As most of you are already aware, this Thursday (25/5) is the #7wordwinereview dinner. For those of you who have never been to one, you are missing out. It’s a dinner for wine lovers in a Central London restaurant that allows us to have free corkage. This tends to attract some incredible wines and champagnes.
Given the numbers, we are going to be having dinner at
We will be meeting for some pre-dinner drinks at 7pm (there is a bar there) – with the aim of sitting down for dinner by 7:30pm. For those of you who are already coming, please be sure to get your pre-orders in to me. The restaurant have insisted that all our pre-orders are sent to them today at the very latest.
Dinner will be £25 which will include 3 courses and free corkage. All monies are payable directly to the restaurant.
We all love him. British Comedian, Michael McIntyre has entertained us for a few years now with his observational comedy. He’s simply brilliant at taking a snapshot of everyday events and turning them into hysterical sketches. And of course, at some point, we must have known it was coming – he finally got around to it and ripped into wine lovers as he parodied the steps that so many of us do when tasting wines (in a restaurant). It was brilliant. Received live and online with rapturous laughter. And yet, it hit a little close to home as well. Why? Not because I’m thin skinned and sensitive. No….but because there’s too many people who already mock the routines to begin with. And sadly he had finally given that a name. – ‘Bullshit Productions’.
I can think of countless dinners with non-wine people in restaurants. The conversation is flowing, everyone is having a good time and at some point early on, after the champagne is all gone, the wine would be served.
I promised Mrs 12×75 that when our son was born, I would dedicate as much of my time to him as I could. That of course meant making some sacrifices, one of which was sadly writing this blog. However, the last year has given me a great deal of time to keep trying new wines and of course old favourites. It’s also given me an opportunity to read a lot of the wine news and blogs.
WINE CONDOMS
In the last 12 months, I managed to actually get to have a clear out too and sort through old bits of paperwork. I used a company called Total Shred who specialise in on site paper shredding. They showed up and shredded all my paper on site in their shredding truck – how cool!! In a rush to leave, their driver George left his copy of the Metro Newspaper. And as I leafed through it, I was SHOCKED to see an article that talked about a new wine gizmo to hit the market. Now at this point, I’m sure you will have of course seen the Wine Condoms. But without even having to get too graphic, let’s just back up for a second… Below is a video explaining exactly what it is and how to use them:
The wine condoms are sold as bottle stoppers and their Amazon page proudly boasts the following celebrities that support them: Amy Poehler, Sharon Stone, Mila Kunis, Madonna, Bethenny Frankel, Melissa McCarthy, Patricia Arquette, Rosie O’Donnell, and Ruby Rose have one! (all women huh?)
It started off as a Kickstarter project by Mitchell Straham and reached great success by smashing it’s goal of $7,500 and settling on a final total of $9,285. Since then, they ramped up the project and now sell the Wine Condoms through Amazon.
If you can get past the whole condom thing, then yeah – in many ways it’s actually not that stupid an idea. Mitch makes a valid point in an interview that the problem with bottle stoppers is that they add to the length of the bottle, making them even harder to refrigerate. True.
However, on the heels of a few years of weird and wonderful bottle stoppers, I was hoping that someone would perhaps think of something that was more unusual and and niftier than the Coravin. That said, as much as I can see the Wine Condoms being a practical application and perhaps even working, for very obvious reason it’s not for me. In all honesty from a marketing point of view they should have gone with perhaps a totally different name. The Wine Balloon perhaps…. One thing is for sure, whether it’s because of all the Celebs that like it, it works or it’s a novelty, they seem to be selling like hot cakes on Amazon.
We here at 12×75 we will of course be keeping an eye on their progress and reporting back.
It did get me thinking though, if Coravin and Mitch over at Wine Condoms partnered up, maybe they could come out with a new device altogether? The Coravindoms!!!!
