My Back-to-Back Wins At The Wine Spectator Video Contest!

It was September 2021 and the Wine Spectator Video Contest committee just announced their video competition winners. I have followed the WS annual video competition off and on for several years. But something clicked in me when I saw the winning video. I thought it was good, but I knew I could do better. After looking at the winner from 2020, and whereas it was a clever idea, I noticed it wasn’t very well produced. I decided to give it whirl. After all, I love wine… And I love creating video stories.

Wine Spectator Video Contest – Find A Catchy Tune

So, a song immediately popped into my head… and I started to write the lyrics. After two 8-hour writing sessions, I came up with what I thought was a fun idea that celebrates wine. I’ve always been a fan of Broadway musicals… and one of my favorites is A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Now for those of you who aren’t into Broadway, you may not know that show… or the movie from 1966. But you might have heard the song COMEDY TONIGHT… It just so happens that there are many varietals that are 3 syllables – cabernet, chardonnay, zinfandel, etc. So, it seemed to be a good fit – CABERNET TONIGHT. I wanted to include as many of the wines that I was familiar with and that I had some connection to various wineries, including knowing the winemakers or the proprietors.

Production Time

Once the lyrics were finished and I recorded a very rough demo, I had to figure out a way to produce this ambitious project with NO BUDGET. I pulled my son Matt into the process. He is an audio recording engineer and has been in the music industry recording and producing for most of his career. What better way to do this than with my son. He worked with me on improving some of the lyrics and getting into shape for the final vocals.

My singing voice hasn’t been the same since my days in my high school and college choirs. I thought of one great talent who I knew could pull it off. So, I reached out to my oldest nephew, Aaron. He has been classically trained and has a great singing voice. Since he lives in Arizona, Matt and I made it a family visit and recorded Aaron. And of course, he nailed it.

Shooting Day

Next, it was time to storyboard and figure out how I was going to shoot this. I pulled in a close friend of mine who I have worked with on many video projects. Scott is a great cinematographer and owns a drone. After he volunteered to give up a couple of days to help me shoot this, we planned our trek to Santa Ynez (Santa Barbara Wine Country). I won’t mention the specific vineyards that we shot at, but just say that the one winemaker who I did know recognized his vineyard… Fortunately he was gracious enough to not give me any sh*t for jumping past the No Trespassing sign. I made sure to give the winery screen time along with mentioning his wine in the lyrics.

Additional Footage From Friends & Family

In addition to shooting the footage that I was lip-synching to, I reached out to several friends and family and had them send me clips of them raising their wine glasses so I could edit it into the video.

The only big production element left to do was getting the visual effects and animation produced. I contacted a couple of friends of mine who own a leading entertainment marketing agency called The Refinery. They assigned this to an extremely talented designer/animator who brought the wines and their labels to life. It was the high point of the video.

The Video Competition Has Started

Just as I was wrapping up the three-minute film, it was about the time that Wine Spectator announced their 2022 Video Competition. My jaw dropped when I read that the time limit for the videos were 2 minutes. Oops… I had to quickly figure out a cutdown without sacrificing the song and the fun elements. I was able to get to a solution that brought the film in at exactly 2 minutes, and I sent the submission in. It was in the hands of the Wine Gods!

A Video Competition Finalist…

I was extremely excited to be listed as a finalist. Now the hard work began. I had to wrangle up enough votes to pull this thing off. An email was sent to everyone I knew, and I had them email everyone they knew… Needless to say, I was relentless at asking people to vote for my video.

… And A Win!

It was September 2022 when I found out that CABERNET TONIGHT took the top honor. What a feeling! The Grand Prize was receiving two tickets to the NY Wine Experience for October 2022. I took one of my best friends and it was a life changing event. More on that as a separate post.

Wine Spectator Video Contest – Part 2

I got the bug while I was in NY at that event to do it all over again. I started the process once more. Again, NO BUDGET! This time, I brought Matt in earlier, and we worked on the lyrics together. The vocal performance was done by Aaron’s brother, Adam, who had a rock band for many years. Because if you can’t be with the wine you love, honey, LOVE THE WINE YOU’RE WITH.

I wanted to take this video up a notch, so I reached out to many of the winemakers and proprietors that I knew and asked them to be in it. I ended up with 5 winemakers (and 1 proprietor) in the video and I am ever so grateful for their participation.

Additionally, I did reach out to the winemaker from the vineyard that I had used for CABERNET TONIGHT, Tyler Thomas from Dierberg/Star Lane in Santa Ynez (Santa Barbara Wine Country), and he did grant me permission to use the vineyard again for this endeavor. It’s a damn good thing I do love that wine!

I submitted LOVE THE WINE YOU’RE WITH and ended up winning the Wine Spectator Video Contest two years in a row. And as a side note, I purposely produced a 3-minute version along with a 2-minute version for the competition.

And now I am in the process of working on the third (& final) video in the trilogy. Yes, I was able to subtly connect all three videos together with a storyline… and the third one pays it all off.

Stay tuned… I hope to be reaching out to everyone to vote for the next video to make it a hat-trick.

Cheers.