fancy little pic aided by Instagram

One billion dollars! Sounds like Dr. Evil is getting into acquisitions, but it’s actually what Facebook paid for Instagram. I do love playing around with Instagram’s filters and my photos have majorly benefited from it. Those Instagram people must be pretty psyched (apparently they have only 13 employees), and grapefriend knows exactly how they’ll be celebrating – with filtered wine!

Filtration is part of the winemaking process, where at the end it gets passed through a screen or a pad to remove any leftover grape and fermentation particles. It’s controversial though, since some people think it strips out some aroma, flavor, texture and color. Others just think it takes out some of the wine’s naturalness, some of its je ne sais quois. A little of this has been supported by actual chemical analysis and a little of this is just subjective, but lots of people are going into market with unfiltered wines now.

Drinkers who don’t know about filtering see little things camped out on the bottom of their bottle often complain that there’s gross stuff in their wine or return it to the store or waiter, so that can obviously be a sales problem. Other die-hard natural wine fans will drink absolutely nothing else. Try one out and see what you think, and send the Instagram dudes your bill!

(Other suggestion: a Ridge Zin – Zucky’s grape o’ choice.)