Cheap Red Wine

Drinking wine from a box is something that a lot of people do. Myself included. I clearly recall the days (read: college) when many small get-togethers with friends involved at least one three liter box of the stuff. The wine wasn't phenomenal, but at that stage of my life I didn't really care. I believe my style of thinking was more along the lines of 'Three liters of wine for under fifteen dollars? OK, I'll take four, please.'

And that style of thinking is still with me to some extent, although I'm sure it resurfaces less frequently than my wallet would like.

One such instance was this past weekend when I picked up a 600 yen bottle of red wine housed in a plastic bottle. Apparently beverage behemoth, Suntory, has teamed up with a winery or two in France to produce a red and white Cocovin. They both come packaged in plastic.

Yes, plastic.

Big deal, right? Haven't we already gotten used to screw-top caps due to the cork shortage? Aren't we destined for packaging techniques that reduce shipping costs? Hell, some of the Beaujolais Nouveau sold this year in Japan hit the shelves in plastic. Not that the stuff was great wine or anything, but you get the picture. And I believe that was a pretty faithful rendition of what was going through my mind at the time.

Well...I guess I should have known better. As you probably guessed, the wine was a little bit...interesting. I'm now slightly suspicious that the wine shipped under the Cocovin brand has leftover Beaujolais Nouveau mixed in with it. It has that same kind of brash floral aroma that vaults out of the bottle as soon as it's uncorked unscrewed. And it's just as floral on the palate, but coming from me that's not a compliment. I started to get the feeling that I was sucking on a lilac bush. And the taste lingered for quite a while after I had gulped. Yikes.

White wines are the ones that have more acidity; it defines them, gives them a presence and a backbone that is expected and appreciated. However, the Cocovin red, for whatever reason, is light on tannins but heavy on acidity, especially in the finish. The result is a rather flowery-sour aftertaste.

That said, you get what you pay for, and I certainly did. For those who wish to head down this route, I would highly recommend putting the red in the fridge for at least an hour before opening. After the mercury drops, the aroma calms down and the aftertaste diminishes noticeably. At that temperature, you could argue that it's worth 600 yen.

Oh woe is us. Is this what we're in for? It seems fairly obvious that in order to sell people on the whole 'wine in a plastic bottle' thing, even if it's going to make our hooch cheaper, a lot of said wine better be pretty damned good. Otherwise we're not going to buy it. We'll be headed straight down the whole rosé path again (nobody would buy it until it was renamed blush, remember?). Anyway, message to Suntory: please try again.

But I digress. Come to think of it, two extra seconds of brain usage and I would have realized that I haven't bought wine in anything other than a glass bottle for a good 10 years. There's obviously a reason for that.

Lesson learned. I guess I actually care about what I drink now. The extra 300 yen per bottle is well worth it.

Cheap Red Wine

Things that I'm excited about right now

Update [Mar. 25, 2010]

• The kichigai promotional site is up and running and can be found here.
  
• Another short film that I worked on last year, "Banki", is a nominee at the Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival taking place later this spring!

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It's been a very enjoyable month thus far even if I haven't been lucky enough to win an Olympic medal. I've been busy meeting friends, both old and new, and working on a pretty large swath of projects that will hopefully make waves later in 2010.

Here are some of the big things that are making me smile:

Script. I'm currently working on the spec script for a film that we'll probably start filming in late March or April. I'm very stoked about this because we're exploring a new genre and looking to build on what we learned from the production of Little Tokyo (more info on that later).

Pre-production. Not exactly film-related, but in the prep-stages nonetheless, a couple of new web projects look like they may be getting off the ground soon. One is an information portal related to living in Japan and the other is a site about celebrity fashion. My role in both projects is mostly on the developer side which is probably hard for some of you to believe--especially regarding the fashion site.

Filming. Japan Booze Blind continues to grow within the Japan Eats network. The word 'network' is apt here as we've been experimenting with live tapings of the show, and the next one is scheduled for March 28th at 3pm (Tokyo time). Live tapings via Livestream are a blast because I can interact with the audience in (nearly) real-time. The show on the 28th will deal with my favorite spring pastime, hanami. This post over at Tokyo Terrace will give you a good idea of what we've been up to.

Post-production. A film that I worked on last fall, Kichigai (Japanese title: Wasted), is in post production now and will hopefully be screened at a film festival later in 2010. There's a website being developed to help promote the film, but I've been advised that it's not ready to go live, so I'll hold off on posting a link just yet.

Promotion.  We'll be hearing back next month about whether or not Little Tokyo will be screened at the 2010 Short Shorts Film Festival. Please keep your fingers crossed  for us. Another film that I had a leading role in, Banki, will also hopefully get screened. Fortunately (for me, anyway), Little Tokyo and Banki are not entered in the same category.

Of course, there's also the redesign of the Tokyo Swallows website to be excited about. That took quite a bit of hair-pulling and face-slapping (my own) to get under control, but I think that it was definitely worth it. There are still several things to get sorted out, but I think that we'll have a better feel for what we need to do once more content gets posted within the new framework of the site.


And as many of you know, I've jumped face-first into the world of social networking sites (SNS). Facebook, Mixi, Twitter, and Disqus to name a few. I've actually hooked this site up with Disqus, a service that aggregates the social aspects of several SNS platforms, so make sure to leave a comment at the end of this post and see how it all works. I'm very interested in seeing how it helps users keep track of the ongoing dialogue as it moves and changes across the web.

Anyway, one thing that I'm very grateful for is that I've been able to easily reconnect with a bunch of people that I didn't have any idea how to contact, and that includes both family and friends.

So those are some of the things that I've been thinking about, stressing over, and working on recently. Just need to stay motivated and keep working with the talented people around me. Hopefully I can keep up.

Things that I'm excited about right now

Japan Booze Blind: Third type beer

Japan Eats is steadily building up content, and the feedback that we're getting from friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook has been been fantastic!

There are now four JBB videos loaded on the site, and our food show, Tokyo Bites, should make its debut in February. We're definitely very excited about this--especially since the title of the site does not currently match up with the majority of the content that we've produced thus far.

If you have any suggestions for what we should do a future show on, whether it's Japan's interpretation of Korean soups such as sundubu or something as standard as sushi, please feel free to either comment on this site, over at Japan Eats, or on Twitter.

Or you can also e-mail me at pellegrini [at] japaneats [dot] tv.

And while you're at it, please drop by Japan Eats and watch the latest JBB episode which covers three beers produced by brewing-behemoth Kirin. My two guests on the show are Rachael White, food-blogger extraordinaire over at Tokyo Terrace, and Joe Nakamura, an actor that I met while filming last year's Hagetaka.

Japan Booze Blind: Third type beer

Japan Booze Blind on "Japan Eats"

The Beaujolais Nouveau just hit shelves a week ago, and the reaction was pretty muted compared too years past. On the left is a photo from my local supermarket, Seiyu, where all the expensive wine was deserving of in terms of presentation was a big unused cooler with an island made from a red, felt-covered box.

There's a write-up on this phenomenon and how it pertains to Japan here, and since we're talking about alcohol anyway, let me take a moment to pimp a project that I'm working on right now.

"Japan Eats" is a new website that tries to introduce a wider audience to Japan's varied culinary and alcoholic delights. I host a show on the site called Japan Booze Blind in which blind tastings are used as an excuse for drinking alcohol early in the morning.

The site just officially went live today, so please stop by and check it out.

Japan Booze Blind on "Japan Eats"