The Singularity

Will the machines of the future drink wine? When mankind has been eclipsed by the supercomputers we create and those supercomputers in effect create new supercomputers more power than themselves, will those machines imbibe?

Drinking alcohol is not a pursuit solely performed by humans. Monkeys and other animals ingest fermented fruit that is essentially alcohol. Koalas get buzzed on eucalyptus. However, will the more intelligent forms of "life" which follow us have the same desires for a buzz and camaraderie? If they are too have superior intelligence, and intelligence is not just the ability to crunch algorithms, but also the ability to feel emotions, then the answer seems to be yes. However, if intelligence is just those abilities that we associate to already be in place in modern computers, wine appears to be headed for extinction in the event of a technological singularity.

However, what if the buzz in the future supercomputers is generated through a different means than existing mechanisms? What if the wine, cannabis, and other forms of buzz generation have attributes that the supercomputers will parse out and use to create a super buzz mechanism, with a form factor unlike that we currently manifested by a colored liquid in a glass? What if the wine looseness is coupled with cannabis' ability to largely negate hangovers? If so, I'm looking forward to the singularity.

My Wine Tastes

Before taking this class, I will have to admit, I had a pretty undeveloped palate. I would be lying if I said that I could actually tell the difference between two buck chuck and a Latour. Yet, over the past two months, I have been exposed to so many different varietals of good wine, that I had a hard time swallowing down the selection from Trader Joe's. Just as my aspirations and dreams have been elevated at the GSB, so has my wine taste. It seems only fitting that while I was content with running a lifestyle business before the GSB, I now know that I want to build out a meaningful software company that truly fixes many of the problems of the current US healthcare system. I could have guessed that the GSB would change my attitudes about my business goals, but I could not have guessed that it would have shifted my wine goals. Just as the GSB has helped me realize the business the activities I truly enjoy (growing a company, sales and marketing, financial analysis), this class has made me realize the wine I like. Before this class, I mainly stuck to Italian wine because I had discovered it on a trip to Tuscany with my dad. Yet, I realized over the quarter, that I actually truly enjoy the "jammy" taste of a Cab Sauv. Leave it to GSB to change my life by changing my wine taste.

WineInStyle

While I am concerned about the credentials of the buyers, I think the best course of action for Eberhart is to sell. Although I am confident that he could find the fix for the cash flow issues, his priorities seem to be shifting towards his family. I think he should look with pride on the business he built, but he also needs to acknowledge the current state of the team. While Khoo is clearly a talented salesman, he is short on financial skills. The company clearly needs to fix its net working capital situation. The recent situation where Costco had to lend the company cash to finance its own large order underscores this reality. Since Eberhart is the executive most equipped to fix this issue, under the current regime, he cannot responsibly step away. Yet, if he sells WineInStyle to a financial buyer, it is safe to assume that they will have the expertise to fix this issue. This assumption is much more likely than a financial buyer having the industry know how or sales expertise that Khoo provides. Therefore, in order to provide himself liquidity, and to ensure the long term existence of WineInStyle, I recommend that Eberhart sell the company.

How to make wine making more sustainable?

Besides organic and biodynamic wine, there are more innovative ways to make wine making sustainable. Taking a look at the recommended readings from Vinography.com, I found an article with 3 interesting practices for sustainability in wine. These practices are: “living building” tasting room, dry farming and no-till agriculture.

Here is a link to the article: https://daily.sevenfifty.com/the-next-wave-of-sustainability-in-wine/. The following quotes summarize each of the practices.

A “Living Building” Tasting Room

“The most rigorous standard for green buildings in the world, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) was formulated by the Seattle-based International Living Future Institute (ILFI) in 2006. It’s designed around seven performance areas, referred to as petals. Unlike other certifiers of green buildings, the ILFI won’t certify a building until a full year after it’s completed. That’s because some of the building’s petals—namely, energy and water—require 12 months of continuous occupancy before they can be shown to work in accordance with the challenge. The Energy Petal requires that the building produce 10 percent more energy than it consumes; the Water Petal requires (among other things) that 100 percent of the project’s water needs be supplied by captured precipitation or other natural closed-loop water systems.”

Dry Farming

"After the recent six-year-long drought in California, water conservation is on the minds of many farmers in the West, including growers of wine grapes. As a result, the Old World practice of dry farming is making a comeback. Why irrigate vineyards if you don’t need to—and if dry farming creates better-tasting wines (as its advocates claim)?"

No-Till Agriculture

"Healthy soil is full of microorganisms and mycorrhizae, which are essential for the health of your crop and which are disturbed when you till. When you refrain from tilling, not only are you preserving the soil’s rich biodiversity but you’re sequestering carbon and preventing erosion. Another benefit of using the no-till approach and then planting cover crops is that the soil becomes better able to retain moisture."

Wine Etiquette: An Example of What Not to Do

I thought I might share an amusing wine-related story to add some comic relief during finals week. Back in college, the family of one of my friends was generous enough to host a few of us at their ski cabin for a long weekend. Not only did they provide us lodging, but they also provided great food and even better wine. However, one particular dinner provided a life lesson about when it might be prudent to keep some wine knowledge to yourself. As we sat down for dinner, the father brought out what must have been a $100+ bottle of white wine and rhetorically asked us if that would be suitable to pair with dinner. One of my classmates quickly responded that he prefers red and added that a red wine would pair much better with our meal. As Alder Yarrow mentioned in class, traditional perceptions of wine / food pairings may be misguided, so for all we know the white wine may have made an excellent pairing. Regardless, it may have been better just to accept the white wine and not look a gift horse in the mouth.

However, always the gracious host, the father dug through the kitchen to find a red wine to add to the feast. When he returned with the bottle of red, the same classmate inspected the bottle and said "you know, you can tell how good a wine is by looking at the size of the punt," as he presented the nonexistent punt on the bottle of red to the table (ignoring the fact that marketing strategies that go into the presentation of a wine bottle may not necessarily correlate with wine quality), followed unsurprisingly by an extend awkward silence.

Funky Forgotten Fogarty

My friend (and our classmate) Morgan came over last week to a dinner I hosted with a bottle of 1998 Thomas Fogarty Chardonnay Blanc de Blanc Late Disgorged as a gift. She had just visited the winery and tasted this sparkling wine, saw it was only ~$28 and inquired why the cost was so low for that vintage. Turns out our favorite riddlers (shout out team Ridley) "forgot" about the bottles and they were rediscovered a few years ago and finally put on sale. (What intern got fired after this incident...?)

This extra time underground without any riddling caused the wine to develop a verryyyy funky taste and color, but it is now a novel drinking experience. I actually enjoyed it a lot! The wine has a bit of a cider-y taste to it.

It's also hilarious to note how Fogarty tried to pass off the accident as an intentional winemaking decision and market it as such, as noted in their description:

"Fermented in tank and then transferred to barrel for malolactic fermentation to soften the fruit's intense acidity, this was then bottled and left "en tirage" for nine years. This extra time in bottle and on the leese tamed the initial razor sharp acidity, producing a sparkler that is wonderfully complex and flaxen-hued."

Check it out! :

https://www.klwines.com/Products/i?i=1066330

Coravin Convert

My parents bought me a Coravin for Christmas, an appliance that allows you to tap into a bottle of wine through the cork via a needle and pour a single glass, preserving the bottle up to weeks or even months. Initially, I thought I would shove this device in the back corners of my kitchen as yet another superfluous appliance.  I absolutely LOVE this thing now though.

When I'm not FOAMing or BPLing, I like to have one nice glass of wine here and there throughout the week, but I constantly have to think through the following four days and consider if I have a hang with a friend coming up when we can finish the bottle. Or I'll often be that person coming to a dinner party with a half-drank bottle of nicer wine so that it doesn't go to waste!

This kind of unpredictable wine drinking routine causes me to keep cheaper bottles of wine on hand that I don't feel guilty about not finishing if I open up for one glass. The Coravin is already changing my purchasing behavior - I've been more inclined to invest in more expensive wines because I now have flexibility in consuming it. I imagine this will be the case for a huge portion of the wine drinking market and change sales trends for premium end wines. Genius invention.

Buy yours now!!! Or come hang out at my house and drink wine with me so that I don't even need to use it ;)