Who is Lion Vineyard?

Hello! My name is Andreas, and for some time I played mini-golf as Lion Vineyard. I also strolled the net as Lion Vineyard while maintaining the old LionVineyard.com. So you may wonder, where does this new kind of Lion Vineyard come from? Let me start from the beginning…

Back in 2002 I moved to Vermont to attend the University of Vermont in Burlington. Vermont, despite being the greenest and at the same time whitest place I have ever lived, it was also a highway of new experiences in every aspect of life. Experiences aside, Vermont will always have a special place in my heart, nonetheless, as it is the place where I fell in love. But Vermont was also the birthplace of Lion Vineyard!

One of the side streets of this highway of experiences was mini-golf. I have never played mini-golf before, but I was good. I wish I could say the same thing about my golf swing! Anyhow, being good at mini-golf, I was looking for my mini-golf course-name. I deemed that my mini-golf greatness would only be expressed with something unique. A name that would go head-to-head with Tiger Woods, the master of golf. And there it was, Lion Vineyard! My mini-golf course-name.

My mini-golf days were over and Lion Vineyard was just fading. But fading was not option for such a great name. Following the trends in web technologies I was active in the blogosphere. I wanted to setup a tutorial/how-to blog about programming, mainly for PHP. In the times, that no descend domain name is available, voila! Lion Vineyard was available. I grabbed it and run, blogging as LionV at LionVineyard.com and HephaestusLounge.com. About a year ago my long time friend Andros and I cofounded AmberPanther, a sturdy incubator for ideas. Resources and efforts were put on AmberPanther, hence, Lion Vineyard as a blogger was put aside. The Lion was not King anymore!
Then, that time in life came, where you sit down and think what you want from life 20 years down the road. Last winter, my wife and I started philosophizing around this question. We both agreed on one thing. We both see ourselves retiring on a vineyard, fermenting wine and enjoying the finer things in life. We still have a disagreement on the location, with the south of France and the north of Italy being at the battlefield, but we have a long time ahead of us to negotiate the location.

We started looking online, to see what are the options in terms of vineyard real estate, in order to develop a vague plan for the times ahead. In our surprise, in the era where every piece of information is available online, we found little information about vineyards. Even this little information available, was found on websites developed in a previous internet era, the paleonternetic era as I like to call it. And then the idea came! Maybe it is about time for someone to set up a neonternetic, Web 2.0 site for vineyard real estate. And who is better equipped than Lion Vineyard? His name says it all! Massaging the idea further and looking at the possibilities beyond vineyard real estate, it was apparent that this was not a one-man’s job. On June 30th, 2010, the rights to develop the new LionVineyard.com were transferred to AmberPanther and the idea was put in motion.

Today, the AmberPanther team and myself, are proud to be launching the New LionVineyard.com. Our goal is to pull together information about everything vineyard and wine, and then spread it to the whole world. For myself, personally, I see it as an educative experience. I will be actively involved in all the decision making for Lion Vineyard, hence, I will be learning vineyards in parallel. Twenty years down the road I will be able to make an educated decision on which vineyard and location to invest, transforming the dream into life.

Initially we will be launching the Lion Vineyard Vine Times under the umbrella of the Lion Vineyard Cellar. We are currently working on the development of additional sites that will bring rich content and enhance the visiting experience at Lion Vineyard.
Each of these sites has a specific aim and target. For example the Lion Vineyard Vine Times is all about the news, the happenings, the experiences, and the information from vineyards and wineries to wine to cheese. More to come on the rest… In the meantime stay tuned as Lion Vineyard grows to be the number one vineyard network. We promise you an informative ride.