Every year, just before Super Bowl time, Bay Area wine lovers play host to ZAP, the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers event that consumes both halls at the venerable Fort Mason Center. This year there were slightly fewer wineries than last year, for reasons I can’t quite figure out. From the plethora of purple teeth I saw, there are still hordes of people who love this particular grape.
But there were still over 300 producers in attendance. If each poured just one wine, that would be more than any sane human could hope to taste, no matter how accomplished a spitter. And I think the average was closer to three wines per winery, so one must approach this event with a sound strategy and the discipline to stick to it. I’m great at the former.
But I got distracted by eavesdropping, which is easy to do when you’re elbow-to-elbow and glass to glass…
Continue reading ‘Seen & Heard at ZAP!’
This week, the wine road took me to
Texas
, whose wineries have been making great strides. But sadly, a
Texas
winery tour is not to be found on my schedule. I was asked to lead a session at the “Marketing with a Kick” conference of the SMPS.
And that means I spent time on an airplane, without a cell phone or access to email. Over three delicious hours to catch up on my reading! Among my stack of catch-up reading was an old issue of The Economist (
12-23-06
–
1-5-07
: Happiness, How to Measure It – subscription site). The title article describes some economists being described as “rogues” by their peers for expanding on the old idea of “Utility” - that 100 year-old term economists use to describe why people pay more for a luxury product than economists’ models predict they should.
Known as hedonomists, these rogues have come up with a high-tech, modern way to measure pleasure and pain. This new technique involves, pretty much, asking people how happy they feel. As I said, a new technique. Very high tech.
Actually, high tech does play a role. It comes in rather handy for verifying the accuracy of the low-tech approach – from measuring brainwave activity in the pleasure/pain center of the brain to measuring pupil dilation and eye muscle activity when a subject smiles. Click here for a very cool site that tests your ability to measure true vs. fake smiles.
Continue reading ‘Wines That Tip the Hedonimeter to “Eleven”’
Every year, just before Super Bowl time, Bay Area wine lovers play host to ZAP, the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers event that consumes both halls at the venerable Fort Mason Center. This year there were slightly fewer wineries than last year, for reasons I can’t quite figure out. From the plethora of purple teeth I saw, there are still hordes of people who love this particular grape. 
