Whoa, look what we found via Make Magazine: a contraption that actually turns water to wine. Well, sort of. Dreamt up by Party Robotics’ Robert Kaye and Pierre Michael, the water-to-wine cooler has only been rigged and gutted in a really clever way, that’s all (‘Our solution was to hide an identical water bottle below, for the top one to drain into.

This lets the water level decrease over the course of the party, which is more realistic. When the water gets low, you just swap the bottles, and you’re back in business.’). A step-to-step guide is available online if you want to make your own.

The post Water-to-wine cooler appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Cake Wines is an Australian wine company who, in 2012, launched a prestigious art event – the annual Cake Wines Archi-bottle Prize.

This contest is a nationwide search to discover Australia’s most talented artists to create bottle artwork for the Cake’s new summer release of wines. Dan O’Toole took home first place, and his artwork can now be seen on Cake Wines’ 2011 Coonawarra Shiraz. Manuela Strano and Jae Copp were the runners up, with their art appearing on the Mclaren Vale Rose and Adelaide Hills Chardonnay. Last year’s contest saw over 600 impressive submissions, and submission dates for 2013 will be announced this September.

The post Cake Wines’ Archi-bottle prize: design an arty wine label appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

What a pairing. The ChocolatRouge range of wines, which mixes up chocolate and red wine in varying levels of sweetness (Dark Red, Sweet Red and Milk Chocolate), infiltrated our consciousness recently and we haven’t stopped fantasizing about it since. Baileys addicts now have an alternative.

The post Yes, there is such a thing as chocolate red wine appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Good wine in a good house for a good cause. From the creative mind of one Dutch wine expert and a group of local savvy designers comes Wijnhuis: a new initiative to help raise funds for the homeless. Color screen-printed labels adorne the bottles, which are tucked inside a die cut “house” made of old wine boxes recycled and glued together. Better yet, all profits from the sale of these stellar red and white organic wines will go to an Amsterdam-based foundation for the homeless. The style is inspired, the cause is worthy and the wine delicious. Proost to that.

The post House of Wine’s Wijnhuis: an initiative to help raise funds for the homeless appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Vintage hats, over-sized sunglasses and bountiful beards. No, we’re not talking about your local hipster hangout but a new series of Spanish wine. Hailing from the great vineyard-laden Rioja, Siete Pasos is a just-launched wine project that aims to bring together seven wines from different regions. Each bottle will be assigned an individual character, inspired by those in our every day lives.

The post Siete Pasos wine from Rioja, Spain appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Here’s how to drink straight from the wine bottle in a sophisticated manner: empty the whole damn bottle into the Bottle Of Wine glass. At 10″ tall with a 3″ diameter, this enormous glass with mad capacity can hold every single life-giving drop of antioxidated goodness from your regular 750ml wine bottle. Bottoms up.

The post Bottle of Wine Glass lets you be a classy alcoholic appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Trap doors are cool. Secret basements are cool. Wine cellars are cool. Secret basement wine cellars that you access with trapdoors are cool, whichever way you look at them. Spiral Cellars have made these commercially available since 1981, and it claims this is just the thing for you ‘if you always like to have a few dozen bottles around the place and tend to keep bottles for months or years before drinking them’ and want to ‘open up the fascinating world of wine… like never before’. Yeah, we want one.

The post Your own secret basement wine cellar with trap door entry appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Snake venom wine was first consumed in China during the Western Zhou Dynasty by practitioners and patients of traditional Chinese medicine. They believed that it promoted vitality and health. The snakes were preserved for their ‘essence’ and left to steep in a glass jar of rice wine, sometimes enhanced with smaller snakes and medicinal herbs. Traditionally, because of the high alcohol content, it was drunk in shot glasses. However, heavier drinkers ate certain parts of the snake such as the gall bladder, eyeballs and stomach. If you dare try some yourself, you can order a bottle at Asian Snake Wine. The expression “hair of the dog that bit you” just doesn’t seem… enough. 

The post Asian Snake Wine appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Swiss winery, Fin Bec, flew eight top graffiti artists from around the world (New Zealand, Japan, USA, South Africa, UK, Switzerland) to their winery to create artwork on eight canvases made of 84 wine crates each. The finished artwork was then used as wine labels and the artwork was dismantled and filled with the wines. Video by Rebild Productions in Paris.

The post Artwork on eight canvases made of 84 wine crates each appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Stencils, tags, paste-ups, and vibrant strokes sprayed intensely across underground walls are a common city scene. Graffiti is the epitome of urban art and culture. It is not, however, what one would expect on a proper bottle of wine. That’s where South Australia’s Longview Vineyard comes into the picture.

A sprawling vineyard in Adelaide Hills, Longview set out to defy convention around wine events, offering instead a bold and energetic mash-up of food, wine, and street art. Entitled the “Krush Klinic,” the annual event brings together four leading Australian artists who compete for a chance to have their work featured onLongview’s “The Piece” Shiraz. Amidst the sprawling green rows of grapes and vines, each artist provides his or her interpretation of the vineyard, turning white walls into stunning murals as guests look on while eating, drinking, and dancing away. Winning this year’s prize was Sydney-based artist,Beastman, who’s work will be featured on the limited release The Piece series, encased in a spray-paint can of course. Now tag that.

The post The Piece Shiraz appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

The way I see it, our decade will be remembered as one that celebrated the underdog. We’re fixated on watching the average Joe rise to the top. To illustrate my point, look no further than reality TV: we’re all about watching the one big break opportunity. Naked Wines, an online wine retailer, is jumping on the bandwagon. Recently launched in Australia, the company will fund up to 20 independent winemakers and help them make it big in the competitive wine market.

The post Naked Wines: Australian-based online wine retailer appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Here’s one upside to a sulking global economy: the rise of prohibition cocktails, speakeasy bars, and underground restaurants. Less capital tends to spur unexpected creativity. So too does that depression-era nostalgia. To add to the list of trending booze and bites, is Spodee. If the old-timey milk bottle doesn’t convince you that it’s a throwback, well, its contents surely will.

This ‘depression era hooch’ was inspired by the drink of the times made of country wine mixed with strong liquor and topped with anything from soda to juice, herbs to spices. The result? Wine that really packs a punch, which is exactly what spirits guru Steven Grasse and the makers behind Spodee promise. Produced and bottled at America’s oldest winery, Spodee is a bit like mulled wine meets moonshine. Sweet, easy-to-drink, and deceptively strong at 36 proof. Mix it with cola for a “Spodee & Sody,” blend it with coffee for an extra buzz, or top it with tonic. It’s a spirit masquerading as a wine. Wine with a kick, that is.

The post 36 proof Spodee: mulled wine meets moonshine appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Food plus fashion is not new to us. From wedding dresses made of wedding cake, to eggplant espadrilles, to a beef jerky handbag, it seems like we’ve seen it all. And then, came this: a dress grown from a bottle of wine. 

Yup, you’ve read right. A dress grown from wine. Essentially, it is created through a process whereby the wine turns to vinegar creating a by-product that can only be described as a ‘slimy, rubbery, skin-like substance’. It’s thanks to researchers at the University of Western Australia that this seamless clothing from wine discovery came about. Some downsides are that you’ll smell like red wine, it feels like “sludge,” and of course, you’re wearing cellulose. We can definitely file this one under the foodie WTF category.

The post WTF: A dress grown from a bottle of wine appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

The Marlborough region in New Zealand produces more than fifty percent of New Zealand’s finest wine. However, the cold climate means some innovative solutions are needed to combat grapes being damaged by frost as they grow in early spring. Enter the helicopter, flying low over vineyards to push warmer air from the inversion layer down onto the freezing ground and circulating the air. This has meant that more than 150 helicopters — a large portion New Zealand’s fleet — were in use over a small region at one time.

Brett from Nautilus wines explained that on average, the ‘choppers are called in for around three days a year to protect the crop. While helicopters might seem expensive, losing precious wine producing grapes can result in millions lost to frost.

The only alternative is to pick the grapes while frozen, producing wines known as ‘ice’ wines, which are very sweet as the water is frozen off, leaving a more concentrated flavour.

The post Helicopters frost fighting for New Zealand wineries appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

You know what they say: when in New Zealand, do as the Kiwis do. Pegasus Bay is a beautiful, family-owned winery producing some of New Zealand’s finest wines. But people don’t visit just for the wine. The food is a secret weapon, with the restaurant serving up great local and seasonal dishes, using fresh, seasonal ingredients with some top-shelf choices mixed in. Our favourite dish was the black truffle frittata, which melted with flavour as we sat overlooking the wintery gardens in front of an open fire.

The post Pegasus Bay in New Zealand appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Having met during the making of The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola and film production designer Dean Tavoularis continued to put their creative minds together for years following the film’s close. A few more films, interior and exterior designs, and other random projects later, Tavoularis’ artwork is now gracing the labels of Francis Coppola Reserve wines.

This limited edition production, highlights the vineyard’s renowned terroire and the beauty of Tavoularis’ striking work. With labels and wine as gorgeous as this, you can leave the gun – and the cannoli – and take the wine.

The post Francis Coppola Reserve wines appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

At Gut Oggau Estate Wines, generations of vintners have been producing Austrian wines with quality and character. Literally. To help the drinker identify what they can expect once the cork is popped, Gut Oggau assigned an actual face and personality to their wines. Each portrait on the label has a name and tells a story.

What started off somewhat simply – a younger portrait signifies a younger wine – has now grown more complex over time and today nine Gut Oggau Wines are all interconnected as grandparents, parents, and children, with interwoven stories and relationships. Designed by German agency Jung von Matt, the unique portraits boast beautiful illustrations, saturated with life and individuality. So, forget the rolling hills — let’s talk about a wine with real character.

The post Gut Oggau’s portrait wine labels appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Wine by Some Young Punks is, as you could guess, the product of three young Australian winemakers who have a reputation for solid wines and standout labels. The images plastered across the bottles are inspired, ‘bright and intense’ — intended to echo the wines themselves. Selected from original 1950s book covers, the packaging, like the wine, is juicy, tantalizing, and charismatic. And just as the name of one of their signature wines suggests, passion really does have red lips.

The post Wine by Some Young Punks appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Ever been totally confounded by the wine selection at your local booze shop? 94wines is here to help. Using a fun little survey on its website, the Dutch company claims it can find several wines that will be a perfect match for your particular tastes. Just answer six simple questions (Do you prefer mint or pepper? Would you rather walk on the beach or in a forest?), and out pops your ‘wine ID’. The company has its own line of wines – with names like Fresh, Spicy and Luscious — that are then matched to your score, and you can order them straight off the site. The company calls it ‘the most personal wine in the world’ — we call it a stellar idea.

The post 94Wines appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Among ‘garage’ wine makers, Justin Lane is a legend for his passionately crafted wines, eclectic style, and loveable rogue-vintner ways. So after years of making other people’s bottles notorious, Lane’s newest incarnation — his own unique wine label — has been well anticipated. So too has its accompanying cellar door, AB&D Wine Salon. Here, Lane’s Alpha Box & Dice wines can be tasted in this quirky, though stylish, space. And the wines, like the cellar door, are full of character.

Of course, it was therefore necessary that the labels were too. Enter Mashdesign. In collaboration with Lane, thiscreative agency worked to dream up an image that would reflect the storytelling, old-school methods, and eclecticism that is Alpha Box & Dice. Each wine tells a story – 26 letters, 26 interconnected narratives.

Now available are ABCD&F (Apostle, Blood of Jupiter, Changing Lanes, Dead Winemakers Society, Fog), so whether at their cellar door or your local liquor store, make sure you get to know your ABCs.

The post Australia’s Alpha Box and Dice wines appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.