"Best in the World" award for book on Chinese Wineries.

--> At the international Cookbook Fair in Beijing, China, Janis Miglavs—that's me—received the “Best in the World” award for my most recent book China: The New Wine Frontier.

But the best part of getting the award: the Chinese publisher flew me from Sherwood, Oregon, to Beijing, China, in business class.  

See this big grin on my face, that’s because this was the first publisher to ever fly me anywhere, let alone China, and business class.  You  should see all the different kinds of wine Air Canada offers on Business Class.

For those who couldn't guess, that's me on the far right trying to tell the photographer how to use my camera. I also had to give a 30 second speech. And for those who have never seen me dressed up, I brought an appropriate jacket, but it was too darn hot in Beijing.

After all the people left, the publisher made me sign a stack of books even after I told them that would decrease the value of the 2.2 kilogram tome. It just dawned on me that I should have signed in Chinese characters instead of Latvian.

China: The Wild New Wine Frontier

This is Chateau Huadong Parry in Shandong Province. General Manager thinks that for China, this winery is too small.

WA Wine Tour Guide cover

Wow, did you see the great shot on the new Washington Wine Tour Guide? 

Oh, wait, that's my photograph.

Epic Journey of Spiritual Discovery

When I look back at my behind-the-scenes adventures while gathering Ancient Myths and Architypal Dreams from Africa's most remote tribes, the stories are amazing. For example, one night I hear a lion roaring while I'm reading Shakespeare in my little backpacking tent at the edge of a Karo tribe village along the Omo River. Hearing that lion roar was a truly a reality shift for me.  This wasn't a zoo.  The next roar is closer. Then closer.  Do something. I looked around my tent to make sure that I didn't have any food inside. (Later a friend reminded me that indeed I was the food.) 

Come to the Epic Journey Presentation to hear how the story ends.

(Above) This is the Konso tribe village called Busso, one of my favorite villages in all of Africa.

(Above) The Konso tribe witch doctor has a region-wide reputation of being able to pull out evil spirits to cure diseases. So in the interest of spiritual science, I had to go and check him out. 

He wanted to charge me to take photographs, but he wanted some professional photographs of himself.  When he told me his fee, I replied in a very surprised voice, that my fee was exactly the same. What to do? He wouldn't give in, nor would I. Finally, the culture minister who was traveling with us, paid the fees. He actually wanted the witch doctor perform magic on him.

This boy had severe headaches before he went to the witch doctor and reported that he felt better after the "operation." Unfortunately, I never did a long term follow  up.

 (Above) This is the evil spirit the witch doctor pulled from the subject. Looks pretty nasty; so does the witch doctor's hand.

(Above) On my first visit to Busso in 2001, I photographed an old man. I printed lots of the photographs I snapped during that first trip and took them with me on the second trip. It turns out the old man had died. When I gave the photograph to the son, he cried. It was the only thing he had to remember his father. That's the power of photography.


Epic Journey of Spiritual Discovery live presentation
July 1, 2012   4:00 to 5:30pm
Mumm Napa Gallery 
8445 Silverado Trail
Rutherford, CA 94573
RSVP  707-967-7740 

Getting to the CiZhong Vineyard

Working on the Yunnan section of my Chinese Winery book today.

It took us almost three days along this road to get to Cizhong Church and vineyard that I wanted to include in the ShangriLa winery shoot. The church was originally built by French missionaries in 1867. The missionaries are buried in the nearby cemetery.