DESCRIPTION: Living the WINE LIFE

“Wine Life" is a life full of great affordable wine, sumptuous food, captivating company, beautiful locations and entertaining adventures.

This half hour TV/web show is about living the “Wine Life”. It's not your typical wine show. “Wine Life” is current, funny and down-to-earth. Hosts Mark Oldman, Leslie Sbrocco and Doug Frost are all well known for making wine accessible, interesting and fun.

To find these great affordable wines “Wine Life” travels to some of the most beautiful places in the world to visit wineries, vineyards, restaurants and festivals. We meet fascinating winemakers who share unexpected, funny and often touching stories about life behind the wine. To a winemaker wine is life and life is about making and sharing wine - about living the “Wine Life” .

“Wine Life” also looks at wine's quirky bits. We shatter wine myths, look at new trends like organic wine and screw caps, tell interesting historical wine stories, and poke fun at wine's geeky and pompous side.

Wine lovers need to feel confident around wine. They want to know how to select a good bottle of wine in a restaurant or wine shop. They want useful tips and specific wine recommendations that will help them buy and enjoy good wine. More than anything else they want to relax and live the “Wine Life”.

Mark Oldman is the wine anti-snob. Mark has his own fresh take on wine. He’s young, funny and very accessible. Whether giving the keynote at the New York Wine Expo or tasting Champagne with rapper Ludacris, he always makes wine interesting, fun and tasty.

He’s the author of the best selling Oldman’s Guide To Outsmarting Wine which was called "perfect" by Wine Enthusiast, "winespeak without the geek" by Bon Appètit, and "shortcuts to a connoisseurs confidence" by BusinessWeek. Mark writes about wine for several leading lifestyle publications, including a wine column and the wine picks for Everyday with Rachael Ray. He will appear as a judge on PBS’s The Wine Makers.

Leslie Sbrocco brings energy, humor and passion to “Wine Life”. The author of the award winning Wine For Women: A Guide to Buying, Pairing and Sharing Wine, she is a sought-after speaker, writer, wine consultant and an established television personality. Her credits include Seasonings, cable television’s On the Vine series, CBS’s Evening Magazine and the Today Show. Leslie’s current television project is as host of the PBS series Check Please! Bay Area, which has been nominated for both a James Beard award and Emmy award

Doug Frost is one of a handful of people in the world to hold both Master Sommelier and Master of Wine. He is the expert’s expert. He has a quirky sense of humor, an encyclopedic knowledge of wine, and a no-nonsense approach. With a background in restaurants, retail and hospitality Doug knows the inner workings of the wine world and he’s always happy to let you know what he really thinks. The Washington Post reported that his book On Wine was “fabulous, witty, engaging and wise.”

2. THE PRICE

"Wine Life” focuses on wine that is both delicious and affordable in the ten to twenty dollar range. This is the popular "sweet spot" of the US wine market. It’s where the money is made because it’s the wine that wine lovers actually buy and really drink. There are a lot of great everyday wines out there and “Wine Life” is here to discover and recommend them.

3. THE PHILOSOPHY

Wine has an image problem. It’s exclusive, snobby and intimidating and people don’t like that. Wine needs an attitude adjustment. And “Wine Life” is here to give it one.

4. THE AUDIENCE

Women are the lead buyers of wine today. Overall, wine lovers are better educated and more affluent than the average American. Most are Baby Boomers with Generation X and the Millennial Generation making up 25 percent of wine consumers.

5. THE TIMING

Wine is explosive in the US today. In 2007 wine sales in the US exceeded 30 billion dollars. Most of those wine consumers consider themselves novices who need help and advice about wine from someone they can trust. "Wine Life" connects with these people

THE DESIGN OF "Wine Life"

"Wine Life" looks at wine as part of a fun, interesting and tasty lifestyle.

The design of the show is modular.

Every show will have an introduction to the episode, a feature story, reoccurring segments that can be mixed and matched and each show will end with the “Rants and Recommendations” segment.

INTRODUCTION

Mark Oldman introduces every episode. He welcomes the viewers to the show and tells them what’s coming up in each episode. He also intros and outros the Feature Story and other segments.

FEATURE STORY

This is the human-interest side of wine. Leslie Sbrocco or Mark Oldman travel to some of the most beautiful places on earth, taste some of the greatest wines and meet some of the most interesting wine people. For example: Shannon Lindhorst, a six year old winemaker who started making wine at the age of four on her family’s wine estate in South Africa. She makes Shannon’s Shiraz, and all of the proceeds go to the Endangered Wildlife Trust. Or Susanna Balbo, a single mother with three kids, who had to step in and take control of her family’s wine making business in Argentina when her young husband died suddenly. This is a story of conquest over adversity.

Forget the wine: their stories are interesting in and of themselves.

REOCCURRING SEGMENTS

“In My Glass” is a reoccurring segment where one of our hosts shares a funny wine anecdote or insightful story over a favorite glass wine.

“Young wine” features younger faces – novices - people who are at the beginning of their wine lives. They’ll be correspondents who will provide reports on wine about their wine experiences and perspectives. Mark Oldman will send them out on assignments like going to a wine shop and finding the perfect wine to go with something impossible like pomegranate short ribs of beef. Or go buy wine on a tight budget for a Super Bowl party… for 50. Then they will get together with Mark and discuss what they discovered.

“Off the Beaten Wine Path” Leslie, Mark or Doug explore vineyards and wineries in unexpected places like New Mexico where the Gruet family makes a great Champagne or North Carolina, where Richard Childress is blending fine wine with NASCAR. This is where we also meet celebrities who make wine such as French movie star Gérard Depardieu who owns vineyards in France or the Smothers Brothers who make award winning wine in California.

In “Thinking Outside the Barrel” Doug Frost looks at new wine trends, new grapes, new wine makers or new techniques. For example: Doug takes a different look at storing wine. He buys two identical mixed cases of wine and then puts one case in a wine cellar and the other in the trunk of his car for six months. Then he holds a blind tasting with experts and friends to see if anyone can tell the difference between these cases.He goes to Bordeaux, France home of the most expensive wines in the world, and instead of focusing on wines that cost hundreds of dollars a bottle he spends the day with a young brother and sister wine making team who “bottle” almost everything in a box.

RANTS

Mark, Leslie or Doug have fun going off on a particular wine topic. It could be corks versus screw caps. Wine makers who use so much oak you could get splinters. Or Wine Gifts - the odd, outrageous and funny wine stuff out there - like a wine bottle that plays Que Sera, Sera or a 3D wine tie.

AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Four to six wines are selected as weekly picks in the $10 to $20 range and recommended.

BIOGRAPHIES

Gail Spangler
Executive Producer

Gail Spangler brings her unique blend of business development, marketing skills and wine savvy to “Living the Wine Life” project as an executive producer.

Uniquely qualified to work on “LTWL” with 15 years marketing, advertising, branding, media and PR experience, including stints at top shops, Hal Riney & Partners and Grey Advertising before beginning her love affair within the wine industry in 1997.She was the Sonoma County Film Commissioner and the PR Director for two Sonoma County wine and tourism bureaus. From there it was a natural fit for Gail to become the Communications Director at the New York Times Company cutting-edge internet site, WineToday.com where she traveled the globe promoting wine to the average consumer via the popular site WineToday. It was for the Times Company, she first began producing television segments on wine, including a weekly segment on CBS’S Evening Magazine. .

Currently, Gail is co-executive producer on a new wine series coming to public television this spring called, “The Wine Makers.” Gail’s favorite wines include New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, Rhone reds and any kind of dry Rose.

JAY FEDIGAN
Director, Producer

Jay Fedigan created "Living the Wine Life" to bring together two of his passions, wine and filmmaking. Jay was fortunate to grow up tasting and loving some of the greatest wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy at the family dinner table. He loved wine but not the snooty attitude or the expensive books. So to learn about wine he started at the source and visited small vineyards in his own backyard in New England. Then he traveled to Oregon, the Rhone Valley and Bordeaux in France, Orvietto in Italy, Napa and Sonoma in California and many more. Wherever he went he found that what people really drank were the fun, tasty and inexpensive wines. Wines that everybody can afford to love

Jay has directed shoots all over the US and Europe. His credits include: “The Angry Heart”, an award winning documentary about the impact of racism and health; "Your On-line Identity: On The Line" for the MIT Media Lab; "Words to Action” for Community Change and many other projects for community, higher education and corporate clients. Besides directing, Jay is an accomplished photographer. His photographs have appeared in publications including: O The Oprah Magazine; The Boston Globe; The Underground Wine Journal; Hemispheres Magazine; EasyFood Magazine.br>

For more information please contact Jay Fedigan at wine@livingthewinelife.com