions welcome in comments.

Lastly thanks so much to everyone supporting this and don’t forget to mail us so we can include your fine work in the post at the end of the month, we really want to help Barringtons out and send them big love for helping sponsor this too. If you know anyone that is flush enough to buy their own little bit of heavenly vineyard pass on the word and tell them about Barringtons vines (sorry for the promo pitch but promise they are such nice chaps).

Have a great weekend and keep sexy people