This Membership is a $300 value!

Your dad will receive 6 shipments of handcrafted wine from boutique wineries in Israel and invitations to attend live winemaker interviews and chats.

Your dad has gotta live in one of these states, ok? CA, DC, IL, NY, FL, GA, NC, OR, WA, OH, TX

Here’s all you have to do….

1) Tell us why your Dad deserves this Israeli wine club membership more than everybody else’s Dad in a text or video entry in the Comments section below

2) Tweet this post (just use the Tweet This Post button below) and/or link to it on your Facebook profile as follows : My dad deserves wine from @israeliwine a helluva lot more than your dad does

That’s it!

Good luck!

P.S. Contestants get added to our Israeli Wine Direct Newsletter which contains news and special offers.

I am going to send a 6-pack of premium Israeli wine to the Mother who submits the funniest entry answering the question:

What is the role of wine in your life as a mother?

It can be either a text or video entry.

The only rules are 1) you gotta be a Mom, and 2) I can only ship wine to a state where we can legally do so.

I reserve the right to post on our blog (or not) any of the entries. And of course if we do, we will give you full credit, link to your own blog or site, etc.

Have fun with this, okay?

Extreme humor is, of course, most welcome!

Some of you  have heard me talking about a new LLC I formed with my pal Leah Jones here in Chicago.

Leah dropped the idea that grew into the company over supper with me late one night at Matilda, her fave haunt, as easy as if she had said “please pass the salt” (this happens a lot with Leah!).

The new company is called MyWineTxt.com 

You can go there now and register if you like. Yes, we know it’s just a shell of a registration site right now…we’ll pretty it up as soon as we can. As Leah will no doubt tell you, I tend to be impatient to get things moving so she’s frequently telling me to slow down and breathe (one night I told her she’s like my Ritalin!).

You’ll see the Israeli Wine Direct logo up there for now while we get the logo designed over at Crowdspring by an entire crowd of hip designers we don’t even know and may never meet from all over the world (cool, huh?). You can watch their design work (and my feedback to them) on our logo real-time here, and even participate by posting a design of your own.

mywinetxt.com will change the way people buy wine, adding another wine-buying channel for people like me who want an easy, immediate way to get whatever the hell it is they want at any particular moment in time. My impulsivity has gotten me into trouble on occasion but in this setting I think it’s a good thing!

mywinetxt is a platform for people to order wine via txt messaging.

Once registered, your phone becomes a wine order-taker for you. Simply type “buywine #bottles winecode” to our shortcode and 3-4 days later wine shows up at your door. No lie.

This should facilitate wine sales in a PARTY SETTING – my favorite setting to drink wine and interact with people but generally (before mywinetxt) a lousy, challenging setting for taking wine orders.

In addition, registrants can elect to receive special wine offers they can simply respond to immediately with an order. You could be buying wine walking down the street or in the shower or in the middle of Target or wherever. 

We’ve got some other crazy wickedly fun stuff we’ll be doing in our major parties, too, that should get people really excited about buying great wine.

I’m jazzed to see the group psychology that happens in a party setting as people compare-and-contrast wines with friends and then buy wines they like immediately.

One of the things that makes me nutty is the often ridiculously long time between a person’s Urge to Buy and their Ability to Buy. (Game Over with mywinetxt!)

The Israeli government has taken this to ridiculous extremes in the past by holding major wine tastings in the US with great wines not even yet imported (talk about having to delay gratification!). As in, “hey, I love this wine, how can I get it? — “oh, that wine, that wine’s not even imported yet…”

Maybe this says more about my impatience than anything but I just think it’s a pain to have to go on-line to buy wine, or drive to the store every time, or fill out paper order forms in a party setting.

Plus txt messaging is FUN! You know you love it!!!

We’ll use it here at Israeli Wine Direct and we will also license the platform to others – retailers, for instance. If you know someone who might be interested, email me at richard@israeliwindirect.com, please. Or call me at 847-924-5523.

Over time, our mywinetxt database will be a wicked piece of the platform enabling us to make recommendations to people based upon their past buying coupled with the purchases of others with similar tastes.

Europeans are years ahead of us when it comes to mobile marketing and purchasing with cell phones. It’s time to catch up to them.

So, go register on the secure site….we’ll start using it soon to make special outbound wine offers.

In November we have launch parties planned in Denver and Chicago.

Now I just gotta get my gal pals in Houston to pull over and stop drinking long enough to plan a major launch party in Texas, too. Hhhhhmmmm, maybe we invite a Texas winery to the party and let them use the technology with us (not a bad idea, huh?).

Please share your thoughts. And REGISTER!

Be patient and gentle with us though……….it’s a beta, baby! We want cool people like YOU to play with it and make it BETTER.

Maybe this has happened somewhere else before with Israeli wine but I don’t think so.

Israeli Wine Direct is beginning now to sell Futures (or Pre-Arrivals) of the best premium wines coming out of Israel. “Futures” is just a fancy wine-world way of saying we can let you buy limited exclusive premium wines now for delivery to you later when they arrive (it’s a little more technical that that officially, but fuhgetaboutit…you get the idea!).

This allows me to bring Americans small allocations of amazing wines I discover in Israel for you real-time.

You get the chance to reserve for yourself AT DISCOUNTED PRE-ARRIVAL PRICING some of the wine as we work as quickly as possible to register the selected wines with the US Government and prep them for import.

I’m starting our Futures of Israeli Wine Program with two wines from Flam, the largest boutique winery in Israel, based in the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, now producing more than 100,000 bottles annually.

The two wines now available for immediate discounted pre-arrival purchasing are:

Flam Superiore Syrah 2006 (audiences taste this with me and let out a collective WOW)

Flam Cabernet Reserve 2005 (this baby is some seriously smooth Cab and won a Bronze in Decanter’s 2008 World Wine Awards)

Honestly, I have already sold 3 cases of each of these wines without hardly even telling anyone about them. I will import only 10 cases of the Cab Reserve and 20-30 cases of the Syrah (same grape as Shiraz). So, please, don’t wait if you have any interest in this at all.

If you have any questions about these wines or our Futures of Israeli Wine Program or you have a recommendation for a specific Future wine, just call me directly any time on my cell at 847-924-5523. Matter of fact, anyone can call me anytime on my cell about anything.

Richard

They actually conferenced me in 1,000 miles away here in Chicago for a few minutes of the tasting.

Listen to Me: Are you getting how small this world can become when we use technology in the best of ways?

We talked a bit about two wines they tasted this evening:

Meishar 730 Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay 2007

In one private hidden tasting, The Long Undiscovered Tail of Israeli wine reached across continents and oceans and found itself re-discovered in the living room of a family who has (I believe) never before experienced wine from Israel. An ancient wine land got re-born this evening…this time in modern America over a conference call via cell phone. I don’t think anyone anywhere got together like this to talk about and share an experience of wine from Napa Valley (no, wine was NOT born in Napa Valley…or in France!).

I think what they did tonight was pretty darn cool.

(Um…gosh, it looks like even Bruce’s dog is into the wine – doesn’t it look like the dog is sort of waiting in line for a glass of his own? And Bruce is painstakingly pouring him a glass! Only the best for Bruce’s dog! This just re-defines “man’s best friend” – I mean, it’s hard for me to share wine with my wife…forget about the dog!)

All kidding aside, awakening Bruce and others like him to great wines from an ancient wine land is the reason on this side of the world I founded Israeli Wine Direct.

The reason on the other side of the world (in Israel) I founded this company is so small often family-owned wineries there could access the world’s most important wine market in a creative way they simply could not have achieved on their own.

I have a feeling we’ll hear more from Bruce once he and the dog recover from drinking all the wine they bought from us (smile).

BRUCE: if you’re not still drinking, share some COMMENTS down below!

Here is another photo with two new pals with whom we shared great wine and conversation:

That’s Melanie Notkin on the left (check out her site for Aunts – SavvyAuntie.com) and Rachel Sarah – author of Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from The Dating World.

Shout out to Laura Mayes who did all the hard work putting the event together. She has some great party shots on her blog The Queso, and is a Founding Mother of Kirtsy.

I also made new friends with Ingrid Alongi, very likely the smartest person and Web developer in all of Colorado and also an avid biker. I’m betting we should expect some cool biz surprises from her over time.

PLUS…Wednesday night in San Fran, I had good wine and a chat on everything from religion to Israel to social media with Leah Jones, blogger and new media PR guru based in Chicago.

Oh, yeah, before I forget….in honor of the very cool people we met at the party, we set up two promo codes.

Feel free to use them and to SHARE WIDELY.

Simply enter either kawasaki or kirtsy at Checkout when you visit Israeli Wine Direct and purchase boutique wines from Israel from us online for delivery to your door. There’s a little box at Checkout for Promo Codes.

Guy was nice enough to invite me to pour Israeli wine for his guests.

Here’s a photo Guy took of Tim and me. 

People loved the wines we served and kept returning for more of the same and to try new ones. Most of the guests had never tasted wine from Israel and didn’t realize wine was even being produced there. 

We drank 23 bottles! And we were drinking some serious juice, like Meishar 730 Cab, and Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay, Pelter Sauv Blanc, Margalit Cab Franc and Margalit Enigma, Clos de gat Har’El Syrah, etc. Here’s a shot Guy took of all the bottles we’d killed by the end of the party and laid out on his lawn.

OK, so now….I need to get to the serious part of this post.

It became quite clear to me during the event that Jenny The Bloggess has a pretty flaming crush on me.

This just needs to be said. And now I’ve said it. I’m not surprised, really. In fact, I’d seen this coming for a while. A lot of other people at the party told me they have been aware of the exact same phenomenon and that Jenny seemed to spend more time than usual getting ready for the party before my arrival. A LOT of people said this.

Here’s a photo of Jenny post-Xanax drinking (swear) Pelter Sauvignon Blanc 2007. She pretty much singlehandedly drank two bottles of it and kept sending her gal pals over to drink it, too.

I am convinced now more than ever that Israeli Wine Direct needs to dedicate itself even in a small way (I’m short) to bringing sexy back into the wine industry. (Uhm, was sexy ever in the wine industry?) And at least 3 drunk female bloggers who didn’t really hear me agreed with me when I raised this at the party!

No more snooty sniffing and swirling. No more sport jackets. Come barefoot for Godsakes, throw on some jeans or a sundress, lay down on the grass with someone you love (or someone somebody else loves).

Cuz I can promise you that the orginal wine drinkers from the Original Wine World did not lift their pinkies when they drank or spit the stuff out in buckets or talk incessantly about tannins and terroir.

You know who I mean by “original wine drinkers”, right?

Noah, Abraham, Jesus…and some other serious wine-drinking homeboys.

I hope we get invited back to next year’s party. I know Jenny hopes that, too (smile).

Guy Kawasaki invited me to his home next week to pour Israeli wine for – are you ready? – 200 of the top female bloggers. They’ll be in San Francisco for the Blogher Conference. Blogher is an online community for women bloggers.

Guy’s blog How To Change The World and his book The Art of the Start have provided great practical inspiration for me (and loads of others) as we try to make something meaningful happen in the world through Israeli Wine Direct.

Guy was gracious enough to add our little blog to both the Israel Alltop page  AND the Wine Alltop page.

Alltop is a one-stop-shop site providing an amazing aggregation of links to substantive sites on a huge and growing list of topics.

Two of my favorite “mommy bloggers” (start reading these cool ladies EVERY SINGLE DAY): 

Karen Armstrong

and

 Jenny The Bloggess

My partner in all things wine Tim Elliott will be chaperoning accompanying me. We’ll be sure to get you some photos and I bet we do some live tweeting from there so sign up to follow me on Twitter now, guys. I’ll even use TwitPic to post shots real-time via Twitter.

Anyone wondering which wines we’re pouring?

Flam Sauvignon Blanc / Chardonnay 2007

Pelter Unoaked Chardonnay 2007

Meishar 730 Cab 2004

Somek Bik’at-Hanadiv 2004

What do YOU think about our wine choices for the party?

What % of the attendees will be tasting wine from Israel for the very first time?

What you experience when you try these wines is SURPRISE and then EXCITEMENT and then there’s that MOMENT when it hits you that you’re tasting something few people have ever tasted…Israel in a bottle, the Future of Wine History, the results of the rebirth of winemaking in an ancient wine land. I know I can be dramatic, but it’s true.

Here’s what Lev, a customer in Cleveland, wrote me earlier today about a 6-pack of Clos de Gat he purchased from us:

Shared my 6 bottles of Clos de Gat last weekend at a huge neighborhood bbq. Of the 150 bottles of wine sampled, Clos de Gat received a 4.5 out of 5 average score and was up against some serious French, Australian, and California competition.

First of all, Lev is a saint for sharing 6 bottles of Clos de Gat at a BBQ (I wish he was my neighbor!). No watered-down, critter-labeled spit-in-a-bottle for this man!

And the experience of his neighbors is becoming more common.

And the best – no – the only way to have that experience is to TASTE the wines. When it comes to wine, it’s like so much of life – you gotta just do it.

If you are new to Israeli wine, a great entry is to look to someone who’s been there before to guide you a little bit.

And that’s what we’re doing for you in a couple ways.

First, join our Taste of Israel Wine Club here. We’ll select representative “tastes” for you from around the country, mixed reds and whites, and deliver you a set of three wines each quarter. We’ll pay half of the ground shipping costs for you, too, and discount the wines some as a way to WELCOME you into the Israeli wine scene!

Second, we have pre-built Sampler Packs for you – themed Israeli wine 3-packs you can choose from based upon your personal wine preferences.

So, come on in, the wine is wet!

By the way, looks like I’ll be doing a House Party in Cleveland late August. If you are in the area, let me know. I’d love to see you when I am in town.

Good morning!

I’m leaving home now for the TECH Cocktail conference in Chicago.

I’ll be attempting to Tweet “live” from the conference out to my followers on Twitter.

If you want to hear the key messages from some of the hottest tech + marketing + startup people out there right now (including Gary Vaynerchuk), sign up for my Twitter Feed Fast!

Follow this link to get info about the event.

Golan Flam will be there with us as a guest Israeli winemaker (then he’s coming back with me to Chicago for meetings and tastings — email me if you want to come to one of the Chicago events).

On the homepage they even have a photo of yours truly – I’m the guy in the photo with sunglasses pushed back waiting for someone to come pour me some wine!

I have invites out to another winemaker in our portfolio now – stay tuned….