Time.  Does anyone really have enough of it??

Hello and welcome to Fluid Occasions, a podcast series designed to help busy tech-savvy professionals educate themselves on quality wines and get recommendations on which ones give you the biggest bang for your buck.  My name is Patrick and I’ll be your host as we master a multi-faceted topic – as efficiently as possible!

Fact is; we’ve all met people who seem to know everything there is to know about wine.  And while they’re talking away, trying to impress everybody with their knowledge, we usually sit back quietly and wonder what it all means.  Different varieties, different grapes, different regions and different labels – you could spend a lifetime trying to figure it all out.

Not here.  Fluid Occasions intends to dramatically accelerate the process.  Our stated objective is to get you the important information and the fascinating data points as quickly and as easily as possible.  And we’ll go a step further and identify the very best values in quality wines.

You see, every wine has a rating between, effectively, 70 and 100.  But at every rating, there’s a wide price range.  For example, you can get a year 2000 Bordeaux with a rating of 90 for as little as $18.  OR, you can spend as much as $95 for a different year 2000 Bordeaux, ALSO with a rating of 90.  So what’s the difference?  Price.  All wines with a rating of 90 are very good quality wines.  No question.  But the prices vary dramatically so if we want to be smart with our money, we should find the very best values within each rating.  And that’s exactly what I plan to do here.

Now, don’t be expecting a bunch of $12 wines.  That’s not our market and we’re not providing a bargain basement wine review service.  We’re looking for wines with a rating of 90 or higher and $18 is probably one of the cheapest we’ll find.  Most will be between $25 and $50 a bottle but they’ll be among the best values available anywhere.  Make no mistake.  We’re looking for truly quality wines – wines that’ll impress a special date or be coveted or even hidden at dinner parties you attend.  We just don’t want you to pay too much for it, that’s all.

Here’s what you can expect from this series.  I’ll do my best to post a new podcast each week.  Each chapter will feature a different wine, selected for its quality level and value.  You’ll learn what the average wine with a similar rating costs and how the featured wine measures up.  I’ll include as much background information as I can get on the wine, the winery and the region where the grapes were grown.

I’ll talk about what types of food would go well with the featured wine and when it’s best to be opened.  Each chapter will be about 8 minutes long.  And at the end of each podcast, I’ll announce the wine being reviewed in the following chapter so those of you who have tried it can contribute your own personal reviews on the website.  I’ll read two reviews in each episode so we can all benefit from your experience.

But you’ll get more than that.  This is intended as a strategic learning experience and I’ll scour the Earth looking for useful and fascinating data points about wine in general – juicy nuggets you can easily use in social settings.  No, we’re not trying to impress anyone – I understand – but everybody loves thought-provoking trivia and you’ll get a lot of that here.

The website supporting this podcast is FluidOccasions.com and I hope you’ll visit.  Each chapter will get posted on the site in text format so you can reference it later when the time is right.  When you have an event coming up, check the site for ideas or suggestions.  Since we’re dealing with premium wines, you probably won’t find them at your local grocery store so I’ll provide links to places where you can buy them directly.

So, who am I?  Nobody special, really.  I’m a self-employed professional who doesn’t have enough time in the day to do all the things I’d like to do.  Sound familiar?  But I’ve had an incredible experience with a podcast series I developed for my business last year (which has been downloaded over 11,000 times in 27 different countries, by the way, so I’ve become a huge fan of the technology) and I absolutely love good wine.  So I’m creating this series as a bit of a hobby, educating myself as well as listeners like you.  It’s gonna be fun and I’m really looking forward to it.

If you like what you hear so far on this podcast, please tell a friend about it.  Technology like podcasts can help elevate new and innovative thinkers but we all have to play our part to help spread the word for those who deserve our endorsements.  If I am deserving of yours, my thanks.

See you next time for Chapter 1.  We’ll be reviewing the Clos Pepe 2004 Pinot Noir.  If any of you have tried it in the past, please visit the website – again, it’s FluidOccasions.com – and submit a review on the Contact page.  I’ll read two of them during next week’s podcast.

Until then, work hard, live well and drink safely.  Bye for now.