Last Saturday, Darby and I had the extreme pleasure of finding our way to the heart of the Dundee Hills. After a quick stop at Dobbes Family Estate in town, we motored west and up the hill toward Domaine Drouhin, except we never found Domaine Drouhin. Instead we found De Ponte Cellars.
In winemaking, as in many things, location is crucial to the enterprise, and De Ponte Cellars is on “the hillside” that is home to several of Oregon’s top producers. De Ponte’s slice of this precious hillside is also home to one of the oldest vineyards in the Willamette Valley. This scenic property was acquired by the Baldwin family in 1999 and soon De Ponte Cellars Winery was born.
This special volcanic soil has excellent minerality and drainage. Also, the Dundee Hills benefits from being drier and warmer than many pockets that surround it. All of these factors together combine to showcase unique characteristics found in the best Pinot noirs from this region. Our wines tend to be very focused with great clarity and complexity. Some of the descriptors are bright red fruits, exotic spices, and a gorgeous minerality in the structure.
So, De Ponte has location, soil, climate and family on its side. De Ponte (pronounced Duh Pon Tay) also has winemaker Isabelle Dutartre. Dutartre learned the art of winemaking in the Burgundy region of France where she’s from, and each of her De Ponte vintages reflects her uncompromising commitment to quality and tradition. To learn more about Dutartre, see this video from Wine Is Serious Business.
I think it’s important to note that another one of “the hillside’s” best winemakers is also a woman–Anna Matzinger at Archery Summit. Pinot is a delicate grape and getting the pure essence of this delicate fruit in the bottle is an art and a science, one being mastered by women. But cheers to anyone who can do it well!
De Ponte also produces pinot noir under the Clay Hills label. We tasted the winery’s various offerings, and the 2008 Clay Hill Pinot Noir at $26 turned out to be the wine we were looking for.
See my iPhone picture of “the hill” in question on Flickr.
I’m grateful to literary blogger, Maud Newton, for sharing this 1964 documentary from BBC on poet Phillip Larkin, widely regarded as one of the greatest English poets of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Also from YouTube, these excellent clips of the poet reading his poems, “Water” and “Aubade”.
Jim Lauderdale’s new album, Patchwork River, comes out May 11 and I can’t wait (which is why I just pre-ordered the physical disc from Amazon).
Lauderdale is one of my favorite artists, so I’m excited for any new material he puts out, but this album is another collaboration with Robert Hunter, which ups the ante considerably.
Lauderdale and Hunter teamed up before. In 1999, they worked with mountain music legend Dr. Ralph Stanley on I Feel Like Singing Today, and again on Lauderdale’s magical release Headed For the Hills from 2004.
According to The Tennessean, the two men admire one another’s work and are willing to talk about it.
“He paints pictures that have never been seen. I can’t believe that I ever got to meet him, much less work with him,” Lauderdale said of Hunter.
“He’s a world-class genius,” Hunter said about Lauderdale. “If you don’t like country with a humble jolt of human soul, leave him alone.”
Cathy’s Book is a transmedia storytelling experience written and produced by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman (with illustrations by Cathy Brigg). First published in 2006, the book includes an evidence packet filled with letters, phone numbers, pictures, and birth certificates, as well as doodles and notes written by Cathy in the page margins.
Cathy’s Book is a huge success and now two more books, Cathy’s Key and Cathy’s Ring round out the trilogy. All three are presented in print and online in a complimentary and overlapping fashion.
One of the author’s, Sean Stewart of Fourth Wall Studios, spoke to ARGNet about building “interactive arcs†into the stories, so that a reader might send an email and go through a 3 or 4-step investigation to arrive at a satisfying endpoint.
Online or off, the magic here is the series of interactions taking place between readers/followers/fans and the storytellers. Stewart explains:
MA: What was your favorite out-of-book element in the trilogy?
SS: Actually, I think my favorite thing we did was to build a gallery for readers to post their art…and then put some of those pictures in the printed books. There is something very beautiful to me about closing that circle: the books invite you into Cathy’s life beyond the page, and then, eventually, circle around until your life is part of her printed world. That for me is a lovely version of The Dance – that cooperative give-and-take between artist and audience that is seems so clearly to be part of what the next evolution of art will be.
With the rise of digital culture, writers are now required to think beyond their manuscript. And while the writer remains the architect of the story, as the larger experience of the story unfolds, others with a deep interest in the story emerge to help bring finishing touches and/or new ideas to the table. This could be somewhat off-putting to the storyteller, put in needn’t be. When you tell a story in the ancient tradition–around a campfire!–the people gathered there clearly impact the pace of the story, the details left in or taken out, the ending, etc. Thanks to the interactive abilities of today’s always-on mediums, we’re getting back to that more familiar model.
Between 2002 and 2009, Gerding Edlen built 3,200 condos valued at $1.6 billion. Naturally, that didn’t work out too well for anyone. The article goes into all the juicy details of investor losses and bank repos, but that’s not the part I’m interested in. This is:
With the condo boom over, Edlen is trying to reposition the company to be the national leader in green building makeovers.
The green economy is in.
Gerding Edlen’s strategy is to buy completed or partly finished buildings at bargain prices, retrofit them with state-of-the-art energy-efficient technology and then either sell the buildings or hold them and lease them out.
Edlen is convinced sustainable building has finally arrived as a viable business strategy, thanks in part to the Obama administration’s view of the green economy as one of the country’s primary economic engines.
“You’ve got to get your hands dirty and do deep retrofits,” Edlen said. “It’s about insulation, new windows or reglazing existing windows, it’s about new water-use strategies.”
The Oregonian article is followed by several negative comments from readers—sadly, that’s often par for the course in a public forum. Yet, I think Gerding Edlen deserves some praise for keeping their head above water during the deluge. And their new course is the right thing to do, for their business, the people who buy or rent from them and for conservation of our natural resources.
In related news, The Economist recently asked, “Is Oregon’s metropolis a leader among American cities or just strange?”
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based demographer and author, thinks that places like Portland, San Francisco and Boston have become “elite citiesâ€, attractive to the young and single, especially those with trust funds, but beyond the reach of middle-class families who want a house with a lawn. Indeed Portland, for all its history of Western grit, is remarkably white, young and childless. Most Americans will therefore continue to migrate to the more affordable “cities of aspiration†such as Houston, Atlanta or Phoenix, thinks Mr Kotkin. As they do so, they may turn decentralised sprawl into quilts of energetic suburbs with a community feeling.
That is not to belittle Portland’s vision. It is a sophisticated and forward-looking place. Which other city can boast that its main attraction is a bustling independent book store (Powell’s) and that medical students can go from one part of their campus to another by gondola, taking their bikes with them? Other cities will see much to emulate…Adam Davis of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, a Portland polling firm, says that Oregonians like to consider themselves leaders but also exceptions. They are likely to remain both.
It’s safe to say Gerding Edlen’s desire to retrofit old buildings to exacting green standards is a leadership position and an exceptional path, not frequently taken by real estate developers.
As for Kotkin’s claim that Portland is an elite city, I don’t see it that way, although I know what he means. Houston would be a much easier choice for a young family to make. Portland is, in fact, an expensive place to live and the wages here have not kept pace with the rise in cost of living, particularly real estate valuations.
Anyone who is on the ground in Oregon today knows the economy is weak, but I think the future portends good things. Many people are retrofitting not just buildings, but their entire way of thinking and doing business, and as this process unfolds we’re going to see business and civic interests align in impressive and unprecedented ways.
“She makes a person want to close their eyes and just bask in a star-filled night” – Daytrotter.com
In my previous post about the greatness of Daytrotter, I couldn’t help but notice that several of the artists hail from Portland, Oregon. Laura Gibson, for instance.
I recently came to the conclusion that Daytrotter is far and away the best music site on the Web. It may be the best site on the Web, but I digress…
Daytrotter is the best because they provide a daily handful of live tracks from artists who veer off I-80 to record an epic “Session” at Daytrotter’s Rock Island, IL studio. The tracks are raw, unscripted performances from the road that are totally unique to that moment and only available through Daytrotter.
Did I mention that I freaking love Daytrotter? All the tracks they provide are totally unique and they’re free. If discovering new music is something you enjoy, Daytrotter and you may have a beautiful future together.
Here’s a band that I’ve heard of before, but their Daytrotter Session led me to learn more.
Digital ninja, Faris Yakob–who I had the pleasure of meeting at a conference in Cambridge, MA a few years ago–made a guest post on Gaping Void that resonates.
Here’s the heart of Yakob’s argument:
Once you begin to extend yourself via media, you become aware that by broadcasting your life through media fragments, you are creating an idea of who you are that is distinct from, but inextricably linked to, who you are.
And that brand is a highly defensible asset.
Naturally, Yakob is referencing the ideas in “The Brand Called You,” a 1997 article by Tom Peters in Fast Company. I bought in to this line of thinking pretty much since it emerged and I’ve been actively “extending myself via media” since 1999, when I launched my first site.
Given the investments I’ve made in my brand, particularly at AdPulp, I ought to have a “highly defensible asset” that can be used to land clients, speaking engagements, job offers and the like. Yet, the reality on the ground isn’t nearly as grand as all that. I’ve spent many a long night tossing and turning on why that is.
One problem is I’ve established myself as an ad critic while continuing to work in the business, which may lead to some unintentional confusion. For instance, when you meet me, are you meeting David Burn the ad guy, or David Burn the guy who rips on and/or compliments other ad guys? Personally, I’ve never had a hard time unifying the two. To make quality communications, one needs to be acutely aware of the rest of the field in order to instinctively react to it, build upon it or utterly reject it. For that reason, AdPulp ought to be the ultimate portfolio piece. But unless the job in question calls for the creation of an online media property, it’s often perceived to be an apples-to-oranges situation.
Here’s the thing though, I’m not really concerned about the brand called me problem I just outlined. As Shakespeare said, “to thine own self be true.” I’m doing what I like to do, and what I’m good at. I don’t need a bunch of people to recognize how to best employ my talents for their own benefit, I just need a handful of people to do so. That’s why I started Bonehook and that’s why it’s a content development firm, versus an “ad agency.” I’m making it as obvious as I can that my success with AdPulp is directly transferable to any number of my client’s marketing problems.
I didn’t go to journalism school, but I was a journalist while in school. My training as a reporter and news editor on The College Reporter–more than my classes–prepared me for the work I’ve been doing for 22 years now.
My uncle was a journalist, a pioneer in TV broadcasting. When I graduated from F&M, I asked him if I ought to pursue a Masters in Journalism. He said that’s one way to do it, the other is to become an expert in a field first, then start covering that field. As it turns out, that’s the path I chose, or maybe it chose me. Either way, I worked in marketing communications for many years before I started to cover the industry on AdPulp, an industry site I co-founded, write and edit.
With that in mind, I’d like point to Chris Lynch and his ideas about where journalism, and J-school education is today.
In the coming years, I think most journalism schools will shrink or disappear. The ones remaining will be drastically different, with students focusing on topics that don’t relate to content creation at all. Moreover, some of the best new professional content creators won’t attend journalism schools. They will hail from different majors and degrees, like business, computer science and finance. The notion of being a professional journalist who is merely an objective observer of a topic or industry will officially fade in the coming years. This is a good thing, since it was a stupid fantasy that it should be like that anyway.
…most journalists today aren’t experts; they merely report about people that are. This creates a barrier and credibility problem that people paid little attention to before the Web because the journalists’ identities to regular people were less transparent, and less social.
The move to a pay model will be the first step in giving rise to the Reader Elite. Pay-for-media sites will employ smaller staffs that will produce headier content to satisfy its needs. Paying up to hundreds of dollars a year for their content boutiques of choice, the Reader Elite will expect stories, videos and podcasts put together by on-site content creators across the world.
Skipping over the elitist part of his argument for a moment, I’m thinking I’d very much like to get a percentage of the readers who frequent AdPulp to pay us hundreds of dollars a year for our work. Perhaps, that’s the next stage in AdPulp’s evolution as a media property.
But what about the remainder of Lynch’s points above? Is objectivity a tired old 20th century notion with no place in modern media? Are J-schools a waste of time and money? Will the rise of pay models hurt civic discourse? These are meaty questions and I thank Lynch for serving them up.
An objective storyteller is a faulty idea. Storytellers, by definition, have a point of view. Fairness is the question, not objectivity.
As for J-schools, they will adapt or perish, just like the businesses that employ their graduates. Will they adapt fast enough for this fast changing marketplace? If they don’t, another kind of school will rise up to meet the need, which is what happened in advertising. In advertising, one goes to an industry school like The Creative Circus or Miami Ad School to learn from working professionals. I can see where media companies might start calling for this type of hands on, real world training too. Whether established schools or startups staffed by working media professionals meet the need isn’t important, because the need will be met.
Lastly, will online pay models reward elites, while ignoring the needs of those who can’t afford multiple expensive subscriptions? I don’t think so. The idea that information is free (and wants to be free) is is still in beta. As far back as the late 18th century, people, not all of them rich, paid for content. In fact, Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” cost two shillings, which Paine thought too high. The public did not agree and Paine’s pamphlet sold over one hundred fifty thousand copies in its first printing. Eventually over five hundred thousand copies were sold.
The mistake made recently by digital publishers of all sorts was to offer their content for free in the first place. Many, like The Times of London, now see the error of their ways and are preparing to put the genie back in the bottle. Here’s how the managers of that particular paper see things:
There are those who argue that it is in some way contrary to the “spirit of the internet†to charge for content. This is an absurd contention. The internet is one vast free market. Indeed it is the critics who fail to understand the net. In the early days it might have been possible to regard online publishing as merely a marketing teaser to encourage print sales. Years later, the internet has grown up and grown out of this. It is a proper platform for publishing a newspaper and we propose to treat it as such.
The Times will charge £2 a week for access to both the Times and the Sunday Times, which goes to Lynch’s point about hundreds of dollars per year, per periodical. But here’s the thing, if a site produces original content that no else has, their product is worth every penny. Which is another way of saying there’s too much talk about technological upheaval, and not enough focus on the fundamentals of the media business. I often say, “may the best storyteller win.” The reality is if an organization is able to charge for its content–because it is high quality and in demand–it needs to do so.
[UPDATE] Mashable is reporting that in the last four years, newspaper ad revenue dropped by 44.24%. That’s nearly half of the industry’s revenue.
There are currently eight wine producers in Clark County, Washington. But none of them are familiar to the people of Oregon, because the Beaver State has its own wine industry with hundreds of producers to visit and support. Yet, the Vancouver-area wineries are easy to reach from Portland, and they tend to produce different varietals from their Oregon counterparts, making them a good option for a Saturday afternoon picnic.
Last fall we had a lovely afternoon at Rusty Grape in Battle Ground. Yesterday, we ventured to Confluence Winery, positioned on a high plateau above the Columbia River in Ridgefield. The property is home to maturing pinot noir vines, two horses, a production facility and tasting room, plus the lovely home of the proprietors, Jae and Greg Weber.
Confluence produces big bold Washington reds with fruit sourced from the Yakima Valley region, Horse Heaven Hills and Red Mountain, all in the south central part of the state. Darby and I tasted their Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Primitivo and a blend. The Syrah was excellent, but we were intrigued by the Primitivo, so we bought a bought a bottle and enjoyed it thoroughly it with our picnic lunch of olives, cheese, hot Genoa salami and crusty bread.
Originating from Croatia, the Primitivo grape has been grown in Italy for thousands of years. DNA testing now confirms that Primitivo is the exact same grape as Zinfandel, made popular by Californian wineries. The original Croatian name for this grape is Crljenak.
Weber told us his Primitivo fruit was planted from Italian vines and that the growing region in Washington is one of the best in the world for this particular grape. I believe it. At $32 for a bottle of Confluence’s 2008 vintage, this is a special wine that easily lives up to its price tag. The fruit is vibrant in this wine, but it’s balanced by a lingering velvet finish one might find in a powerful Cab.
Confluence wines are only available at the winery in Ridgefield. They do not supply any restaurants nor retail outlets at this time, so you’ll have to head north on I-5 and make your way to the western edge of Clark county. Be prepared to come home with a case, or as much as the Webers’ will sell you.
