It’s not often that WineOfTheWeek finds itself on the SoCal Glamour Girls website but a google alert (you gotta trust those links right?) recently had us clicking through to this rather different approach to wine news reporting.

In a departure from their usual ‘All American Girl in Black Latex’ videos the saucy minx’s at SoCal Glamour Girls take a pop at the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board’s decision to ban a wine label they felt to be pornographic. The Californian Cycles Gladiator wine features the kind of artwork you’d see on the tattooed torso of many a hairy biker but the imagery proved too much for Alabama.

How to best present this story? Well with a buxom young maiden in a bikini of course.

Ad agency meeting, somewhere in Manhattan…

Beer Brand: We’re really worried about these stats that say people are drinking more wine than beer
Ad Agency: Relax! Wine is for pussies.
Beer Brand: So what’s your idea?
Ad Agency: OK, so we open in a laboratory. A sexy ‘intelligent’ scientist type chick conducts an experiment on mice. She lets some of the mice drink wine and some of them drink beer
Beer Brand: Er, where is this going, exactly?
Ad Agency: Well the mice that drink wine just slouch around doing nothing.
Beer Brand: And the mice that drink beer?
Ad Agency: Well they get off their faces and totally lose it.
Beer Brand: The point being?
Ad Agency: Wine is for pussies and beer is for parties!!
Beer Brand: Put down 10 mill on the media campaign. Let’s do it!

Makes me glad to be a pussy.

Ollie leaves Stan in charge of bottling their home-made wine. Another fine mess ensues.

Oh dear.

Info-graphics, it seems, are all the rage. To you and I they are simple graphical representations of information. To hyperbolic web marketers info-graphics are are a revolutionary new paradigm that will change the way we look at data forever (substitute ‘info-graphics’ in that sentence with any web development you choose and you too can become a web marketer – it’s easy!)

But what has all this to do with wine?

Well, I stumbled across this rather good ‘animated info-graphic’ (is there such a thing?) that shows the process of winemaking within six steps in less than 2 minutes. Bloody marvelous!

Maynard James Keenan is my kinda man. By day, Keenan works the soil in the service of Bacchus the god of wine. By night he kneels at the alter of the rock gods as the frontman of Tool and the hydra-headed Puscifer.

Over the years WineOfTheWeek has been guilty of sneering at the long list of  celebrities who adopt vineyards as vanity projects or allow their name to used by profit seeking corporate initiatives. In Maynard, WineOfTheWeek has found it’s celebrity salvation.

In the documentary ‘Blood into Wine’ Keenan shows that he’s a committed oenophile. He’s learnt his vini and viti and has a real passion for the vine. The documentary charts the determination of Keenan and his winemaking partner Eric Glomski to produce something beautiful in the harsh terrain that is Arizona.

Take a look at the trailer below to get a feel for the tone of the movie and find out more about Keenan’s wines at their (pretty damn spectacular) website.

WineOfTheWeek isn’t sure when and where this movie will get a UK screening but rest assured, we’re on the case to be the first to get a hold of it.

Every man needs a hobby. This man’s hobby involves roller-blading through lines of wine bottles carefully arranged to play Mozart when he hits them with customised spurs on his skates . Yes. That’s exactly what this man’s hobby is. Watch on…

Academy award nominee John C. Reilly has created an absurd new character called Dr Steve Brule in a series of short videos for the AdultSwim channel. When Dr Steve decides to give wine tasting a chance, carnage ensues. WARNING! This video contains scenes of projectile vomiting.

It’s not quite Spinal Tap but Christopher Guest, Michael Mckean and Harry Shearer ask us to consider a horrific vinous combination. Ladies and Gentlemen I present The Folksmen from A Mighty Wind with ‘Corn Wine’ and the immortal refrain:

Consider the corn, Consider the wine
One’s in a hurry, one takes it’s time
If only the two could just combine…
…Corn Wine.

Ok, so this video has been knocking around for a while but it still resonates with me and is definitely worth a first or repeat view. Thinking of giving up your day job to a live of service to the vine?

This video uses the extraordinary website ‘text to move’ website Xtranormal. Check it out if you’ve yet to.

What is it about our very human nature that revels in other peoples misfortune? This clip of a FOX News presenter conducting an interview treading grapes still has me smiling.

At precisely 55 seconds our hapless interviewer pays dearly for a moment of bravado. The frankly unsettling yelps of agony are simply bizarre. As we cut away to the befuddled presenters in the studio a nation cries “For the love of God, put this poor woman down.”!