Leena Eats, Gourmet Communication ... Food, Travel, Gastronomy

Happy Friday! This week’s Gastro Friday is definitely a “toot my own horn” edition, and ain’t no shame in that game, especially when a bitch is trying to get a job. For starters, kindly watch the video embedded above. It is my entry for the Murphy-Goode Winery “A Really Goode Job” contest. Here are the contest details: the winery is looking for someone to explore their winery and Sonoma county and blog about it. The winner receives a 6 month job doing this with free accommodation near the winery and $10,000 a month. I KNOW. Damn near peed on the cat when I first read that. The only catch is you have to make a 60 second video of yourself, showing your experience in social media, wine and writing, and it has to be entertaining to boot. So my entry is posted above. If you like it and would like to vote me (or just think I’m funny or hot), go here. On the right side of my video should be a spot for your email. Enter it, and you’ve just voted for me! Doesn’t that make you feel awesome and like you deserve some bacon? Hell yeah! It IS Gastro Friday, so I suppose I should spit a little gastronomy for you. I believe one of my best qualifications for this job is my wine experience, the bulk of which was acquired while I earned my Masters in gastronomy from The University of Adelaide in South Australia. Plenty of contest entrants have visited wineries, drink wine at home and enjoy drinking wine in a nice restaurant–these are experiences we all share. However, not as many contestants have visited wineries while learning about gastronomy in school. From a purely gastronomical perspective, There are at least 5 wine regions in South Australia that I lived near (Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley, McLare Vale, Coonawarra, and The Clare Valley), and through independent research into the history and foodways of the local areas, I was able to understand the personality of each of these wine regions. I knew why The Barossa wine region had more German sausage places you could shake a stick at, and they made a damn good Riseling–the area was settled by German immigrants who supported their food culture using Australian ingredients. I understood how Shiraz, a varietal typically found in Spain and France, made it’s way over to Sydney and later to South Australia thanks to a man by the name of James Busby, where it became a staple varietal for the country. I discovered the unique family-run and boutique winery atmosphere in McLaren Vale, the wine region where the land meets the sea, where wine makers take a break by having a quick surf in the ocean. To be able to learn about gastro- and wine tourism practices and then witness in action these practices either succeeding or failing, was also invaluable. For instance, when it comes to gastro and wine tourism, not many wineries in South Australia are on board. Plenty of wineries have tasting rooms, but all are not attended to in a way that makes you feel like they care. Many winery owners feel that their job is to make wine that consumers will buy at the store–not at their winery. And why is that? Personally, I think South Australia reminds me a lot of the Midwest if it were on the west coast–a ton of farmers, and a very country mindset, yet it happens to be next to the ocean. As a result, not all wineries are down with handling tourists, despite the fact that it could bring in a lot of money. Many of them only see extra work, not the possibility of new customers, especially overseas. It made me sad to see a great winery with delicious wines just not give a shit about customer service–especially those that were making an effort to promote tourism! For example, I went on one of the many wine and cheese trails on offer in the regions (which means you get cheese and food and a map of wineries and wines to drink with the food), and was not impressed–check out this blog. In a nutshell I learned in my gastro-tourism class that the most important aspect of tourism is to tell a story. If you don’t tell a story, no one is gonna want to listen to you or support your tourism venture. The wine and cheese trail didn’t involve the people at the winery talking about what you were going to eat and drink and why it went well together, you just ate it and drank and had to guess. When the food didn’t pair, only one of the four wineries helped us pair the food with another one of their wines. It felt very disconnected and just unneccesarry. On the other end of the spectrum, a visit to any of the towns in The Barossa will show you what proper gastro- and wine tourism can do for a wine region. The people of the region have created Food Barossa, a group dedicated to promoted local regional food along with local wine. If you buy food at any shop in The Barossa and it was made locally, you will find a logo on all of the packaging that says Food Barossa and shows a fork stuck in a cork. The fork in the cork is symbolic of the relationship between the region’s food producers and wine makers. The Barossa is trying to profit off of the fact that they have amazing wines and amazing regional food, and so far they have built a reputation for high quality, artisanal products. Okay, I could on about this forever, but let me make my point: the people at Murphy-Goode are looking for a person with the skills to explore their region and get people excited about it. I may not know Sonoma, but I certainly know how to get to know Sonoma from a drinker as well as a gastronomer’s perspective. So please–vote for me because I think I deserve this Really Goode Job. Thanks! ~LTG!