Category Archives: how to

(WBC 11) Sharing the Wine Wealth Part 2

Sharing the OWC Wealth Part 2: Trick or Treat!

Hey there friends and fellow wine enthusiasts!

This is no trick, it’s all treat–I spent last weekend at the First Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa and scored a bunch of open wines including a motherlode of  Dry Creek Valley zins!

These wines were opened Friday so they need to be enjoyed soon! Want to come help me taste and evaluate them??

I’ll set out some crackers, cheese, apples, bread, vegies, that sort of thing, then when we’re ready, I’ll throw some pasta on and Kathy’s going to pick up marinara at Ferrarros (both meat and vegie).  Kathy’s also going to make a salad.

Since both Kathy and the Big Monkey just had birthdays, we’ll put some candles on a cake (I’m thinking cheese cake with home canned cherries and fresh blueberries actually).  SHHH! That part’s a surprise!

Looking forward to seeing you and hearing what you think about these wines!

ml, g

So went the email I sent to about 15 friends. Ten wine enthusiasts came over the other night, and in the course of the evening, we polished off the remnants of eight Dry Creek Valley zins and tasted two pinot noirs from two continents.

I laid the zins out on a table with a black cloth to hide wine spills and to carry out the Halloween Trick or Treat theme. The boy and I had put out Halloween decorations the week before, but I added a few more before the party so it was quite the festive scene.

But it was the table laden with alphabetized dry Creek Valley zins which got all the attention from the adults! (The children of course were transfixed by the led motorized pirate ship…) And it didn’t take long for us to choose our glasses and get to tasting.

In addition to collecting these wines from the conference, there was a pile of 20 or so tasting sheets from the meal I didn’t get to eat and the wines I didn’t get to taste, so since I’d brought them home for scratch paper, we used the backs of those sheets for our notes providing an intro to other Dry Creek wines as well as a place for our notes.

I’d also gathered up all the handouts that were lying around the sweet zin suite, and was able to supply those informational sheets for almost everyone. I had maps out and I showed everyone where the Dry Creek valley was, and set the scene. I had the laptop up with info from Dry Creek also but we never went there. It would have been wonderful to have someone like Nick Gorevic of Wine Scholarship lead us, but I think I muddled along quite well!

Here’s a quick run down of our tasting notes with some general info as possible:

Bella Vineyard and Wine Caves: 2006 100% DCV zin, 15% alcohol $35.
Smoke right away (tar?), dark cherry, blackberry, smooth and silky yet “jazzy.” Hangs around.

Copain 2003 Arrowhead Mountain Zin 14.8
Smoother, a little smoke like smoked salmon, barn, leather, hay, thick.

Dutcher Crossing 2006 Maple Vineyard DCV 91% Zin, 9% Petit Sirah; old vines 14.8%
i was reminded right away of the light rose raspberry currant spice of carnation vanilla natural perfumed scent of an old beautiful elegant refined woman smiling, and I couldn’t shake her. Maybe it was the time of year, here on the heels of Halloween, but I couldn’t help but like her and want to know her better. (Jock’s favorite?  He worked as a sommelier at the Ranch House in Ojai 30 years ago…)

Mauritson 2005 Growers Reserve DCV Zin 15.5
Very fruity, muddy, hard to taste after the Dutcher

Mauritson 2006 DCV Zin Rockpile Ridge 15.5
Clear sense of cherry, bramble

Fritz 2006 14.6% DCV Zin
Butterscotch, black fruit, hay, leather. Lots going on.

Pedroncelli 2006 14.6%
This wine went really really well with dinner! Very satisfying and pleasurable! Easy going yet meaty and smooth.

Talty 2005 Zin Estate 15.0%
I remember really liking this one: peppery, complex, intriguing, a conversation starter of a wine

(I’ll come back and add links to more of the wineries when I get a chance…)

So here’s my latest idea for an income stream: organize regional wine tastings to go. You could order a tasting for 12 say, of Dry Creek Valley zins, or wines in general, along with tasting notes and other info from the region. This could be done for every appellation in California and beyond! I’ll leave the northeast for Lenn Thompson if he wants it!

Even better, to work with other folks in the Open Wine consortium to pull this together, drawing on different people’s areas of expertise, and giving them a shout out, for example, doing an Austrian ed pack of biodynamic wines from Anthony Nicalo Farmstead. Or working with David Strada and his New Zealand wines.

While I may not be the most sophisticated or knowledgeable person out there in wine, I do know my way around educating adults after teaching college and yoga for 20 years!

Hmmn, maybe this idea is so obvious it’s already out there. But it is a bit of a complicated idea to pull off well to provide the service of connecting people to a wide variety of regions in a consistent way. If it is out there, I sure haven’t run across it during the last six months of world wide web wine wanders. Then again, I wasn’t looking for it specifically.

Please let me know if you know anything I should know!

(WBC Post 2) Gary Vaynerchuk’s advice: how to make $100,000

WBC: Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote “How To Make $100,000 Blogging”

At the last minute I heard from organizer Allan Wright that I could get into the (busting at the seams full!) First Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa, California. I arrived right in the middle of Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote address–and watched the plates get cleared, the creme brulee served, and the port poured…for everyone but me as I stood on the sidelines and drooled. No clean glasses in sight for water or wine–either one would have worked for me after the 7 hour long drive. Admittedly, Allan had warned me there might not be a seat at a table or food for me, but my goodness, I did expect to find a glass of wine while I listened to Gary’s enthusiastic address!

While some of the conference was devoted exclusively to wine, quite a few of the ideas transport easily to other on-line communities, and I will focus on those ideas here.

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk’s claims to fame are broad and bold–at least in the world of blogging, and especially wine blogging. His bio on his site says:

On February 21, 2006, Gary launched Wine Library TV (WLTV), a free daily video blog in which Gary tastes and reviews wines.  Gary made television appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and The Ellen Degeneres Show, and he has garnered widespread media recognition including features by the LA Times and Washington Post. In February and March of 2008, Gary became increasingly known throughout the Web 2.0 community. His remarks on branding within the social media landscape at FOWA, Strategic Profits, and South By Southwest occasioned praise from established web denizens including Kathy Sierra and earned the admiration of countless bloggers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Gary even made headlines with an impromptu free wine party during South by Southwest.

At the Wine Bloggers Conference, Gary suggests that

10-20% of our time as bloggers should be spent building community.

That means visiting other bloggers and leaving comments etc. Where to find the time? a winemaker asked. Stop looking at your stats, he joked, and cut back more on sleep, he said not kidding.

Now I don’t imagine that winemaker spends much time on the naval gazing phenomena of so-called “stats analysis” (at least that’s how I justify my time there!) We all have the same challenge of figuring out how to prioritize the amount of time in the day we are each allotted–24 hours, no way of cheating on that.

In order to have a healthy developing, growing blog with more and more readers, he argued, we must participate in our communities.

And we must blog regularly–at least once every day. As I reported in an earlier post, he asked how many blog. Of the 200 or so people there, about 160-180 people raised their hands. When he asked how many post daily, with daily defined as 5 days a week, only about 10 hands were raised, with my hand one of them. I try to post every day, and to have almost as many posts as there are days in a month. I have found the more often I post, the more traffic I get, and I’ve been able to develop an audience of both new and regular readers and 30,500 page views over this, my first year of blogging (my first blogoversary is election day!)

People perked up quite a bit when he talked about monetizing blogs.

Any wine blogger can make six figures in ad revenue in 2009, claims Gary Vaynerchuk.

Note that he didn’t say EVERY wine blogger can make six figures in 2009. Note that he didn’t say it would be easy. It’s not easy. It’s a lot of work making $100,000 a year blogging–the drinking of wine may be a breeze but selling advertising is not. He suggests bloggers make cold calls or cold emails and sell ads on their sites.

If a potential client doesn’t get social media, then move on–don’t bother arguing with someone who is going to get left behind. Instead find those who do get social media, and cultivate that relationship. Many people in all industries are misspending their marketing budgets, using pre-web 2.0 models. It is up to us to figure out ways to sell space and pimp ads on our sites, and in the process, change the way the world does business.

Blogging is the greenest way to advertise.

Important questions for any blogger to consider include:

  • what’s your goal with your blog?

  • what do you want out of it?

  • global or regional?

  • how can I mix it up?

  • what’s my “real” job?

  • how can I kick ass and create cool shit?

Next up: Adventures with Dry Creek Valley Zins and what to do when alone in a roomful of New Zealnd wines? Scoop them up! (Let’s hope I don’t get in too much trouble for revealing these secrets from the First Wine Bloggers Conference!)

(WBC Post 1) Wine Predator Drinks Up 1st Wine Bloggers Conference

Wine Predator Drinks Up 1st Wine Bloggers Conference

I’m drinking an iced coffee on a warm sunny day in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, from the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel, host of the First Wine Bloggers Conference and watching cases of wine roll by which they are opening rapidy as they set up for the next tasting of Sonoma wines.

Wine bloggers wander around a bit dazed; the women all seem to be drinking coffee as we all gear up for more wine! I seem to be the only person publicly bloggging; maybe people are in their rooms writing but I doubt it. Last night when Gary Vaynerchuk gave the keynote, he asked how many people in the room have a blog and most of them raised their hands–probably 150 of the 180 people in the room. But when he asked how often people post, only 10 of us post 5 or more times a week. (And yes, I was one of the 10!)

Since I drove in last night (in the new wonderful soon to be written up car!), I have tasted 10 or so Zinfandels from the Dry Creek Valley,  tasted a half dozen wines from New Zealand, walked through the organic and biodynamic winery Quivera with the winemaker Steve Cantor,  enjoyed an incredible lunch of local foods and venison navy bean soup and Quivera wines, and followed by two breakout sessions. My head swims with wine and wine words.

Adventures and details to follow soon–after I taste some more Sonoma County wines! After that, we have dinner tonight at Sebastiani with keynote speaker Alice Feiring author The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization which I recently devoured and can’t recommend highly enough!

Am having a fantabulous time–wish you were here!

P.S. Since they ran out of nametags, I get to wear my Lettre Sauvage letterpress beautiful card around my neck!!

Welcome to Wine Predator!

I’m the Wine Predator aka the Art Predator and I will be your guide to stalking, finding, and slurping delightful affordable and drinkable wines!

I love to travel, camp, and eat and drink well, and I will share my adventures in dining and drinking and  unusual places! Some of these posts I will import from one of my other blogs, Art Predator.

I’m no wine snob–merely someone who loves wine and writing, and who wants to learn more about wine while writing about it. My wine posts will cover some beginning basics and help us all grow to enjoy wine with more sensitivity and sophistication. I especially love good deals on great wines!

Bring on your questions! If I don’t know the answer, I wil find it!