No more selfish wines! Read about the Antidote and be a giver
Antidote for selfish wines
Love..is..an action?
How many times have you heard your spouse or loved one say these words,”Love is an Action”!? But isn’t it true? When words don’t match the actions, it is certainly a conflict you’ll ‘need’ to pay very close attention to, isn’t it?
We make decisions in our lives based on ‘contradictions’. If pepper doesn't compliment our ice cream as a ‘topping’, we choose chocolate syrup. If our skills at playing baseball ‘contradict’ the necessary skill-set of a ball player, then we make a decision to choose a different vocation. If you have a potential suitor who says “I love you and would do anything for you.” but never sacrifices time for you or can’t tell you the color your eyes, then you might want to reassess that relationship (FAST!).
Expressing love comes in many forms…….and this is my love language to you.
Would allowing that ‘impatient’ person into your lane soften a possible tense moment on the road? Well, would it!?
“The Antidote”
’Sharing tender thoughts with others;
’Willingness to withhold our own pain to comfort another;
’Waiting a moment to allow another car into our lane;
’Sending a gift anonymously;
’Passing a mirror without a glance.”
Shock factor: Growing up with Lucille ball
‘Shock factor’ and other Lucille Ball Hollywood stunts have the ability to draw our attention fast but if dwelling too long on the ‘attention grabber’, we can easily be offended.
Some of my favorite memories were in the Hollywood Studios where my grandfather worked. A vivid memory is watching the filming of shows with Lucille Ball and my grandfather talking about having coffee with her when she was ‘on set’.
Lucille was famous for doing something “shocking” to get our attention…..and then the story would end with emotional relief as she reconciled with Ricky or her neighbors, Fred and Ethel.
In the 1960’s book, “The Psychology of Color”, an example of bright fuchsia fur coats in a retail storefront draws fast the consumer eye. Looking past the window decor into the store should meet us with warm inviting earth tones, otherwise our split-second psychology tends to offend our senses (say if all the others coats were bright primary colors like ‘canary yellow’).
Fleshing out this idea with ‘branding to raise awareness’ is a sensitivity exercise for a brand marketer.
When we combine ‘reason’ behind our brands and with it serious quality, it aligns our brand stories and helps to ensure that our businesses aren’t based on ‘gimmicks’ or simply capitalistic greed. The result: Enhancement of our capability to give ‘voice’ and social power to our products.
So, unless you live in a vacuum or an unchartered island in the South Pacific, your life is impacted by serious mental issues (whether directly in your family or personal life or daily news channel changing).
THE NARCISSIST ATTEMPTS TO RID THE WORLD OF SELFISH WINES!
“There’s nothing wrong with being anthropomorphic. That’s how we understand the world.”
From Bugs Bunny, to Donald Duck, to Wile E. Cayote, anthropomorphism drives the way we think in modern culture.
The message
We can all relate to the topic of the brand, “The Narcissist”. The likelihood that each of your lives is impacted by an ‘over self-focused’ individual is very high. Sometimes we have a tendency to translate continuous selfish acts as ‘narcissism’ but the topic of this brand, true narcissistic personality disorder, has its roots in cultural philosophy that focuses much more on ‘self satisfaction’, ‘self-fulfillment’ and YouTube’s “Promote Yourself” mentality than in a self-sacrificing mode of life.
It wasn’t all that complicated to promote awareness of narcissism through whimsical descriptions of human character through anthropomorphic language. It was almost as though the challenges were greater in using common descriptions ‘translating’ the exact character attributes of this particular psychological disorder.
How to rid the world of “selfish wines”
The reason beyond the reason….beyond the reason.
I’m a winemaker, second to being a human being….one that would like to make a slight difference in the world…but a winemaker nonetheless.
My daily functions as a winemaker are to create character traits in the wines I produce by agonizing over details such as:
Vineyard sourcing;
Developing fluid relationships with the vineyard personnel;
Balancing environment in the field to insure phenolic development and perfect timing for harvest;
Insuring that the fruit grown in the Vineyards of Élever consider the balance of environment and health of the workers who labor daily to deliver great fruit;
Using only the finest of natural fermentation products holding to Vegan, Non-GMO, and Gluten Free to include consumers with sensitivities and convictions;
Managing the production of wine from pick to delivery to processing to finishing with the least intervention to ‘guide’ the fruit to a beautiful bottle of wine.
These are the goals of any conscientious winemaker. These should be the goals of any conscientious wine supplier…..period.
The Narcissist is sourced from 3 different vineyard regions in Paso Robles. Willow Creek, El Pomar, and San Miguel America Viticultural Areas are specifically the sub-AVA’s my fruit is grown in. I’ve been either overseeing, reviewing, and/or judging wines from Paso Robles for 30 years now and have discovered what I love about each of these areas. Acidic and overall phenolic concentration from Willow Creek Petit Verdot. Concentration and boldness in Cabernet Sauvignon from the El Pomar vineyard, and aromatic enrichment and ‘integrity’ in the Cabernet Franc from San Miguel.
The fruit is hand-harvested at varying ripeness between 24.8 to 25.5 brix and small open top 2-5 ton stainless and 1/2 ton macro-bins with hand-punch downs. No sulfur dioxide is used in the processing until fermentation and Malo-lactic fermentations are complete.
The wine is aged for 20-24 months in mostly French Oak barrels of mixed coopers with a few new American Oak barrels enhancing the berry and sweet aromatic fruit notes in the resultant wine.
This wine is filtered one time at the very end of processing in preparation for bottling with no fining or clarification agents used to clarify the wine for finishing. This allows for minimal filtration in the final prep for bottling and allows the wine to be very ‘giving’ as it ages, enhancing the overall aromatic and textural qualities. This wine qualifies as vegan.
“For evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”
“Storytelling” is the most powerful way to share an emotional thought or topic.
DRIVING the ‘Point’ home
If the idea of “The Narcissist” helps to encourage one person to ‘allow another car to move into your lane’ without throwing a fit (a suggestion on “The Antidote” back label description of The Narcissist), then one person will have reduced societal stress by ‘giving up their personal (and legal) right to be in that lane’.
The impact of writing this back label was fascinating to me. Every time someone tried to move into my lane with a bit of ‘narcissistic aggression’, all I could see were the words on that blasted back label! Every time I thought about sending my wife a note to tell her how much I loved her, there was another distraction of something “I” wanted to do to keep me from that action.
a “giving” Wine
“The Narcissist” is a product to be sold for profit. Profit, not being a dirty 4-letter word, is what drives economies. Healthy economies are more commonly ‘giving’ economies, and giving economies more often come to the aid of others when the need arises.
The Narcissist has ‘ingredients’. A recipe, if you will. One such ‘ingredient’ of “The Antidote” back label description is “Passing a mirror without a glance”. It raises awareness of our own desire to promote ourselves above all else. Loving ‘ourselves’ is a very good thing, but when we become the center of attention rather than servant leaders, sacrificing for those around us (especially those placed under our care) then our caring becomes more like a thin veil.
If you have ever had a family member or spouse or friend lose their lives young or suddenly, and you never took the opportunity to share with them how much they meant to you (even though they were living their lives in opposition to your desire), then you can relate to The Narcissist. Not just a gimmick to cash in on, but a way to say, ‘yes, I could have done better, I could have given or communicated with more sensitivity, and I’m resolved not to beat myself up over my mistakes but to grow in my efforts to strengthen relationships around me’.
“In the end, I created The Narcissist to combat my own selfishness and to help others combat theirs that there might be a more giving attitude around me, my family members, my children, my business partners, my community and yes, even my country.”