So what was this studying? Pretty much finishing The Complete Bordeaux by Stephen Brook. That and starting some flashcards on my iPad. I pretty much finished the book. I got to page 643 out of 710 before I came back to San Antonio. And I didn’t read every single page. But what I did read was all the main information and then the entries for all the top chateaux. That alone was a few hundred pages alone. Made me want to go back there. But enough about the book, I didn’t stay in the cave 24/7. I did go and have dinner in a few places. So I’ll talk about them here.

First night I headed to Bellino’s. It’s pretty much become a tradition for me to go on my first night there. They have a pretty decent food menu and the wine menu has a good selection of Italian wine. Tonight they had a special that sounded good. It was some Italian sausage and spaghetti with marinara sauce. I decided to pair it with one of the wines on their menu but they were out. This was the second time in a row that my first choice of wine was not available there. I went with my backup choice, though to call it a backup isn’t really fair. Let’s just call it a second choice. It was the 2010 Banfi Rosso di Montalcino. And in actuality, I was going to get this first, but thought another wine would be better.

Sausage and Pasta with Banfi Rosso di Montalcino

The food was good. I had heard one of the servers describe it to another table and say that the sausage wasn’t spicy. Well I’d agree, but it wasn’t not spicy. Definitely a mild sausage which is fine. Very tasty. The spaghetti was cooked well and the sauce also tasted good. It was a bit watery, but that was probably from the pasta not being completely drained. Very minor and really didn’t detract from the meal. The wine had good fruit, but very high acidity. It wasn’t a bad pairing, but it really needed to calm down a bit. All in all a good pairing. I ended with tiramisu. It’s kind of hard for me pass that up. After dinner I brought home the wine to have later.

Night number two. I really didn’t know where to go so I drove around and just stopped once I decided. I went to Moondogs. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy that night. I entered and was greeted very pleasantly by the host. She let me know I could pick any table I wanted. Grabbed a table and checked out the menu. I decided on just a chicken fried steak. I have a weakness for them. I wanted to try their bbq nachos, but my server let me know that even the small one was a good-sized portion. It came out and was also pretty good. Not the best I’ve had, but definitely not the worst. I would have it again if I went back. This time I didn’t have any wine. I went with beer. Here they really didn’t have a stellar selection of beer, just the normal selections. I ended up ordering a Blue Moon. Not a beer I typically order, but it’s nice every once-in-a-while.

Third night I decided to check out Glow. This was a restaurant I’ve seen the past couple times I’ve been down there, but decided not to go there. Basically because the menu online didn’t really have much that I thought I would like. While I’m not as bad as I used to be, I’m still a pretty picky eater. The menu on this night had at least two things I thought I would like. Glow has been around for almost two years and it’s one of a few places in the Rockport area that has an upscale menu. I ordered a pepper crusted tenderloin. It also had some potatoes and spinach with it. Two items I like. It came out perfectly cooked. It was also served already sliced. I believe this is called chef cut as I’ve only had this style a couple times. Great flavor and the pepper crusting wasn’t overwhelming.

2011 William Chris Artist Blend

The wine I ordered was the 2011 William Chris Wines Artist Blend. This was one of the main reasons I came to Glow. I had gone to William Chris this past December. While doing their interview we talked about Rockport and that their wine was on the menu at Glow. They are picky as to what restaurants carry their wine. Glow is one of the places they like to eat and that’s why it’s on the list. Another wine with good fruit. Some good dark fruits on it and a bit of earthiness. It’s a blend of Merlot, Mourvedre, Syrah,Sangiovese, and Cabernet Sauvignon. An unusual blend, but it works. For dessert I had bread pudding paired with one of the brandies they have.

I do have to say that first, get a reservation here. There’s seating for about 40 people. I knew this ahead of time from reading reviews. I made my reservation for a seat at the bar since it’s just me. Glad I did. There was a 20-top at 7:00 that took up half the place and the other tables were mostly sat. I got there just in time too. The 20-top was a surprise birthday party and I got there before the guest of honor did. They only had two servers/bartenders to take care of the whole place. Since I had gotten my order in before the big top, I had no issues with the food timing. However, these two were definitely running. They also had a busser helping out. They did an awesome job taking care of everyone and keeping their cool.

The next night I was joined by the neighbors downstairs. They’ve been living in the complex for a long time and are super nice. They’ve been friends of my parents since they got the place. I let them choose the restaurant. They picked a place called Crab-N. It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere near Aransas Pass. A seafood place of course, but as usual there’s a few items for a guy like me who doesn’t like seafood. We all pretty much ordered a pasta dish with different proteins. Mine was the chicken with a lemon butter sauce. Pretty good, but I would have liked the sauce to have more flavor to it.

I chose their only Sauvignon Blanc on the menu to pair with dinner. It was the Chateau Ste Michelle Sauvignon Blanc. Unfortunately I didn’t get the vintage, but it’s most likely a 2011, maybe a 2010. One of the main reasons I chose it was due to the seafood dishes my guests had. For me a chardonnay would have probably been better. They also drink a lot of Sauvignon Blanc, so I knew this should be a good choice. I was pleased with it. Good citrus aromas and great acidity.

The only issue with this particular dinner was the service was pretty slow. The place was full when we got there at 7:00. My guests tried to call to make a reservation but the person who answered the phone said they didn’t take them and then for some reason thought they wouldn’t be busy. On a Saturday night? Busy at 7:00? No never in the history of restaurants is it busy at 7:00 on a Saturday. A case of someone thinking that how busy you are a 4:00 determines how busy you’ll be when most people eat dinner. Not sure how many servers they had on the floor, but it looked like they were a bit overwhelmed. Not a big deal for someone like me, but it was noticeable.

My last night in town I really didn’t know where to go. Some of the places are only open during the day on a Sunday. I just got into the car and started driving. I ended up at a place called Latitude. I’ve been here before and know the food is good. Parking lot is pretty empty at 7:00 but yet the dining room was on a wait. So that means they only had 1-2 servers on the floor. I decided to go to the bar which is actually where I prefer to eat anyway. Since I already had a pepper tenderloin earlier that week, I decided to go with a Beef Burgundy.

Beef Burgundy with King Estate Pinot Noir

For the wine I ordered an Oregon Pinot Noir. For the second time this week I get told they were out. They bring out a Russian River Pinot Noir because it was close to the price of the wine I had ordered. Unfortunately I prefer pinots from Oregon and not California. They then tell me what other wines they are out of. I decided to get the 2011 King Estate Pinot Noir. Apparently this is not unusual here with wine. From what I get told, they order wine and it doesn’t come.

The Beef Burgundy arrives and it’s got a nice brown sauce with mushrooms, onions, and carrots. I forget that this is a dish with mushrooms, yet another food I don’t like, but it’s no big deal to pick them out. The tenderloin tips are nice and tender and tasty. The Pinot Noir has a good smoky aroma and good sour cherry on the palate. Figured a dish with the name Burgundy in it might be something to pair a Pinot Noir

I decline dessert as I’m pretty full. I take the rest of the wine home (by the way Texas is a state where you can order a bottle of wine and as long as it’s recorked, you can take it out of the restaurant). I reopen it when I get back to the condo while watching TV and having one of those generic swiss rolls. The pinot eventually gets this really nice tobacco on the nose.

Well, that’s my culinary adventures while down in Rockport. It’s a small town (along with Fulton) on the coast of Texas. Popular among Texans and lots of piers to fish off of. However, most of the piers are private or part of a hotel or condo complex. Many of the restaurants allow you to bring your own fish to have them cook. Not much as far as nightlife, but there are a few bars.

I don’t know when I’ll return to Rockport. While it’s only a 3 hour drive, it’s not a place I would go to just to spend the night. With the kind of schedule I have I wouldn’t be able to spend more than one night normally. Plus I’m not a fisherman, and I’m not as fanatical about hanging out at the beach like I used to. However, if I had to make the choice about being at the beach or in the mountains, I’d pick the beach every time.

Speaking of the beach, be sure to look for my episode on beach wine next week. I did hit the beach with some wines that would be good for hanging out with friends at the beach, or any kind of outdoor event.

As always, thanks for stopping by. Friend me up with the links above, hit the donate button to the right to send me a few ducats for wine, and leave comments below. Make sure to tell your friends to check out the site and the show.

L8r,

Mark

1337 Wine is proud to announce the upcoming release of Loki Pinot Noir. This will be the first of hopefully more wines to be released under the 1337 Wine label.

When asked why the name Loki for the wine Mark Fusco, owner of 1337 Wine, said, “the Pinot Noir grape is notoriously difficult to grow and due to the capricious nature of the grape I felt this would be an appropriate name for it.”

While not Mark’s first choice of varietal for a wine, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with Olof Vineyards out of Oregon. Oregon Pinot Noirs are Mark’s preferred style of American Pinot Noir. Olof uses the 413 Clone in their vineyards. Located in the Rogue Valley AVA in Oregon this clone does exceptionally well.

1413 cases of the wine will be produced at a price of $41 per bottle. Olof will be handling orders and shipping the wine for 1337 Wine.

For more information contact Mark on his website http://www.1337wine.com/

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V

APRIL FOOLS!!!!

Ok, so here are the clues. First Loki. C’mon that should be obvious . If not, Loki is the “Trickster” God in Norse mythology. I chose Pinot Noir because it is one of the ‘trickiest’ grapes to grow.

Next Olof Vineyards is really Fool Vineyards.

Clone 413? April 2013.

1413 cases. European dating of 4/1/13.

$41? Should be obvious.

Rogue Valley is a real Oregon AVA. I was lucky that there is an AVA in Oregon that evokes Loki and his trickster nature.

Now, don’t screw it up on Facebook and reveal this is an April Fool’s joke. Save those comments for here!

Now that you’re here, check out some of the past episode. No new show this week, but I am interviewing someone today in Austin for next week.

Repost and retweet

I can remember being in the checkout line deciding to buy 1337wine.com. I already had my own domain marz.me (I don’t post much on there anymore and it can be controversial), so like someone getting their first tattoo, I had to buy another domain. I ended up buying a few more variations later that year.

Shortly after buying the domain, my Father asked me what I was going to do with it. I had been thinking the same thing for a couple months. I had a Blogspot/Blogger site called Sommelier-in-Training a couple years earlier and never did anything with that. I was also a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, a Vayniac even. Had the t-shirts and wristbands to prove it. Since I knew that making a wine named 1337 was going to take a long time (especially since 337′s branding is almost how I would do mine), I decided that I really should do something with it. So video wine reviews seemed natural.

The early days of this blog were new territory for me. I had followed a lot of people on the ‘net so I was able to observe what they did. But I didn’t follow a lot of wine bloggers. So my site was not from a wine blogger turned vlogger perspective but a technology geek turned wine geek. I winged a lot of it. I still do a little bit as is evident in the glitches that happen from time-to-time. From the beginning I wanted to emulate Gary in a few things and be myself in others.

1. No edits. No retakes. I want my first impression to be real. Yes I’ve done a couple. And I do mean a couple in over 260 episodes. And those retakes were just redoing the intro and may first minute before any review happened.
2. Review wine I’ve never had before. It frustrates those who know me when I tell them I won’t review a wine I had at dinner. I’ve still held to this except for maybe one exception from what I can remember. Like Gary, I may have had the wine before, but a different vintage. And even then it’s only been a few times that I’ve had a wine from a different vintage.
3. Keep it real. If I don’t like it, say it. I try to be as nice as possible in panning a wine, but I won’t not say I don’t like something. I’ll also be honest if that style of wine isn’t a favorite and try to at least evaluate if the wine is well made and just not to my liking. I also don’t have any “lost” episodes where I hated a wine. If I didn’t like it, it got posted. I have one “lost” episode where the video from a Skype tasting never recorded from a Skype crash. All I have is the audio.
4. Don’t take myself seriously. That may hurt my cred but it’s who I am. Stuffy wine reviewers are snobs. I’m not a snob. At least not when it comes to wine
5. Be selective with advertising. I don’t have too many ads now. The site used to have a ton of affiliate ads (never made a dime from those BTW), but none were from wineries. And that’s where I try to stick to that. I don’t want to feel obligated to give a wine a good review because they paid me. Now, I do have some Palate Press ads, so whatever contracts they have will show on my site. And I don’t keep track of the specific ads.
6. While my show obviously is derived from Wine Library TV, it’s still my own. I do my own thing.

There are some other things about the site that I wanted to do. I wanted to be educational. Gary’s reviews, and other video wine reviewers out there made me feel like I was missing something. They “Rest of the Story” as Paul Harvey would say. Look him up you young whippersnappers. If I can find out more about the winery I try to give you something of that. Most reviewers seem to just say if they like the wine. People want to feel a connection with the wine so sharing something about the winery is important if I can. And not the bullshit marketing fluff. I try to avoid that or at least call them out on it.

That also lead me to Sommelier School. Part of the reason for the wine review videos was to get eyeballs to the site for Somm School. I don’t distribute Somm School so you have to come to the site to see it. This is the wine geeky part, and my video diary of my studying for the Intro Sommelier test. I was (and probably still) the only person out there putting out a 30-40 presentation and written report on wine regions. Every Week. For the most part. I got to 29 Lessons. Damn, that’s a lot of learning.

I had the year of no wine. 4/15/10-4/15/11. A year of no wine reviews for a wine review website is a death sentence. I kept it going. Sommelier School was the main vehicle. But even then, I started to fade. I stayed active on Twitter and Facebook. As my year was nearing an end I knew I needed to relaunch. So I changed things up. New look to the site, new intro, and a renewed passion. I came out swinging with new reviews. Rewarded someone who gave me support during that year with my first review in over a year – Sacre Bleu wine. I was afraid I wouldn’t like them, but I did.

And I even changed my Avatar to make those untasted bottles front and center. All the bottles in that pic had yet to be reviewed. I also made sure I included Texas wine in the pic. The pose even. Not meant to be dominating over wine, but showing a confidence in myself. Granted the original idea was to have me standing over the wine, but logistically it wasn’t feasible. I like how it turned out.

From April 2011 until now, I’ve continued to mature the show, and myself in the process. I’ve spent a lot of time, effort, and money (for someone that really doesn’t earn more than a couple hundred dollars from this – hint, hint – donate!) to improve the show. I think about it much of my waking hours. Some things are just not possible since I do work a “real job” and am not independently wealthy or have major backers. I’ve upgraded my lighting and sound. I’ve upgraded my computers. I’ve incorporated Green Screen. I was also the only wine person out there doing Skype until recently, and even then that other person doesn’t do Skype tastings. I stream live occasionally too (not the first to do this). My last acquisition for the show is the Canon VIXIA HF M500 I recently got to finally have a “real” camera.

Now it’s about to get real. The original title of this post was 2013 – The year 1337 Wine Gets Real. Then I realized that this may have people think I’m finally creating the wine itself. Not yet. That’s a very long way off still. 2013 will be yet another year of growth. I’ve been planning and scheming for a few days on some things, weeks on others, and months on still other stuff. What’s in store for next year? Here is a partial list:

1. Live tastings. As in, I’m somewhere with an audience doing a guided tasting while streaming live. I kind of did this last year with Ceci Barretto at her shop, but I really haven’t done it since. That was a great test to see how I would “perform” in front of people. Now it’s time to take it bigger.
2. More interviews. Besides Skype, I plan on hitting some Texas wineries this coming year. Texas is beginning to produce better wines that can compete on the larger stage and I’d like to help feature that. A trip to another winemaking area in the U.S. is a possibility depending on my schedule.
3. The return of Sommelier School. I don’t think I can do it weekly at first, but I can at least do it bi-weekly. I’m in a sommelier study group now. I feel like I’m about in the middle when it comes to knowledge. Some of the group definitely knows more than I do about a lot of things. Some are really knowledgeable about a few things but lack in other areas. So I feel like I’m in a good group. I’m not in over my head nor am I the smartest person in the room (which is how I typically view myself many times – sorry that’s my Ego).
4. New look to the website. While the current look is OK, I want something better. I’ve looked at a few themes over the year and most really don’t fit exactly what I want; a magazine style layout. I did find one that seems to let me do what I want, but I think it may require a lot of custom design that I’m not well versed at.
5. In the spirit of TWiT (This Week in Tech) and the other person to inspire me to do video, Leo Laporte, I’ll launch a regular internet video wine round table. The two names I’ve thought of are taken for URLs (I would have redirected them to here anyway). Earlier this year I had the grandiose idea of doing wine reviews for 24 hours straight. 4 wines from each time zone and review them when it’s between 1-2 PM local time. Well that idea faded for various reasons. But the idea of doing live tasting but not a regular review is still alive. I also would love to get various wine people (bloggers, writers, winemakers, importers, etc.) together on a regular basis and live stream it. Very much like TWiT. This really isn’t new for me, but I’ve mulled over this and with the new camera, I can finally do it right.

So there you have it. Pretty much what my plans are for 2013. Some these may actually happen, and other may prove to be impossible or no longer interest me. And not all of these are going to happen in the first few months but may be later in the year. The one thing I do know, is that I’m still pretty much the only one on the Internet doing a show like this. There are a few others that have “shows” that are nothing but overly produced fluff pieces with big money behind them hosted by out of work TV anchors or actors. And these people produce a few shows and then stop. They’re in it for the money. I’m in it for the passion. Only two people have more reviews than I do. And they stopped over a year ago. Last Man Tasting is what I call myself.

Yeah, I just whipped out my man parts for all the world to see there. And not to make light of Naked Wine Show or Wine Library TV. Gary has moved on. Not sure why the other show ended. And that’s annoying. It’s a friggin’ Internet video. You could at least make a goodbye video like Gary. Hate that with blogs that just stop too. No “final post.” The point is, everyone else ran away and hid when they didn’t become the next Gary Vaynerchuk. I’m still here doin’ my thang. And if they don’t like it? Then do it better.

My first really good night sleep on the trip has just happened. I left San Antonio on a Saturday and arrive in France Sunday morning. I don’t get to sleep until late that night and have to wake up early. Not really a big deal as far as my typical amount of sleep I get, but still. I check in with the world and then get ready for the world. I head down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Typical continental breakfast kind of thing. Cereals, pastries, juices, milk, coffee, etc. I sit down and have some cereal. Pretty much my typical breakfast. Funny thing is I never had any French Toast (my favorite breakfast food) the entire time

Anyway, once I’m finished it’s time to get on the road. I have two appointments today. One at Chateau Fonroque in Saint-Emilion and another at Chateau La Pointe in Pomerol. First on the agenda is Fonroque. I head to my car and enter the address into the GPS. During my time there, the addresses for these Chateaux many times were no more than a postal code and their name. I used a combination of the car’s GPS and the Google Maps app on my iPhone. The car would get me to the town, while the iPhone would get me to the actual Chateau if I didn’t have a street address.

The drive to Saint-Emilion is about an hour from Pauillac. I have to drive through the city of Bordeaux to get there. It’s a pleasant drive overall even with the construction along the way. It’s a pretty brisk morning and the skies are clear. I take pictures along the way while I’m driving, yeah I know. I finally arrive at Chateau Fonroque about 15 minutes before my appointment.

Entrance to Chateau Fonroque

Chateau Fonroque

I park in a grassy area and make my way to the chateau. I find the office and let them know I’m there. They contact Alain Moueix, the owner of the Chateau and let me know he will be with me shortly. I find a bench to sit on outside and only have to wait a short while for Alain to arrive and we introduce ourselves. We start with the vineyards. Chateau Fonroque is a Biodynamic property. Alain explains to me how this all works. While Biodynamic has the connotation of whacky hippies, Alain explains that they use it along with real science to manage the vineyards. While I don’t necessarily believe the whole Astrological side of this (I was an Astronomy major so I consider Astrology to be bunk), there are some valid farming techniques here.

Looking up the hill towards Chateau Moulin du Cadet (managed by Alain and ran by his sister)

Vineyard of Chateau Fonroque

This is really the second time I’ve actually been in a vineyard. The first time was at Spicewood Vineyards here in Texas. When I visited there we drove through much of their property and stopped occasionally to look at grapes. In this case I’m walking through Fonroque’s vineyards. While we really don’t walk up and down the rows we do stop in a few rows so he can show me the Merlot grapes. Being the right bank, Merlot dominates the blend of Chateau Fonroque.

Merlot grapes at Chateau Fonroque

More Merlot grapes from Chateau Fonroque

We head back to the winery to continue our tour.

Looking back at Chateau Fonroque from about mid-way up the hill.

Just like most of the other tours we start from where the grapes enter the winery, then proceed through the fermentation tanks, barrel room, and then we end at our tasting area. Pics below.

Destemmer at Chateau Fonroque

Destemmer at Chateau Fonroque

Fermentation tanks at Chateau Fonroque

Top of the fermentation tanks at at Chateau Fonroque. Alain is giving a tour to a photojournalist also.

This is a small barrel room at Chateau Fonroque. Barrels here are mainly “show” barrels. However, these barrels do contain wine aging.

Our tasting area at Chateau Fonroque

We arrive at the tasting area. It’s a beautiful room. Lots of concrete and marble. Great for recording sound for an interview using the on-camera mic of a Kodak Zi8 We are also situated right next to the destemmer. It is behind me in the picture I took above. We get situated and taste two wines. Unfortunately I don’t remember the exact ones and I didn’t take individual pics of them We conduct the tasting and one thing to remember about Alain is he is very soft spoken. I’m loud and can at least partially drown out the machinery outside. Alain? Not so much. Of course I don’t realize this until after I get back to the hotel. Another lesson.

You can watch our tasting here!

After our tasting, Alain invites me to stay for lunch. And not just any lunch, but lunch with the entire staff. We head to a large building that has a kitchen and large dining hall. I’m floored. The hospitality is awesome. It confirms to me that outside of Paris, the French are very hospitable. And even then, I think I encountered one rude Parisian – the conductor from my first day. We enjoy stew, cheeses, bread, and of course wine. We have the 2007 Chateau Fonroque and the 2009 Chateau Moulin de Cadet.

There are two long tables in the room and I share it with Alain, his assistant, and a few other guests there specifically for lunch and business. Two of them are from a trading company out of Hong Kong. We briefly discuss the growing Bordeaux business in China. The owner of the company tells me he’s been visiting Bordeaux since the 70s, so he’s no stranger to the area, nor to Fonroque. One of the highlights of lunch was the harvester who was dressed at the Statue of Liberty. I asked if it was in honor of an American visiting. Actually, no, she just dressing in different costumes during harvest. I should have gotten a picture with her!

2009 Chateau Moulin du Cadet. Alain Moueix is in the background

2009 Chateau Fonroque. Notice this is the table wine for lunch and we are drinking out of “rocks” glasses. Grand Cru Classe wines(Cadet is also GCC) as a table wine? Yes, Please. Just another day in paradise

After lunch another visitor came by and he also gave her a mini tour. She was a photojournalist from Paris doing a story on them. I hung around for a bit and shot a few more pictures.

The “Lab” at Chateau Fonroque. They are testing the wine.

More destemmer action at Chateau Fonroque.

Alain showing us a ladybug. These are considered good luck during harvest.

Chateau La Pointe

After lunch and the extra bit of tour I headed to my next destination. No, it wasn’t Ausone or Cheval Blanc.  I couldn’t get appointments with them. I was headed to Pomerol. No, not Pétrus or Le Pin. Same thing. But that’s OK. I was perfectly happy with my visit at Fonroque (and will go back again next time I visit Bordeaux) and perfectly happy with the next destination, Chateau La Pointe. Another awesome visit. I made the short drive of about 10 minutes to La Pointe. Another really nice looking chateau (they knew how to build these places back then).

I was greeted  by Eric Monneret the General Manager of La Pointe. We also head to the vineyards. This is where the name for the Chateau is thought to be derived. The vineyards come to a point when viewed on a map. There is also a convergence in soils here which Eric coves with me. I get to check out some more Merlot, but not just look at it, but also taste it.

Vineyards at Chateau La Pointe

Vineyards at Chateau La Pointe

Merlot at Chateau La Pointe

Merlot at Chateau La Pointe

After the vineyards we follow the path of the grapes. We head over to the staff working the destemmer. This is outside like at Fonroque but they have a raised platform for work from too.

Destemmer at La Pointe

Destemmer at La Pointe

Destemmer at La Pointe

Destemmer at La Pointe

We then tour the fermentation tanks and barrel room.

Fermentation tanks at La Pointe

Fermentation tanks at La Pointe

Barrel room at La Pointe

Barrel room at La Pointe waiting for new barrels

We then head to the tasting room in an upstairs room of the Chateau. Again a beautiful room with lots of surfaces conducive to echoes We set up and begin tasting. We taste two wines. The first one was prior to Generali France, an insurance company, buying the property, and then one after the purchase.

2005 Chateau La Pointe

2009 Chateau La Pointe

See the tasting here!

After the tasting I thank Eric and head out. It’s sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 and I know I have at least a 1 hour drive back to Pauillac. I’m undecided as to if I should eat in Pomerol or in Pauillac. I asked Eric for some recommendations but ultimately I head back to Pauillac.  I take a few more pics on the way back.

Unknown Pomerol Chateau.

Almost sunset in Pomerol

Yep, I’m in Pomerol!

Chateau Taillefer – Pomerol

Chateau Taillefer – Pomerol

I head back to Pauillac after taking these pics. I get through Bordeaux during rush hour and head up the main road to Pauillac. Along the way there are areas where cars can pull over. Not exactly like rest stops here in the States, but more like a shoulder area. I’m pretty tired during the drive and feeling sleepy. I decide to pull over in one of these spots and take a 15 minute nap. After that nap I feel pretty refreshed. I’m not sure if that’s what these things are for, but I was glad it was there. I had seen other cars pulled over so I’m guessing that they are so people can pull over and phone, text, or rest.

I get back to Pauillac and drop off my stuff in my room. I head over to another restaurant on the main street in Pauillac. It’s pretty dead compared to the one I went to the night before. I’m only one of a couple guests there. I can’t remember exactly what I ordered but I did get a bottle of Chateau Léoville Barton (Saint-Julien) Second Vin. Léoville Barton is a Second Growth of Bordeaux. Yeah, Life. Is. Good.

Second Vin from Chateau Leoville Barton

Stay tuned for the next posting from Bordeaux. Another special day for some special reasons.

Monday morning. 7AM. I wake up refreshed. Not an ounce of jet lag. No, really. I don’t get that at all. But then again, I have a weird body clock. I’m lucky to sleep more than 5 hours at a time. This time I think I slept 6 hours. Yes, I set an alarm, but it wasn’t like I felt like I needed to hit snooze 20 times.

I get cleaned up. The shower is barely big enough for me. I go to the lobby of the hotel to grab breakfast. The exact same guy is there that checked me in 9 hours earlier. I ask him if he ever sleeps. He just smiles back. He shows me the area where I can get breakfast. I know I took a picture of it, but I don’t really remember what I had. Probably some cereal and a croissant. Oh and Nutella. This stuff is amazing. Yeah, I know. How can I be Italian and have never had it. Well I just fixed that.

I gather my luggage and walk to the rental car building. It’s open! All the companies share the same little temporary classroom building. You know, those buildings that they use when the school has too many students? Never seen them? Not missing anything. Same thing as a construction temporary building.

I get there and hope they still have my car. Remember, I’m concerned about it being automatic. I know they’ll have a car for me. I just want that car. Yes, they do. The car is pre-paid anyway. Of course I don’t get any money off for not picking it up the day before. Again I have to walk to where they have their garage. I haven’t done this much walking since living in Chicago!

Pic of the Car I had in Bordeaux

The Dashboard

Finally get to my car. It’s pimp. HUD, full roof sunroof, bluetooth, GPS, etc. The only thing it won’t do is play my music from my iPhone. Ain’t no thang. I get myself oriented with the car and enter in my hotel in Pauillac. I exit the garage on my way.

While the GPS is great and all, I do get a bit lost. Luckily I can set the language to English. Very helpful for turn-by-turn. In trying to get to the main road I do run a stop sign by accident and get a bit turned around. See, that’s why I didn’t want stick shift.

I eventually find some kind of radio station to listen to, have the sun roof open all the way. By the way, a sun roof is not the same thing as a moon roof. A sun roof is a glass roof, where a moon roof is the same, but the actual glass roof retracts. No matter, this is pretty cool. I have this thing open every time I’m in the car. I head to Pauillac.

Full length Sunroof

Me and my Sunroof

The drive is cool. I’m probably about 30 minutes north of Bordeaux itself when it finally hits me. I’m in fucking Bordeaux. France. About to spend the next few days in some of the best wine country in the world. The World. I’m smiling. The drive is pretty good. Traffic circles all over the place. It’s kind of funny, because the GPS will say something like, “take the 2nd exit and continue on…” I did travel around an entire traffic circle or two during my stay there.

Hotel Le Vignoble and de France et d’Angleterre. Two hotels in one. Vignoble is in the back and the more modern part.

I finally arrive in Pauillac. I had called the hotel the day before to explain I was running late. But I had expected to get there before Midnight the night before. When I realized I wasn’t going to get there till Monday I called them back. They were very accommodating. I get the the hotel. I’m staying in the more modern wing. It’s nicer with bigger rooms. The room is basically the same size as an American hotel room which is nice. I unpack and get settled.

I check my calendar to see where my 1st appointment of the day is. Somehow I thought I had two appointments in the afternoon. Nope, I had already missed my first one in the morning. I quickly e-mail the first appointment to apologize and briefly explain what happened. I get a reply later that day and they were super cool about it. They let me know what other days and times they could see me. Unfortunately those all conflicted with my other appointments. And Monday was the only day I would be in the area anyway. This was Chateau Pichon-Longueville, a 2nd Growth chateau. Grrr. I was going to miss this.

Once I figured this out, I had lunch at the hotel. I had a beef dish that was really nice. But it was kind of funny. When I was ordering my meat, I really was at a loss on how to order it. Over time I’ve gone from ordering meat medium well to medium rare. And I actually like it medium rare plus. So I’m trying to order my steak medium rare but I”m not sure exactly how to tell my server how I want it. Do they use the same terms in Europe? I wing it. It comes out and I’ve never seen a steak cut this way. It was a triangle of beef.

At first it seemed like it was cooked perfectly, but that was the edge. The server came by to ask how everything was, and I did ask for the steak to be cooked a little bit longer. It came out shortly just right.. I then headed to my actual afternoon appointment with Philippe Blanc of Chateau Beychevelle in St. Julien. It’s literally only a couple miles from the hotel. I think it was a 10 minute drive.

I arrive and they are in the middle of harvest. September can be a really bad month to visit Bordeaux or a really great month to visit. It’s harvest time. Some places won’t see anyone not named Robert Parker. Others are able to accommodate tourists. I’m not a tourist so I fall in a kind of in between category. I’m asking to meet the owner or winemaker for a private tour and tasting. Depending on the property, they can or cannot do this. All of the First Growths declined. Amazingly 3 or 4 of them were “under construction” and weren’t taking any visitors. The other one or two just flat out said they cannot see me because of harvest. I stopped by a couple of these First Growths to take some pictures. They really had construction going on.

Anyway, I arrive at Beychevelle. They have a visitor center and I introduce myself to the person there. He contacts Philippe and I’m told he’ll be with me shortly. I maybe wait about 10 minutes. During that time I’m looking at the information in the visitor center. A couple comes in and they are waiting for a tourist tour. Yeah, I’ll admit, I felt a bit special because I was waiting on the winemaker for a private tour and tasting.

Philippe takes me through the the Chateau. By the way, this thing is huge. I don’t see the entire thing, just the winemaking part. We start where the grapes arrive from the vineyard and got through the entire line.

Destemming machine (they were testing two different ones), the conveyor for manual inspection, the crusher, the vats for fermentation, the barrel room, and finally a tasting room.

1 of the destemming machines being tried out. Notice the amount of people needed to operate. This is because it’s not working properly. There are a group of gentlemen in the background trying to fix it.

The 2nd destemming machine being tried out. Notice only 1 person using it. This machine was working properly.

Stainless steel fermentation tanks

I took pictures at every step. They have stainless steel and concrete tanks for fermentation.

Concrete fermentation tanks

One of the things I learned is that each of the concrete tanks has a different capacity. It’s not like a stainless steel tank where every tank is uniform.

Old wooden fermentation barrel.

On the wall where they ferment the wine in concrete tanks there is a old fermentation barrel. this thing is huge and has their logo on it.

We get to the tasting area and I set up. There’s a lot of echo in the room as it’s all marble and tile. I’m a bit worried about the sound since I’m only using the camera’s microphone. I haven’t gotten all sophisticated yet. Now it would be different.

Grand Vin Chateau Beychevelle

Second Vin Chateau Beychevelle

We do our tasting. Before I went to Bordeaux I did a decent amount of research. One of the people I reached out to was a gentleman named John C. Dvorak. He is a technology writer that I’ve followed on TechTV, Leo Laporte’s This Week in Tech (TWiT) podcast, and also No Agenda. John is a wine expert that I’d love to interview sometime. Hell, I want to drink some wine with him and be on TWiT! My show is inspired by both Gary Vaynerchuck (obviously) and Leo Laporte. One big piece of advice John gave me was to make sure I spit during these visits. The Bordelais would be very insulted if I didn’t spit. Well that’s just fine by me since I didn’t want to be diving in France drunk. While we didn’t have a spit bucket for our tasting, we did have a sink behind us. And we actually discussed spitting prior to starting the interview.

The wines were really great. Honestly, every wine I had the entire trip, especially at the Chateaux, where amazing. We had a great time going though the wines and talking about the Chateau. Click here for that episode.

The grounds are immaculate. It’s what Americans think of when they think about a French Chateau. Check out a few of the pics I took.

Chateau Beychevelle

Chateau Beychevelle

Chateau Beychevelle

From Chateau Beychevelle looking East towards the Gironde Estuary.

With the tour and tasting over, it was time to head back to the hotel. I unloaded my stuff and relaxed for a bit. Then it was time for dinner. I walked about a half block to one of the restaurants on the same street as the hotel. Had a simple pasta dish and of course wine.

One thing about France was the ease at which you can get half bottles of wine. Almost every restaurant had at least a couple selections of half bottles. When I go out here in the States, if I can get a half bottle I do. It’s good on the wallet and you don’t have to worry about getting a DUI/DWI. If not I get a full bottle and drink half there and the rest later.

Once I was done with dinner I headed back to my room. I was a bit tired and ready to relax. Exploring Pauillac will have to wait another day.

I’m leaving on a jet plane…..

All charged up and ready to go to France, I load up the car and head to the airport. I’ve got a backpack chock full of electronics and 2 pieces of luggage one of which has another bag in it. I’ve got all of my paperwork too. Passport and all the receipts, confirmations, and other assorted pieces of paper for the week.

I get to the off-site parking site where I’ll be transported to the airport and my car will be protected from the elements with covered parking. Hop the shuttle to the airport with anticipation of my first international trip. To say I’m excited is an understatement at this point. Nervous? Not really. I’ve travelled all over the U.S. by myself before. Hell, I’ve moved myself 3 times across country. Twice to cities where I didn’t even know a soul. That takes cajones. A trip to France? No problem. I can’t tell you how many people were in awe and shock that I would attempt this by myself. Especially this being my first time.

First leg of the trip is from San Antonio to Houston. Uneventful. Land make the transfer to the international flight with ease. Especially since the Continental staff have me and a couple other people board one of their carts since I have to go to the International Terminal.

I know IAH (I mean George Bush) pretty well. I used to work for TV Guide. Ok actually Murdoch Magazines Distribution Division. Yeah, that Murdoch. I’ve actually worked for him twice. Anyway, I used to make a weekly visit to the airport to check the newsstands to make sure the magazines we handled were out. We did over 70 titles by the time I had left the company. They have an underground rail system. Pretty cool.

Time to board the flight to France. I have a window seat by choice. I love window seats. Yeah, 75% of this flight is going to be at night, but still. The only problem with window seats, not much room for your feet under the seat in front of you. The curvature of the fuselage means it’s a bit uncomfortable. Luckily there is an empty seat between me and my row-mate.

I get strapped in and ready to go. I know the flight attendant drill pretty well. But they don’t let you listen to music anymore. They used to when it was just a tape player or CD player. Not anymore. Anyway, we get through all of that and climb over the rain clouds. In the seat back they have video screens. For the next 10 hours I’m kinda glued to the flight path. OK, maybe not the entire flight, but I find it fascinating. I’m weird like that. They have all the stats of the flight, plus the flight path.

I’m plugged in listening to my iPhone and also have some reading material. I try to catch some Zzzzz when I can, but I’m never one to sleep on planes much. I even bought an inflatable pillow. Not that comfortable.

As we get closer to France the sun is rising. Not a whole lot to see with all the clouds, but I start to see land and look at the map to see where we are at. Landing in Paris was smooth. I get through Customs like I was landing anywhere in the U.S. I mean, yeah, some guy checked my Passport, but there wasn’t any hugely long lines. I think they have a lot of different checkpoints to make things smoother.

So now I need to get some money exchanged. I’d probably do it differently next time where I exchange the majority of my money to Euros before leaving, but I didn’t really think about it. I get the money exchanged. I sign up for some kind of deal where I keep the same rate and don’t have to pay a fee when I leave. At least that’s how I remember it. Right now it’s 9/14/12 and I left for France almost exactly a year ago, so I may not remember all the small details.

With Euros in hand I fetch my luggage. Grab a cart and head over to where the train platform is at the airport. I go to the ticket counter and retrieve my pre-paid ticket. This is pretty much a necessity. Some of these trains sell out. Especially the one I booked. The people at the counter understand enough English so that I can get my ticket. Now I get to wait for another 3 hours. I could have booked the earlier train, but I didn’t know how long it would take to get through customs, retrieve my luggage, and get to the platform. Even so, I wouldn’t risk it if I made the trip again.

I find a spot in the terminal to hole up and get online. At first there wasn’t anywhere with power. They have an area for people to plug in their laptops and such, but every spot was taken. I get some snacks and wait. And wait. And wait. And hear the non-stop 3-tone signal for every announcement. After about and hour, I realize it’s the same 3 notes as Soulja Boy. No, really. It’s this steel drum kind of sound and it’s the exact same 3 notes in that song. Drove me crazy.

Time to catch the train. I get to the platform. I’m a pro at trains/subways. I know that typically the first and last cars are the ones to go to when it’s busy. Yeah I have an assigned seat, but I also know that it’s a pain to get on in the middle. I head to one end of the platform where I think the front of the train will be.

The train arrives finally. It’s about 5-10 minutes late. Now I’m lost in this train thing. I have an assigned seat, but how the hell do I figure out what car to get on? The outside of the train is no help from what I can tell. So I get on a car. The first car. I’m on it for maybe 30 seconds when I realize that those numbers on the outside of the train mean something. 1 and 2. As is 1st and 2nd Class. I have a 1st Class ticket. Which means assigned seating. 2nd Class is just find a seat. The number outside my train is “2.” I grab my luggage and run the entire length of the platform to the first car I see with a “1” on it. I’m stepping on when the Conductor stops me.

“You’re late. You can’t come on.”

I have probably the most shocked look on my face. I look at the Conductor on the platform all confused. She looks at me and him and I sense she thinks he’s kidding. I look back at him.

“You’re late.”

I reply is the most melodramatic way I’ve probably ever spoken, “But I HAVE to get to Bordeaux! I have a ticket!” All breathy even.

“No, You’re late.”

In my head I’m thinking, “No MF, YOU’RE LATE! I’ve been waiting for 3 hours on your ass and you’re going to let me on.” Yeah, in my head. But I don’t want to be the “Ugly American.” Especially in Paris where they have a reputation of disliking Americans. I look at him with what was probably the saddest eyes I’ve ever had and turn around. I’m devastated. I don’t know what to do. I head back upstairs to start trying to figure out how I’m going to get to Bordeaux.

I look at the next train. It’s 3 or 4 more hours. I then try to contact the rental car company. All I get is failure on the phone. I’ve set up the phone in advance with AT&T to be able to make phone calls in France. All I get is a recording in French of course. And I can’t figure out what it is. I can stumble through French if I’m reading it. Not so much listening to it. I call AT&T and they tell me I’m good to go, so I call again. No change. Now I’m concerned that this is a recording from the rental car company saying they are closed.

I go back to the ticket counter for the train. I stand in line and try to see if I can exchange my ticket. Nope. Well, yes if I had gone back to them immediately, but I waited too long. And it was probably an hour so it wasn’t like I waited 15 minutes.

It’s at this point I walk away dejected. I’ve been traveling for almost 20 hours at this point. I’m so close to booking the next flight back home. No, seriously. It’s everything I could be not to just sit down and cry. And I don’t do that. I’m thousands of miles away from home, and I’m finally scared. I’m really scared. I don’t know what to do. Yes, I have a cousin in Paris whom I never knew about until a couple months prior, but do I sit there and call her up and say, “Hey, can I crash at your place tonight?” I’m alone and I never feel alone. I’m in a foreign country where I can barely understand the language that I was supposed to learn months ago. I’m very self-reliant. I’ve dealt with a lot of crap over the years and I’ve always had that cat-like ability to land on my feet. This time I wasn’t so sure.

I’m looking at my options of staying in Paris until the morning, booking another train, driving to Bordeaux, or fly back to San Antonio. After I calm down a bit I stop thinking about going home. Dammit, I’ve been looking forward to this trip for years. I remember that I always come out ahead. I’ve made appointments with some great Chateaux. I’ve talked about this to everyone. It would be a failure to go home.

I go back to the train ticket counter ask the guy to translate the message from my phone call. He tells me it’s a message about not being able to contact the number. Great. Then he tells me that I could just go to the rental car company’s counter in the airport and talk to them. Well, duh, why didn’t I think of that!

Time to lug all my stuff across the airport to their counter. I get there and start explaining my situation. The girl there thinks I’m trying to rent a car with an automatic transmission to drive from Paris to Bordeaux. Luckily a colleague of hers figures out that I’m just asking if the place in Bordeaux will be open since I won’t be getting there until 9 PM and confirm that my car with automatic transmission will be available still. You see, everyone in Europe drive manual. Still. In the 21st Century. I have nothing against stick shift. I just think that I shouldn’t have to work to drive and it’s only something that should be in sporty cars. And the last thing I need in a foreign country is to worry about shifting and paying attention to the street signs.

My concern is that on Eurocar’s website, to pick up the car after 6 or 7 requires an extra payment. I was scheduled to be in Bordeaux at 4PM. This is Sunday. I know how smaller cities/towns work. After about 6 the sidewalks are rolled up on a Sunday. They assure me everything will be OK, and that they close at midnight.

OK, I decide that I will catch the next train to Bordeaux. My other option was to get a room at the Sheraton which is literally where the train station part of the airport is and catch the first train in the morning. That will get me there too late so I head back to the train ticket counter and buy another ticket.

This time I know what I’m doing. I get on the right set of cars and find my seat. I’m set. I can relax. Bordeaux in 5 hours. I’m on the laptop catching up, e-mailing, tweeting, etc. They have wifi on the train which is nice. I eventually strike up a conversation with the gentleman next to me. He’s a salesman from what I remember on his way to a town just north of Bordeaux. He tells me of a great restaurant also north of Bordeaux. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make it there. Also, during my train ride to Bordeaux, I get a tweet from Sebastien of Chateau du Petite Thouars in the Loire Valley. This was after mentioning I was passing through Tours in the heart of the Loire Valley. I let him know I can’t stop on the way down, but I’m heading back to Paris in a few days. He and his girlfriend, D’Arcy live in Paris most of the time and they’d love to take me to dinner in Paris when I get back there. Sweet!

I arrive in Bordeaux. Lost again. Have no idea where to get my rental car. I eventually figure out where to go. I get to the building next to the train station and it’s dark. Closed. OK, I see a bunch of rental cars in the parking lot here and an attendant in a shack. I go there and ask him how I get my car. This is the first person that I run into that has a hard time with English, which is a bit funny since the British controlled Bordeaux for a while. He understands enough, but it’s a struggle. He tells me to go to the information booth in the train station.

Ugh. I go back there. I find the information booth eventually and talk to two gentlemen there. I explain my situation. They basically look at each other and let me know they’re really not sure what the answer to my dilemma is. They direct me to the Hotel California across the street from the station with the promise that I could get my car there or at least get an answer. YES! So maybe that’s the after-hours place.

I walk in to Hotel California. Yes, the Eagles song is running through my head. I don’t really believe I’ll get my car, but I’m hopeful. I walk in. This is around 10PM at this point. I ask the guy at the counter about my car. Confusion. Feck. I explain my situation to him. He’s sympathetic to my situation, but he can’t help me and doesn’t know why the information booth guys sent me there to get a car. Another moment of weakness. Very brief moment.

At this point I ask if there is “any room at the inn.” Not literally, but I felt like saying just like that. He lets me know that yes he has a room. And he has one where I don’t have to climb any stairs. Thank you, Jesus! At some point I’ve told him I’ve been traveling for 26 hours. I’m sure it was very evident anyway. It’s a room just off their lobby. I pay the rate; around 60€ if I remember right. He takes me to my room. It’s tiny. Like dorm room tiny. Actually half a dorm room. I’ve heard that the hotel rooms in Europe in general are small, but damn. This is a multi-story house that was converted into a hotel.

I get situated in the room. Unpack only what I need for the next day and my laptop. I Skype my parents. I have this MiFi unit that proves to be invaluable for the trip. While the hotel does have WiFi, it’s not that great, so I use the MiFi. It’s early evening in San Antonio and my parents are happy to see me and I tell them everything that happened. I finish the call and head to a restaurant I saw on the way.

Even though it’s after 10 on a Sunday night, there’s a lot of activity around the train station with bars and restaurants. I find one and order some food. In any other situation I’d probably rate it as average, but right now, it’s friggin’ awesome. I eat, head back to the hotel careful to avoid the drunk dudes on the way, and fall asleep.

26 hours later I can finally sleep in a bed with the knowledge that everything will be right in the world a few hours later. I’m in fucking Bordeaux.

A few links from today’s post:

Rail Europe – This is where I bought my train tickets. You can’t book more than about 9-10 weeks in advance.

Europcar – Basically the biggest car rental company in Europe. Prices seemed to be the best, especially for an automatic transmission

Hotel California – Yes, they have a website. No, my room wasn’t nearly as roomy as the one pictured, but, then again, I just needed a place to sleep for a few hours. If you look at their gallery, the little door to the back of the lobby area is where my room is. There is also a picture of the garden area with a walkway on the left. That was where my room was.

So I don’t post a million twitter status updates here about SOPA, OK maybe only a couple, I’ll consolidate it here. SOPA is bad for websites. Especially people like me who are small. One of the issues here is that someone could post a comment to your site that contains copyrighted material and your hosting company could get a take down notice and you’re screwed.

Now, for me, all comments on my site (the few that are actually there) are moderated. I approve each one. Not to censor them, but to prevent spam. As long as it’s not a spam comment I’ll approve it. Even if it’s critical of the review or me. It sparks discussion and improves the site.

However, I also distribute my videos to multiple platforms and I can’t always control what’s posted there, so I could conceivably lose a lot from YouTube, or Daily Motion, or any number of other video hosting places getting a take down notice for a comment.

Or even just being accused of copyright infringement can trigger this. My videos are CC (Creative Commons). The music and sound effects I use is either music I’ve purchased for my use or is royalty-free, except for one sound effect that I’ve used maybe twice (Price is Right Sad Horns for a really low score). So I’m pretty safe from any issues. HOWEVER all it takes is one person to accuse me of infringement and my hosting company, Zippy Kid, would have to block my site until I could be proven innocent. This is the exact opposite of how our legal system works.

So what prompted this? GoDaddy’s 100% support of SOPA. If you’re with GoDaddy as a registrar and don’t support SOPA, then find someone else. I’m already looking. Here is a blog post from one of my Twitter followers that talks about it and gives suggestions of places that even have discount codes to transfer your domains. Kurteng.com.

1&1 is another company I’m looking at and I believe it was suggested to me some time ago when I last thought about transferring my domains. However, I’ve been reading some disturbing customer complaints about them. In any case, here is their Facebook posting also against SOPA – 1and1 Facebook Page.

No matter which company I choose, their position on SOPA will be a deciding factor.

****UPDATE**** 12/23/11 @ 23:00

Reports have been confirmed that GoDaddy has withdrawn support for both SOPA and the Protect IP Act (the Senate version). While this is good news, this may not be enough for me to stay with GoDaddy. I’m exploring my options for a new registrar.

Now that I got my travel arrangements made, I needed to do some more planning. Going to Bordeaux during harvest can be an exercise in frustration to say the least. First you need to pare down what Chateau you want to visit from a list of over 8,000. While I didn’t just look at the entire list, I did do some research first.

Of course, I sent requests to all of the 1st Growth Chateaux from the 1855 Classification. And I got 5 very nice rejection letters. All of them mentioned not having time during harvest and a few were doing construction (which I did see first-hand when I drove by). I continued to use the 1855 Classification as my guide. I also looked at the Grand Cru Classes of Saint Emilion and also targeted the top Chateau in Pomerol, which doesn’t have a classification system. I continued to get rejections letters; actually e-mails. Not to be discouraged, I continued to send e-mails and faxes to various Chateaux. Even while getting polite “No” replies, I was starting to get some “Yes” replies.

One thing to remember here, is planning this out months in advance. Even without harvest, I needed to be able to plan which day I was going to be in what part of Bordeaux. It’s like staying in San Antonio and traveling to Fredericksburg, Austin, Seguin, and well, there really aren’t too many larger towns south of San Antonio but I’ll use Pearsall since I know someone from there. So basically I’m talking hundreds of square miles.

Once I started getting general “Yes” replies I began getting specific as to dates and times. With a couple Chateaux already scheduled the rest would start falling in line. My goal was 2 in a day; 3 if I could do it. Have a morning appointment, have a leisurely lunch, then have an afternoon appointment. I accomplished that goal.

During the course of scheduling these Chateaux, I knew there were 2 I HAD to see. One was Chateau Doisy-Vedrines in Barsac, and the other was Chateau Petit Puch in Entre du Mers. I’ll talk about the why during those posts, but suffice to say they had certain special meanings for me.

So I mentioned faxing these Chateaux. I didn’t just use the fax machine at the house to dial long distance. I found a service that will fax a document for you. It was very reasonable. It’s called Pam Fax. It’s basically the only good choice out there. Multi-platform for its software. 3 month trial. Very easy to use. You can even get a return fax number assigned to your account it you want.

So, you may ask, “Mark, it’s 2011 don’t these Chateaux have e-mail? Who uses fax machines anymore?” Well, a lot of business still fax. When you visit these Chateaux’s websites (if they have one) many times they only have an address (more on that in another post), phone number, and fax number. No contact e-mail. So the only way to contact them initially is a phone call or fax. Now once I did fax I would get a reply via e-mail. So that made further communication easier. My guess is that since some of these places have very limited resources, they want to only deal with people that are truly interested in contacting them.

Once I had my Chateaux lined up I needed to figure a few more things out. What was I going to need for traveling. I sat down and really started thinking what exactly I needed to bring with me. Most of that was electronics, but also clothing, camera accessories, luggage, how I’m going to transport wine back with me, etc.

First let’s talk about electronics. Besides needing an adapter, what else would I need? Power strip? Do my electronics handle 220v on their own? For the most part, modern electronics can handle both American and European voltages. However, first check each piece of electronics. Some of then will say 110~220v on the unit itself. If not, check the manual; you did keep it right? Can’t find the manual, then Google it. Luckily all of my electronics were good to go. What about an adapter?

This is where I started getting confused. You see, I wasn’t sure about the whole “can my electronics handle 220v” thing yet. I was looking for an adapter that also converted to 110v. Once I realized that all my electronics were able to handle 220v, I was fine. I went to where I’m comfortable shopping, Amazon, for these things. No one product is necessarily better than the other, but I went with the Belkin F8E449 Universal AC Travel Adapter. First thing to realize is that this won’t convert power. So if your piece of electronics won’t handle European voltages, you need to look for one that will convert power to 110v. Otherwise, you’ll fry your equipment. So getting that is all well and good, but I have multiple things to plug in. I have power strips laying around the house, but they’re a bit bulky. I found this travel power strip that perfectly fit the bill. Outlets To Go Power Strip with USB – Black. 3 outlets, a USB plug, and the cord is compact. Combined with the adapter plug it does what I need.

For USB expansion I had bought this little gizmo a couple months before making all the travel plans knowing I’d need something like it. I actually use it on my desktop computer too so it is more than just a travel piece. Belkin USB 2.0 4-Port Ultra-Mini Hub (F5U407)

What else do I need? A passport wallet might be nice. Since basically you need your passport to go anywhere, I wanted some way to conveniently carry it. Instead of by itself I opted for a wallet. Again, there are tons of options here. The one thing I wanted above all else is RFID protection. Call it the paranoid android in me, but I really don’t need some random dude stealing my info. I decided on this product – RFID Blocking Executive Organizer Passport Case. While it’s a bit of overkill on size, it works. I ALWAYS put it in a front pocket as it is pretty big and easily could be lifted out of my back pocket. Since I didn’t know exactly how much room I needed, I made sure I had enough. There are a couple smaller ones about $10 cheaper that should be fine.

Next I need to figure out how much wine I can bring back. This is tricky as each state has different regulations. In Texas you can bring back 1 gallon of distilled spirits, 3 gallons (15 750ml bottles) of wine, AND 24 12-ounce bottles of beer in a 30-day period. Your state may have different regulations. Now here’s one thing that can be a bit confusing as far as the TTB (The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) and Customs. There is a 3% duty rate. According to the TTB you can bring back 1L of alcohol duty free as long as it’s under a certain value. TTB says that you pay the duty upon entry. TABC also says there’s a cost to bring in alcohol (even from another state).

NO ONE asked me to pay anything. I didn’t hide what I brought in. I declared the exact amount and had the receipts ready. And I was ready to pay. The Customs officer asked me about my declaration and I told him 15 750ml bottles of wine with a smile. He smiled back knowing I knew that was 2.97 or so gallons of wine. And that was it. I didn’t even think about paying it till now. Guess I should call someone, eh? Here are the links to TTB and Customs:

TTB – Various State ABC agencies – You’ll need to search them to find the limits. For TABC I just entered “how much alcohol can I bring back.”

U.S. Customs – This is their general info page for reentry to the country.

So you figure out how much your state allows you to bring back, how do you get it back? Well this is where the internet really failed me for a long time, or I was just too stupid. I had talked with a friend of mine about the trip and his wife had something that I could put in my luggage to help with packing the wine. We never got to meet before my trip. As I was getting closer and closer to leaving I kept searching for something to protect the bottles. I kept getting a bunch of cardboard stuff. Boxes, or packaging I could use. None of it was really what I needed. It was more for shipping to someone. Somewhere along the line I changed up how I was searching and I came up with what is called the Wine Skin Leak Proof Traveler. I bought it at The Container Store (did store pickup). You can also get it at Amazon (from my storefront of course ) – Wine Skin Leak Proof Traveler (Set of 2). I’ve also found this product that I may use in the future along with the Wine Skins when I need more than 12 bottles – Bellino Bottle Limo. After seeing wine reps with special luggage at a tasting I went to right after the trip I figured out there had to be something I could buy. This would have made things soooo much easier.

Now I needed to upgrade my digital camera. The one I’ve had for years is about as good as my iPhone 3Gs. What’s really cool about it is it’s super compact. But it lacks some features that I felt I was going to need like optical zoom. I had been looking at a couple of different cameras the past couple years and was pretty much set on the Canon S90 or S95. Lots of features. But the zoom was lacking. I found the Canon PowerShot SX230HS 12.1 MP Digital Camera with HS SYSTEM and DIGIC 4 Image Processor (Black) and decided it was the camera. 14X optical zoom? And cheaper than the S95? Yes, please. I also got a couple of accessories. The Lenmar DLC5L Lithium-ion Digital Camera/Camcorder Battery Equivalent to the Canon NB-5L Battery for a backup battery, and the Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 10 Flash Memory Card TS16GSDHC10E for storage. I also got a case at Best Buy called the Lowepro – Tahoe 30 Digital Camera Bag – Black – No Amazon link for this. At first I thought it was going to be too big, but it was just right. Room for the camera and the extra battery.

Being the privacy advocate that I am (yes, I know it’s ironic being as public as I am), I didn’t want others in the hotels or other wi-fi hot spots snooping in on me. While making sure you use https:// as much as possible, there are still times where your traffic can be snooped. So I made sure I set up my VPN account. I’ve got a couple. One for my iOS devices – VPN Express and Ace VPN for my laptop. For my laptop I also installed Tunnelblick. This allows Ace VPN to use Open VPN so that Ace VPN can connect. I won’t go through all the technical stuff, but a VPN basically creates an encrypted tunnel from your computer/device to the site you are connecting to. This tunnel is impenetrable. It’s best to set this up BEFORE you go. One caveat is that it is possible that the wifi hotspot will have VPN tunneling disabled. If so, well, just make sure you are using secure connections when possible.

Speaking of wifi, you’re gonna want it when you want it. While AT&T has international plans with data, I was concerned at how much bandwidth I was going to use. AT&T has for $200/mth an 800MB plan. Well, if I was going to upload just 1 video using the cell connection I would use around 600MB of that. Of course that would require me to do 1 of 2 things. Either change my plan to allow tethering and then imposing a cap on my data usage here in the states (I’m currently grandfathered into the old unlimited plan – 1 reason why I didn’t jump on the iPhone 4S), or jailbreak and unlock my iPhone so I could use a SIM Card from a French cell company. I explored Option 2. I did a jailbreak and unlock and discovered that I didn’t like it as much as I did pre-App Store. It was a pain. Option 1 was a thought – for a minute.

So then what? Just have wifi when there were free ones around? In Paris and at my hotel in Bordeaux that would probably be OK. But what about using Google Maps while driving, or updating Twitter or doing a Foursquare checkin at a Chateaux? Probably not likely. So I did more internet searching and found these guys – XCom. They pretty much have simplified going to a foreign country and having MiFi (a small box that connects to a cellular network and becomes a wifi hotspot). For about the same price as AT&T was going to charge me, I could have a MiFi running at 3G speeds and connect my iPhone, iPad, and Laptop with UNLIMITED Data. Yeah, I was sold.

Next. Weather. Growing up in San Antonio and moving back here a few years ago has spoiled me with not needing to really check the weather too much. It’s either hot, or really hot. Maybe some rain. Going to Bordeaux in September which is a higher latitude than San Antonio means it might get cooler. No problem. I just brought my favorite hoodie. It’s literally good down to about 40 degrees with wind. Other clothing I brought was jeans, polo shirts, t-shirts, and a couple nicer pants/shirts for Paris at night. I overpacked a bit to allow for more than one outfit per day but all of it fit in my normal luggage which could almost be a carry-on. I also needed luggage to cart all my other crap. I have a smaller piece from the same set that I will usually use for shoes. In this case I brought 3 pairs. Boots that I tend to wear all the time, casual boat shoes (more for the plane trip), and dress shoes. I also brought a much larger suitcase. This is because I needed more room for wine.

On the way there I put the small suitcase in the large one so I only have 2 checked bags. I also used my laptop backpack for just about all of my electronics. The large suitcase allowed me to bring my large tripod. I had also bought 2 flexible tripods (Dynex™ – Flexible Tripod) so that if I was going to use a table top or I didn’t feel like going out to the car to get the big tripod I could use that. Just an FYI, the comments on the Best Buy website have a few negative reviews, but I didn’t have any issues at all with them.

iPhone apps. I was about to wrap this up until I remembered a few other things. OK, so I got a few apps from the App Store. First and foremost, get the Metro Paris app. It’s great to have a mobile map and a way to figure out how to get there from here. You can add in the Bus routes too. I did, but never used them. Europcar – I really didn’t use it, but I got it since that’s who I used. I also downloaded the Michelin Red Book. This is a great guide to better restaurants. Again I didn’t use it a whole hell of a lot, but it’s nice to have. I also downloaded the Michelin Traffic app. Good to have since it’s set up for Europe already instead of having to use Google Maps. Rail Europe is another one to get. Again you may use it once, but it’s good to have if you need to look up stuff and don’t have access to a laptop or computer. The U.S State Department also has an app. I bookmarked their mobile website but have now downloaded the app. I never needed it, but I had it just in case. I also made sure I had the phone numbers for the U.S. Embassies in Paris and Bordeaux in my phone just in case. And since I had MobileMe (now iCloud) I had the info on my laptop and iPad.

Ok, that’s really going to wrap this up for now. I did a lot of prep to make this trip go as smooth as possible. As we all know nothing ever goes exactly as planned. So it always good to have Plan B, C, D, etc. As we will see in some future posts, things didn’t go exactly as planned. Especially Day 1. But the more you plan, prepare, and research BEFORE the trip, the easier it is to make the trip. While I do a lot of things without planning, this was one time I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance if I could help it.

Until the next time…..

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l8r,

Mark

First, the why. The short answer, Why Not!? Here is the much longer answer. When I decided that I needed to visit Europe for wine at least 2-3 years ago, I first had to decide which country to go to. Being Italian, going to Italy seemed a natural choice. This may be the one and only time I get a chance to visit Europe and going to Italy has been a dream of mine for decades, yes decades. I’m still a bit miffed that in 1985 I wasn’t able to go with my parents to Italy, but that was a trip for them and my aunt and uncle, not something for me to tag along. It was my first semester of college so it wasn’t like I could just up a take off.

With my growing interest in wine, Bordeaux was the one area that would always come up as the standard that all other wine is held to. OK, so is Burgundy, but Bordeaux is just a bit more mainstream if you can call it that. Anyway, I figured if I was going to make a wine trip, then Bordeaux is the place to start.

In the planning for this I thought and thought and thought out exactly how I wanted the trip to go. What city would I arrive in? What was my transportation? How long would I stay in each area? Can I work in Burgundy? Should I blow off Paris? Plus plenty of other questions not including what Chateaux I should visit.

I ended up decided that if I’m going to France that I have to visit Paris; even if for just a couple of days. It seemed like it’s international law that if you’re on your first visit to France, you can’t skip Paris. So after spending a lot of time figuring out how I wanted the trip to go, I went with this.

Arrive in Paris and then take the train to Bordeaux. Spend the next 4 days in Bordeaux and then come back to Paris. A large part of this was dictated by my “day job” that won’t let employees be off for more than 9 days in a row. In my industry we can typically manipulate our vacation days and days off to get 11. So that immediately ruled out a side trip to Burgundy, or really just anywhere but Bordeaux and Paris. Even without the side trip, I had to cut off a day in Bordeaux and Paris each from what I had intended to do.

OK, so now I know where and how long. Time to get the trip booked. Much of this was going to be determined on what Chateaux I was going to visit and what day of the week. I knew I was going to be there from Sunday night (at least that was the plan) until Thursday morning. So I had 3 full days plus a 1/2 day to really get in some amazing tours and interviews. Then 3 nights in Paris.

Now how in the world do I do all of this traveling? Well, I started searching the ‘net for who’s gone on a wine trip to France. There are lots of posts about how great their trip was and a couple pieces of advice, but really nothing saying, “1st step is this. 2nd is this.” Not a whole lot about the pitfalls that you may come across, laws to follow, etc. And I mean this as far as a single blog site. You can find pretty much all of this spread out all over the ‘net, just not in one place.

First, decide on the dates. Now I went during a time that be the worst time to visit Bordeaux – harvest time. Many of the Chateaux will not see visitors during this time unless you are a big time wine person. Since I’m not, I was prepared to get a lot of rejection. But for me, this was also a kind of birthday present to myself. My birthday is in the first part of September and I had originally thought to do it that week, but with Labor Day weekend being the beginning of that week, I decided that I needed to probably be at the “day job” more than galavanting around France. So I picked another week. And in my industry, September is typically a good time for vacation. People have spent a lot of money on “Back to School” stuff and they tend to be tighter with money for a good month or so.

So I’ve got the dates decided including what days I’ll be where. How to get there? This is completely up to where you live. Living in a non-hub city like San Antonio means I have to take at least 2 planes to get across the pond. This also means at least 15 hours in the air. I also need to figure out my return trip. Not just what flight gets me back the quickest, but what my port of entry will be into the United States. Now, I really didn’t think about that initially, but it’s significant as I’ll explain in a later post.

Most of the flights are about the same price, so this really comes down to what fits into your schedule and if you get miles with that airline. I can say this, book as early as possible. Even 4-6 months out, many of the flights were mostly full. To me this is the first thing to do. Book your flights and then plan the rest. You gotta get there first. Booking the hotel, rental car, and other stuff may have to change if you can’t get a flight there to begin with.

Flight booked? Check. Oh, wait, how am I going to get into France, and then back into the US. Well, that passport thingy is going to be needed. I already had gotten one the year prior when I had thought I was going to go, but that little legal thing got in the way. It actually caused me to get the passport and passport card as I wasn’t going to have a photo ID for at least a couple of months. See this episode for more on that: The Return

So passports. It’s pretty painless. You can go to most any post office and do the whole thing. Many will say you need an appointment. If you’re lucky enough to live near some smaller communities, the person there (many times the only person working) will tell you to just come on in right now, no appointment necessary. Here is the link for the Post Office Passport Page

Make sure you bring the proper documentation. In my case, I was lucky that the person accepted my paper ID from the Texas DPS as my driver’s license (which it legally was). While you don’t really need the Passport Card, I did get one to have as a photo ID while I didn’t have anything other than my paper one. It helped alleviate any issues once I got it. They can also expedite the delivery of your passport for a fee, which I did. Typically it’ll only take a couple months now if you opt for standard delivery. No more 6 month wait.

Passport. Check.

Ok, so now I have a flight and my papers. Time to figure out hotels. In France this isn’t like finding hotels in the U.S. While Paris does have its share of chain hotels to stay in, the Bordeaux area doesn’t. And since I was staying in the northern part of the area and not in the city itself, choices of hotels becomes more limited.

I had some decision-making to do here with Bordeaux. Since I was going to see the entire area, staying in the city itself seemed to be the best bet. And if I was going to do this again, I might consider it. However, the advice I got was to stay in a couple different towns since there really aren’t any major Chateaux in Bordeaux itself. Since I was planning on trying to visit a few Pauillac area Chateaux, I opted to try there.

I tried to stay at a Chateau named Cordeillan Bages at the advice of a John C. Dvorak who happens to be a wine enthusiast and tech blogger among other things. Unfortunately they were booked for the dates I wanted. I decided on Le Vignoble in Pauillac. This is acutally two hotels with Le Vignoble being the newer part and better accommodations. I would recommend it to anyone staying in Pauillac. It’s convenient to everything in town, the room was a good size, wi-fi, and very nice staff. I was also in walking distance to a few restaurants other than theirs. Though some of them weren’t always open for dinner. You could tell it was the slow season.

I was going to also stay in Saint-Emilion for a night since I was going there, but the hotels I contacted (really only a couple) were also booked or too pricey. These are small hotels so like your plane flight, book as early as possible. Again, probably a good thing in general that I stayed at one place. Really just because I didn’t need to worry about packing and unpacking and the hauling my stuff to yet another hotel.

The down side to all of this, was that I only visited one Chateau in the Pauillac area (Chateau Beychevelle in Saint-Julien). The rest of the places were at least an hour drive to get to. My advice if you are planning a trip there is to stay in one area instead of trying to see all of Bordeaux. For my purposes, I felt that I needed to see a bit of everything. So if I try this again, I may end up staying in Bordeaux itself.

In Paris, well, it’s kind of a crap shoot. Depending on what Arrondissement or District you stay in is up to you. Since I really want to see the Eiffel Tower I decided to stay close to it. But there were a few other factors in my stay. Of course price was a big one. For amenities, all I cared about was free wi-fi. The hotel having a restaurant wasn’t a factor as I planned on eating elsewhere for every meal. But the really big factor was proximity to the Metro (subway/elevated) system. Since I experienced the convenience of well designed public transportation in Chicago (yes CTA has its issues, but it got me to where I needed to go), I knew that to visit everywhere I wanted to see, the Metro would get me there.

Once I narrowed down what Arrondissement the Eiffel Tower was in (7th), I just used the various travel search engines like Hotwire, Kayak, Hotels.com, etc. to find hotels. I also checked some of the chains I’m a member of to see if any of them were close to where I wanted to be and if they were reasonably priced. Basically the major chains were outside of my budget.

I decided on this hotel after all of my searching – Hotel Eiffel Capitol. This hotel is in the 15th Arrondissement which is right next to the 7th. The districts of Paris are numbered 1-20 and are layed out in a spiral. So the 7th and 15th are neighboring districts. The hotel was almost literally across the street from the Metro station and I did walk to the Eiffel in about the 10 minutes the website claims it takes.

Hotels. Check.

How do I get around the rest of the country? Train and Car. First let’s talk trains. While I could have rented a car from Paris and driven to Bordeaux and back to Paris for less money than taking the train instead, I felt it was going to be easier to take the train to Bordeaux and back. Booking your train ticket is pretty straight forward. Just go to Rail Europe’s page and pick the trains you want. The main difference between 1st and 2nd class cars is that in 1st class you have an assigned seat and the possibility of a power connection. I stress possibility here. While each set of seats has a connection, it’s only one outlet depending on the train and seat you get. So you might be SOL. Also, the 1st class cars has a bar car attached where you can get snacks, drinks, and just chill if you want. The BIGGEST thing to know is if you have a 1st class ticket is to get on the correct car! I’ll cover that more in another post, but suffice to say pay attention to if the car has 1er or 2nd on the side by the doors. 1er is 1st class 2me is, well, 2nd class.

Rental Car. Plenty of options here. I pretty much went by price AND the ability to rent a car with an automatic transmission. These will cost you double or more than a manual. Most people in Europe drive stick, but automatic is a luxury of sorts. Not that I can’t drive stick, I can albeit poorly, but why do I wan’t to mess with that in a foreign country? The chains we are familiar with here in the U.S. typically were the most expensive. So I went with EuropCar. Another caveat. In Bordeaux their counter closes early on Sundays. It’s not super clear on their website what time it closes. I got conflicting information. From what I could tell it closes at 7PM, but someone mentioned they closed at noon. I find noon hard to believe, but I do believe 7 since I had issues even getting to Bordeaux – again more in another post. If nothing else, contact the location directly.

All of these are in place. Next time I’ll talk about other details such as cell phones, power requirements, legal stuff, other equipment, how to contact Chateaux, etc.

This will very likely be a pretty long series of posts as I want to not only be as thorough about the trip as possible, but also talk about each Chateau in a separate post. See you next time!

Spread the word and friend me up. Link to the site from your site. Contribute to the cause via the PayPal buttons!

l8r,

Mark

The past few Skype interviews I’ve tried something new. And it’s just about always resulted in a screwup in the interview technically. While the interview and tasting itself goes well, somewhere along the line the connection goes wonky, the computer locks up, Skype crashes, or some other catastrophe occurs. Sometimes I’m lucky and it’s just a glitch. Other times I completely lose the video and only have audio (I’ll eventually post that interview). In between interviews I do some research to figure out what went wrong but never really experiment; until today.

Today I decided that once and for all I was going to tackle the issue I have with Skype, CamTwist, and Ustream. A few weeks ago I decided very authoritatively that the 3ivx plugin I had was the culprit of my Skype crashes. It was what was causing iPhoto to hang, and it’s basically a useless plugin. I only had it because I had a Flipcam for a minute and needed it. I’ve had it cause other issues in the past and decided that it might be the cause of my Skype lockups.

So I deleted all traces of the thing. It can be a pain to get rid of if you don’t look in all the nooks and crannies. Once I had done that I fired up Skype. I have two accounts. A personal one (my original one) and the 1337 Wine account (leetwine). I have my laptop running one account and the iMac running the other. I do this for a while and neither computer has a hiccup. So I feel justified in my conclusion. I now know that I can at least conduct an interview.

But there’s a Beaujolais Nouveau tasting coming up soon. There’s going to be people out there following the Ustream feed of WineTwits. Well, not to be outdone, I want to not only Ustream my stuff, but also see if some fellow wine people will want to Skype in. So I need to make sure that I can relay that to Ustream. Now I haven’t tested having multiple Skype connections coming in and forwarding it to Ustream yet (see I always try something new), so I fully expect to have a meltdown. Plus I’ve never even tried multiple Skype connections yet either. For it to work, someone has to pay a premium. At least you can do it a la carte.

Google Hangout is an option, but being able to record it on my computer is a difficult task at best. There isn’t a program that is written to really do it. Not like Call Recorder from Ecamm Network. It does it’s job well as long as Skype behaves. And to make things look better I got another one of their pieces of software called iGlasses. It promised to improve the quality of the video on my end.

So today, after uploading my latest review, it was time to tackle the big problem. Of course I assume it would take 1-2 hours MAX. Yeah, right. 7 Hours later, I finally could successfully repeat connections that actually made it to Ustream without crashing. I even made sure I made some notes so that I could boot into my Skype user account on the iMac and remember what I did.

So after all of this, what did I learn? Quite a bit. One important piece of info, is that it’s important to start certain software before others. I can remember back in my Amiga days that my favorite music sequencer of all time, Music-X, “preferred” to be started first before any other programs. It was a memory hog and would just grab all the memory it could. If you didn’t have at least 512kb (if I remember right) of memory, it didn’t play nice. And if other programs had been started before it, it would fight to get some of the memory allocated to those programs.

Nowadays, modern operating systems do a better job of managing memory and making sure a program has what it needs. The ability to have tens of gigabytes of memory and swap disks for memory means that it’s hard to really run out of memory. But today I found out that it’s not just memory that programs fight over. Built in cameras are another.

Here’s the scenario. In order to get all this stuff to work like I want, I need many programs to work in conjunction. Here is the list:

I’ll detail each below:

First, by far the most amazing of the programs here is CamTwist. While I don’t expect to really ever use the switching capabilities or the other cool “studio” features of this program, the fact that it’s F.R.E.E. is friggin’ amazing. I mean check out Soldier Knows Best and you’ll see what he does with this. Or even better, go to Space Vidcast and see what they do.

Back in the day, NewTek (from right here in San Antonio) created the Video Toaster and revolutionized video forever. For $5000 you could replicate $100,000 worth of equipment. Again, another Amiga thing here. PCs were for business, Macs for Desktop Publishing, and Amigas for Video. CamTwist upends what you can do just in software and it’s free. It’s not gonna replace a network’s equipment, but for small guys like me, it’s amazing.

What I basically do is route either the Skype window itself or the entire screen and work in full screen mode with Skype to FMLE. But the most important thing to remember is that this needs to be the very first program started. Remember the memory problem above? Well here is has to do with the camera. Before I watched the video I’ll link later, I knew that there must me a conflict with all these programs potentially trying to get the feed from the camera in the computer. I was getting choppy video as soon as I connected to Ustream on their website. Up until then it was fine.

Skype. Well, hopefully by now you know what it does so I really don’t need to expound on it. With the ability to have pretty reliable and secure peer-to-peer connections for audio and video, it’s another essential piece to the puzzle. Again, free. Now if you want to contact people on land lines or have multiple-person video chat, that’ll cost you, but still. On the Mac side, Skype is finally getting some love with features so it’s no longer iChat or nothing. Of course Google Hangout is a nice competitor, but integrating recording of sessions is lacking.

Speaking of recording calls, Call Recorder is a Mac OS X only program that really has no equal. While there are other programs that will essentially do a screen capture of the video being played in the window for other video chat services, no one that I know of actually taps into the video and audio feeds like Call Recorder. With MultiTrack you will get all the video feeds as separate tracks from how I read the docs. Audio is a bit different. Your audio will be on one track while everyone else’s is on the 2nd track. While they don’t record HD yet, it is on the table.

FMLE. No it’s not F My Life Eternally. Even if it’s from Adobe and has the word Flash in it. While this isn’t an essential piece of software, if you want high quality video, you do need it. This is what sends the feed to Ustream. Yeah I said it wasn’t essential, because you can just straight up connect to Ustream via a browser and let CamTwist send the feed to the Flash Video control on Ustream’s site. But it’ll look crappy. Another thing this program does is record your video. In as high definition as you can throw at it. So I use it as a backup in case Call Recorder chokes. But usually it’s Skype choking so it wouldn’t matter anyway.

While Call Recorder doesn’t record HD, from what I can tell CamTwist is still passing along the HD signal. Of course all this HD could slow down your computer. I tried to do everything at 1280 x 720 and my Quad Core i5 was cranking at 300% many times plus other issues. I use the recommended settings of 640 x 360 until I can be comfortable going higher (basically when Call Recorder starts recording in HD). Oh yeah, FMLE is FREE.

iGlasses. Another one of those pieces of software that isn’t essential, but it’ll make things better. For my purposes it allows me to adjust the camera to improve the look on my end. It can also do some neat effects (many of which are in CamTwist). But for me I only need it for the ability to adjust the image and also do some zoom and cropping if needed.

LineIn. You might not think you need this piece of software, and it’s easy to forget you do. With all the attention being paid to video, audio can get forgotten. I know, I didn’t do this for one of my Skype -> Ustream tastings. Not a huge deal as far as the tasting itself was concerned since I was recording it to use later, but anyone that may have been watching live would be frustrated. The thing to remember here is that you need to set the Output to Soundflower (ch2).

Soundflower. Another piece of software that is easily forgotten. It’s not something you launch. It’s really a plugin for the system. You may have installed it at one point or not. If you haven’t installed it, you need to get it.

Timer Utility. There are tons of timers out there. Many are free. But what sets this one apart for me was that it has a setting called “Keep windows always on top.” This is important if you use full screen mode for Skype since any other timer windows will be covered. And while Skype can tell you how long you’ve been on a call, it’s pretty small and it fades away. This thing doesn’t go away and it’s big enough so that I can have the iMac a couple feet away and easily see how long I’ve been on the call. Plus I can start it just before recording instead of trying to remember what time I started to how long into the call I started. It’s not free ironically considering the rest of the amazing software that is, and it’s not a must have, but it’s nice to have.

Lastly, connecting to Ustream. Any browser will do. I’d prefer to use one that is barebones so that you don’t have tons of add-ons or extensions bogging it down. All of them will do that especially if you use a separate user account just for Skype. But the thing to remember here is do this last. Once you click Connect and Start in FMLE you will be connected to Ustream and broadcasting anyway. Loading it the browser is so you can monitor the feed and also have Ustream record everything too. Otherwise you really don’t need it. If you start the browser too early, there’s going to be some conflicts between UStream and FMLE and you may not get the feed.

So here is the order I have in my shorthand notes:

When you log into Ustream, you won’t have the option to Start Broadcast (this is a good thing). You might think you can use another computer for this, but you really can’t. That computer will try to broadcast on your channel instead.

Here is a great video from the host of Space Vidcast that covers all the settings for FMLE, CamTwist, and Ustream. He also shows how he uses CamTwist Studio. It’s a bit dated as you have to find the XML file differently in Ustream. You now go to your Dashboard, then Channel, then Advanced to find the XML file. Make sure to pay attention to the rest of the settings that the host talks about. It’s very important in order for everything to work.

My Virtual Tasting page has most of the other advice on how to do Skype like make sure no one else is using the connection, etc.

I hope this steers you in the right direction if you are looking to not only use Skype, but also create your own studio or stream to Ustream.

Mark “Leet Wine” Fusco

One More Thing. I HIGHLY suggest you set up another user account on your computer that ONLY does Skype. It runs the bare minimum of other programs. All those other login applications you use, you won’t need them on this account, so disable them. You’re going to need all the CPU power you can get at some point so make sure nothing you don’t need for the call is running.