Women Wine Critics Board

Wine Adventure: Breaking New Ground in Bringing Wine Information to Women

This week we are joined by Michele Ostrove, editor-in-chief of Wine Adventure magazine.  Michele discusses the concepts behind the creation of Wine Adventure, and her plans for the future.  Feel free to join in discussion about Wine Adventure by clicking the 'Comment' link below.

Wine Adventure, the first wine magazine for women, merges food, travel and style through the universal connection of wine. It’s all about enjoying the wine lifestyle and encouraging women to explore and learn in a friendly, approachable way. Each issue features wine country travel destinations, both far-flung and close to home; entertaining and lifestyle ideas; food and wine pairings; wine trends and know-how; interviews with personalities connected to wine; wine picks from an array of experts and much more – delivered in a fun, highly readable format.

We created Wine Adventure to meet a need that had not been previously addressed by wine publications – to speak directly to women with articles specifically of interest to them. It’s been my experience that average women wine drinkers (and I’m not talking about sommelier candidates here!) aren’t particularly interested in grape-growing conditions, terroir, winemakers’ philosophies, how many points a wine is rated or how many bottles they have in their cellar. They just want to enjoy wine with friends and lovers as part of an overall lifestyle, and discover new labels and varietals. Our goal was to make Wine Adventure a vehicle for expanding readers’ wine horizons in creative and fun ways. For example, we’ve got a new department called The Sensual Side, which is about wine’s role in seduction. I’m pretty sure that’s a topic that’s never been broached in a wine magazine before!

Of Blondes, Blow Driers, and Q-Tips

This recent article at Taste California Travel, The Women of Winter: Hot Wines from Women Winemakers (Taking the Heat in a Whole New Way) reminds me of a late night crush at Tobin James Cellars years ago, when I was sort of interning with Toby during a vacation from my full time winery office job.  Just before 2 am, the press broke down.  A gasket and plate separating the motor from the electronics had blown, so grease and oil sprayed all over the delicate electronic components.  At 2 am during harvest, we could not expect an electrician for at least an hour, maybe two, and meanwhile we were looking at two tons of half-pressed fruit attracting every fruit fly in twenty miles.

In my typically addle-pated logic, I figured that if grease wasn't good for microchips, maybe getting the grease off would help.  With nothing else to do, I borrowed his girlfriend's lemon-scented fingernail polish remover (acetate) and some Q-tips and proceeded to swab around the fuses and wires until it looked better.  Toby let me muck it out, although he seemed distressed by the "Lemon Scented" purple label.  After one false try, the press started up again.

Toby said, "Don't you dare tell anyone about this!"

So of course I am.

I also introduced the concept of latex gloves to the cellar crew at Wild Horse.  They were more adaptive when it was explained that mechanics use them to protect their hands from nicks and grease.  Winemakers' hands will sometimes get so blackened from working with tannic red wines during harvest that their skin will crack deeply and painfully. I showed Dover Dan how to soak his hands in raw yogurt to soften his skin and bleach the tannins out.  Among my other important innovations introduced to the wine industry is the use of those cute hose-diverter gizmos available in gardening centers, so the cellar crew could stop running back and forth between the barrels they were cleaning and the hose bib.

In the "Women of Winter" Laura Ness recounts a wine tasting adventure with a warm and fuzzy (but not frizzy) ending.