This South-African wine maker has gotten itself in the news by referrring to its practices as wine hacking:
“Wine is defined by historical paradigms and perpetuation of old beliefs: Place defining wine instead of a certain ethos of production that actually makes the difference. Many people think that terroir defines a wine, but put the wrong winemakers, procedure or equipment into great terroir, and then terroir matters little. However, great technique can take the mundane and make it special. We see that with hacker driven producers like Andy Quady, making great wine in the heart of a commodity grape growing area. Randall Graham has done the same thing… created great products from mundane sources. How often has a great winemaker shown the potential of a hitherto under estimated area?”
October 31st, 2006 at 12:04 pm
[...] About Wines and Hackers: P2P Foundation Blog discovered recently that the open business model is more usual in the traditional businesses than it is usually thought. Stormhoek is a South African winery that self discovered that their creative and productive processes followed the culture of hacking. In fact many winemakers have followed the hacker ethic from a long time ago although they did not use this term: We think that the wine business is ripe for hacking. [...]