Monthly Archives: October 2009

WBC 2009 Day 1: Live blogging & tasting, Wine Blogger Awards, Sonoma wines & more!

Art Predator ready to live blog at WBC 09I was up and at ‘em first thing Friday morning July 24 helping Zephyr Wine Adventures and Open Wine Consortium get registration going for all the excited participants of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference.

The Flamingo Hotel lobby was hustle bustle with cases of wines rolling through for set-up in one banquet room for the sponsor reception, and lunch and more wine ready to go in another.

People recognizing each other from twitter and blog handles embraced like the old friends they’ve become via social media–even though many of them had never met in person. Others renewed friendships made at last year’s conference and all the while laptop keys were clicking and iPhones popping.

Art Predator Sports a Spicy Zin Tattoo; photo by John CorcoranAfter the first rush was registered, lunchtime was crazy in a different way: I was being pulled in so many directions!

Getting a Spice Zin tattoo from @insidesonoma…

Tasting Biodynamic wines from Bonny Doon and talking kids with winemaker and President for life Randall Grahm…

Telling the Bottle shock folks how much I enjoyed their movie and appreciated their fine cast…

Collecting a few vinfolio wine tasting books and suggesting they attach a pen to the ribbon bookmark…

Grabbing some mediocre lunch with some exceptional truffles from Sonoma County Winegrape Commission  (who needs lunch anyway when there’s truffles and so much wine to enjoy? ummm, me?)…

Checking back in to make sure registration continued to go smoothly…

Looking out for peoWBC 09 American Wine Blog Awards; Tom Wark presentingple who needed to get registered–and people crashing the party! (You know who you are! VinTank’s Asheley Bellville was certainly eyed with suspicion until we knew who she was!)

After lunch, we settled around tables for the Live Wine Blogging, but since most of us were having difficulties getting online, the American Wine Blogging Awards, organized by Tom Wark of Fermentation and sponsored by Mutineer Magazine, came first. Winners received as a trophy beautiful etched decanters by Reidel.

The winners were announced back in March so there were no surprises in who won trophies. Now who received the trophies and how they did it was a bit more fun and listening to them say a few words was well worthwhile–especially since Cellar Rat provided us with some of his stellar syrah to toast the winners with! (One of the best of the weekend, according to Ken Payton on Sunday.)

American Wine Blog Award Winners

Wineblogawards According to Tom Wark, on his blog Fermentation,

“The winners in the seven categories each had to be nominated first, then be chosen as finalists by a panel of judges, then be judged both by the public as well as by the same set of judges. There was most certainly some vetting going on.


Best Wine Writing On a Blog
 VINOGRAPHY

Best Graphics or PresentationWBC 09 wineblogAwardsSM
THE GOOD GRAPE

Best Single Subject Blog
LENNDEVOURS

Best Business/Industry Blog
THE WINE COLLECTOR

Best Winery Blog
MICHEL-SCHLUMBERGER’S “BENCHLAND BLOG”

Best Wine Reviews
BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD

Best Overall Blog
VINOGRAPHY

Alder Yarrow of Vinography acceptance speech came to us via a video due to show up on YouTube and which I will link to ASAP!

The sponsors of the American Wine Blog Awards are
RIEDEL CRYSTAL
MUTINEER MAGAZINE
OPENWINE CONSORTIUM

Next up: Live Wine Blogging. Unfortunately, the wifi continued to be a challenge for many, including me. In fact, getting online was a challenge on and off all weekend as many of us wanted to have several windows open at a time in order to blog, tweet, and who knows what all else. The upshot is I actually lost several live blog posts as well as tweets and finally resorted to taking notes in word. Others used old fashioned pen and paper, but somehow I didn’t have any nearby when I was in need!

For the Live Blogging event, the idea was that every five minutes a new wine and winery would come to the table and pour so we could taste, tweet, and blog while listening to the wine rep who was often the wine maker. Then, rotate! Next wine please! Continue reading →

WBC 09: visiting Ridge & other adventures before the conference

In this post “Art PredaBaby Beluga VW Westy at Ridgetor/Wine Predator  Off to the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma” I describe how I found a way to get into the already full Wine Blogger’s Conference.

From my post “Some winery inspired poetry from Ridge’s blog”.

On my way up to the  Wine Bloggers Conference 2009 in Santa Rosa Sonoma County CA, I stopped at Ridge Winery. Even though Ridge is probably my favorite winery in Caliornia, partly because I got my start there and partly because they make GREAT wine, I haven’t been back since my last day working in the tasting room a million years ago.

It’s changed quite a bit. For one, there is a tasting room, not just a picnic table set up outside. And there are lots more picnic tabl up on the Ridge at Ridge in the Santa Cruz Mountains es, many of them under a shade structure.

The views are the same–spectacular–and so is the wine. Honestly, I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels up there close to the sky, looking out over the fog fingers to the mountains ringing the SF Bay. And the wine, everything I tasted was lovely, full of perfect impressions of pleasure onto my palate.

I was spurred to visit for several reasons, one being that I discovered Ridge’s blog recently–it was started only a few months ago–and I really liked the writing there.

So I was overjoyed when, even though the tasting room is officially only open on weekends, they let me in–and I spent some time tasting wine and talking wine, writing, and blogging with tasting room manager and chief Ridge blogger, Christopher Watkins, who has an MFA in poetry.Ridge tasting area

For his one year anniversary at Ridge, he posted a series of poems about life about there. So, in honor of the Wine Blogger’s Conference, and for this week’s edition of the poetry train, instead of offering some of my poetry, I give you Christopher Watkins, who I will be nominating for a wine blogger award next year. Enjoy.

Crisp autumn morning;
a deer heart’s worth of inno-
cence stirs my soul.

In a clearing, the
new wind reminds me, you can
fall off a mountain.

At the insistence
of the wind, thin mountain brush
fidgets, pointing east.

Birdless, the wind-swept
air; snakeless, the cold, dry soil;
empty, my mouth, of words.

As might a painter’s
palette imitate the sky,
I try the mountain.

The wind, stripping our
revisions away, reveals
the first masterpiece.

Stone greets vine-root, brush
greets breeze, sun greets fog  — Grateful,
I take autumn’s hand.

If terroir is a
sense of place, then my soul is
a moveable wine.

From my post “On the way to WBC 2009”:

Following my nostalgic tasting adventure at Ridge on Thursday–a minerally, bright, balanced food friendly 07 S Cruz Mountains chard, a lively young Dry Creek 07 zin full of black fruit, a 07 Paso Robles zin from 85 year old vines smoother and full of red fruits like cranberry and raspberry, followed by two zin splits: a lively, minty 07 Geyserville zin, and ending with a 06 rich, thick, creamy and yet puckery Lytton  Springs–”Baby Beluga” (that’s the name of my 90 white Westy VW van you see in the Ridge lot) and I continued up 101 to Santa Rosa to help conference organizer Reno Walsh and a few other volunteers stuff 265 True-ly nifty natural fiber wine bags with goodies. I can’t wait to try the Kachina Port with the chocolates from the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission or the Pinot Noir Chocolate cherries from Bouchaine using one of several openers we received while reviewing info on one of several removable drives!)

I was going to have a quiet evening reviewing the materials in my bag and munching on chocolates. But then Joel Vincent, one of the organizers and the man behind the Open Wine Consortium, invited me to join a group for dinner at a restaurant he found using Yelp and Twitter.

Ten of us walked down from the Flamingo Hotel to Monti’s restaurant where, as soon as we were seated, everyone turned over their menus to look at the wine list! Now that’s a first for me, and very fun to hear everyone’s comments. To celebrate Continue reading →

Wine Blogger’s Conference 2009: Round up the posts!

Here’s a round up of what I posted over on my Art Predator blog. Many of these posts were “live blogged” meaning I wrote them during the session and posted them during the session then added to them as the session progressed and cleaned them up immediately after. If you want to read them in the order I wrote and posted them, start at the bottom and work you way up. If you want to read the narrative as it occurred, read the posts above going up. Continue reading →

Wine Blogger’s Conference 2009

So in July I attended the 2009 Wine Bloger’s Conference and I live blogged about it on one of my other blogs, Art Predator. I figure it’s about time to get those posts over here, so in the next few days, I’ll post them. Enjoy!

Regional Wine Week, Meet Blog Action Day on Climate Change 2009!

nowtopia_cover_4x6web by Chris CarlssonThree books that I’m into right now are perfect companions to Blog Action Day on Climate Change 2009 — Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today by Chris Carlsson (AK Press 2008), Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration edited by Chris Carlsson (AK Press 2002) and Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne (Penguin 2009). Critical Mass edited by Chris Carlsson

And while you’re relaxing enjoying a book about how to combat climate change by getting out of your car and riding a bike or by growing your own food and supporting local agriculture, or by using biodiesel or by signing a petition or by preparing to speak out at a public meeting or by writing a blog post or by any number of different actions…

Why not ALSO participate in regional wine week? Try out being a locavore by eating locally produced foods and be a locapour with what you drink! Learn more about Regional Wine Week from Thea Dwelle aka @WineBratSF from her blog post here.

My choice for a locapour tonight would be the Indigena Syrah by Vino V which is produced about 10 miles away from me with the grapes grown about 6o miles away and where winemaker Michael Meagher experimented with indigenous yeasts which would have gone great with the potato, carrot and onion soup made from vegies from our CSA (consumer supported agriculture). Another choice for me would be wines from Casa Barranca which are locally produced wines made from organically grown grapes.

How are you changing YOUR lifestyle to combat climate change and participate in being part of the solution instead of the problem?Re

Blogs Aren’t Dead: Some Statistics

Blogs Aren’t Dead…

cartoon by Hugh McLeod of Gaping Voidcartoon by Hugh McLeod of Gaping Void

Here’s an extended discussion of this cartoon by famed Stormhoek wine marketer and the issues it raises on Art Predator.

Blog World 2009 is going on now in Las Vegas; there’s also a Las Vegas WordCamp. Would that I could be there! Instead, I will post relevant info as I come across it.

In the meantime, here are some stunning statistics from last year about the State of the Blogosphere:

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Important Blogging Statistics PDF Print

Wine Blogging Weds #62: By Any Other Name–Primitivo? Zinfandel?

Sobon Family Wine Primitivo and Old Vine ZinIt started with some tweet I saw on twitter that caught my attention, some conversation about primitivo, a varietal I’d heard of but only tasted in a barrel sample at Old Creek Road Winery which surprised me because it tasted nothing like its clone, zinfandel. Nothing. Really.

So I joined the conversation and next thing I know @sobonwine is asking if I’d like to try it and if so he needed my address to send me a bottle. Sure thing I say! Send it to my cellar at my mom’s house!

“Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you,” says my mom one day. “There’s some wine here for you. A small box. Sawbawn?”

Now if she’d said primitivo I would have known right away.   But she didn’t because 1) she didn’t open the box and 2) she doesn’t drink wine or give a fig about it so I had to flip through the files in my brain and then I had a suspect: could it be the Sobon primitivo had actually arrived?

Not only was it the Sobon Primitivo, but Robert Sobon also sent me a bottle of their Old Vines Zinfandel from Amador County to try. Did he snoop around my blog and see I was a sucker for old vine zins? One of my favorite zins from when I worked at Ridge was Amador County’s Fiddletown, and of course Sobon produces wines from there–they even have a vineyard right next to the one where Ridge sources their wines.

Plus Robert Sobon sent both wines not knowing that the next Wine Blogging Wednesday prompt from host Dale Cruse would be “A Wine by Any Other Name.” We both got lucky!

Since my dear friend Jane was in town from Long Island and going to be joining us for dinner on Tuesday night, I knew I had not one, but three people to join in and lend their opinions. So last night in the rain, we decided to bring the wine with us to Ferraros, our favorite local Italian restaurant since I suspected the primitivo would pair wonderfully with their flavorful spicy red sauce.

Our server opened the wine for a $10 corkage and although I offered a taste to Betty Ferraro a few times, she passed it up leaving more for us (too bad daughter Sarah wasn’t there–I know she would have loved a sample!)

Admittedly, Ferraro’s doesn’t have the fanciest wine glasses, and the lighting is dim, but once we got over the first shock of alcohol (15%), the wine opened up a little and we all kept saying how good it was, and how much it didn’t taste like zinfandel. It was almost like we were surprised by how good and interesting it was. It went great with our salads with blue cheese dressing, with our garlic bread and then with our entrees: Jane and I had manicotti with meat sauce on special and the Big Monkey had rigoletti with broccoli and a side of red sauce. My husband, who often makes fun of my passion for wine, kept refilling his and our glasses until I had to remove the bottle from the table so I could be sure to have some to compare with the zin!

Sobon Family Wines is a “Green Drink” as Sobon Estate is a family-owned winery with a reputation for producing the best possible wines using low-yield viticulture and minimum intervention wine making techniques; the wines are made with their own sustainably-grown grapes which “reflect the unique Shenandoah Valley terroir, resulting in a richness and intensity rarely seen elsewhere” according to their website.

Practicing sustainability is important to me, but the bottom line is whether a wine is any good or not which we established that yes it was verygood and then the next order of business is: what did it taste like? Jane and I agreed we thought the primitivo was earthy, smoky, musky, rich, heavy; the fruit reminded me almost like black cherry cola, the sweetness of root vegetables like beets. These are not any of the descriptors I remember ever having used for a zin. And it was fabulous with the food.

Then we came home, threw the kids in the bath, and I opened the Old Vines Zin. Now this is a zin and it tastes like a zin. My first reaction was “ahhhh” and then there was floral…old vines, the roses and violets of an older graceful woman, old zin, yes, I thought to myself. Lots of stone fruit, Jane and I agreed, and it was clearly red plum for me, none of that typical brambleness I expect to find in the Dry Creek Valley zins I love. Even though this zin is 14.9% alcohol, close to the primitivo, we didn’t experience the alcohol as much, possibly because our house is cooler than the warm restaurant. We were all amazed that this retails in the $10-15 range.

The color is clearly different as well. The primitivo has more of a golden tone to it than the zin which is more purely pinks. The primitivo isn’t the more rusty hue of an older vintage, but more golden in contrast to the pink of the zin. There’s more depth to the color of the primitivo as well.

Sobon suggest pairing the primitivo wine with lamb, and I’d be tempted to try it with lamb cooked on the grill. I could also see it with mushrooms. Possibly the best pairing would be a pizza with mushrooms and lamb…

Definitely going to have to have this primitivo again and see!

BTW, the Primitivo, which has won two gold medals, retails between $20 and $25, and as I mentioned at the beginning, Robert Sobon was generous enough to send me the bottles so I could try them.

Thanks to Dale Cruse for the great  “Wine Blogging Wednesday” prompt! In a few days, he’ll offer a round up of all the wines reviewed by participants so go check it out!