The Metaverse and 3D Web, as blogged by Mark Wallace and friends

The Capozzi Winery is a new venture that’s been getting some press in places like the Wall Street Journal lately. The winery’s Pinotblogger site is chronicling “the long and painful processes involved in starting and building a family winery in the Russian River Valley.” But attentive readers of the blog will have noticed that a recent entry flags Capozzi’s plans to enter the virtual world of Second Life as well, with a virtual winery that will feature not only a scale model of the real thing, but also an avatar tasting room “where you can buy and drink wine (with entertaining results — though not the kind you might be thinking),” and “a series of kiosks/simulations that will guide visitors through an interactive wine-making process.”

One aspect of the project that we here at 3pointD are especially excited about is the fact that Capozzi’s sim is being built out by 3pointD contributor Chip Poutine, who writes the Virtual Suburbia blog. We’ll be interested to see what Chip and Capozzi come up with. The wine-making simulator sounds extra cool, incorporating aspects of gameplay into the educational process in what sounds like quite a natural way:

“Basically what you will do is walk or ride out into the vineyard on an ATV, pick some grapes (make sure they are ripe!), de-stem and sort them and then take them to a fermentor and pick a yeast to inoculate the grapes with (there will be a few to chose from, some more appropriate than others). The process will continue through barreling and bottling and at the end the visitor will be furnished with a case of their wine. As an added twist, the wine will receive a “Farker rating” from 50-100 based on the choices made during the wine production. It should be interesting, educational and hopefully compelling.”