After a successful run of 1000 episodes of Wine Library TV-downloaded short segments of programmes he taped on different wines he relayed from throughout the world wherever he was travelling, Gary had shifted gears and started with the Episode 1 of Daily Grape on March 14 this year –‘Kicking Things off with 2009 Bordeaux at Whole Foods’. In 5 months he had covered 89 episodes of the Daily Grape which was essentially a technically advanced version of the Wine Library TV. The reasoning he gave for the switch in the first episode was the world moving to mobiles and hence his motivation to move to this platform and with iPads and iPods coming to the market , he felt that the communication was faster and the future was in this segment.
‘Thank you to all the Wine Library TV and Daily Grape fans that have made this chapter of Gary’s life so gratifying,’ was his curtain call on Facebook which has been full of complimentary farewell messages for him by his FB friends. Known as GV to his fans, he has been popular for his thunderous style of presentation besides giving a layman’s perception. He was known to often pass derogatory remarks about many of the wines his father sold in the brick and mortar wine shop-the style helping him increase his viewership and the wine sales.
Though the reasons for his sudden retirement plans are not disclosed, it is being speculated that there was not much money in it though it got him a lot of name and fame, rubbing shoulders with the who’s who of the wine industry in a short time. Daily episodes (almost) might have caused a burn out too. But his enthusiastic face will not be forgotten by his fans for a long time.
I had met Gary in Delhi when he came with a couple of local Indian- American colleagues with whom he planned to export wine to India. During the course of the evening, he talked about the WineLibrary TV in which he covered a few episodes on the Indian wine scene. He was kind enough to offer me guidance if I ever wanted to add Video to our website www.indianwineacademy.com which had attracted him to us in the first place. Not as enthusiastic and with not so much time on hand I had to take a rain check from him.
Gary is scheduled to address the delegates at the Hong Kong WineFuture 2011 in November and if his previous appearance at the Conference is an indicator, many people would love to hear from him in the teleconference and also perhaps get to know what made him decide to take premature retirement and what his mega plans for this wine future are- besides taking the Wine Library to newer heights and exploiting the branding he has created for himself online.
Subhash Arora
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