Let’s toast to 2010! And to YOU! Thank you for being a reader of Wine Predator in 2009!
What a year it was! I mean, gosh, I went to PORTUGAL as a wine blogger thanks to Enoforum Wines and Jo Diaz at WineBlog.org! How can 2010 be better? That’s absolutely the best thing that’s happened to me as a blogger–that and meeting fabulous people like Jo, and everyone at Enoforum, and Twisted Oak’s Jeff Stai, and Marcy Gordon, and oh, so many more wonderful wine bloggers and wine folks here in the US and in Portugal! Drinking lots of wonderful wines has its rewards as well!
As Wine Predator/Art Predator, I frequently participated in Wine Blogging Wednesday each month and
–blogged about Macworld in January on a press pass,
–submitted a video application to blog about the Great Barrier Reef in February,
–kept rolling in March and April including a trip to Yosemite
–attended WordCamp SF in May,
–submitted a video application to blog as the Murphy-Goode Lifestyle correspondent in June
–attended my second North American Wine Bloggers Conference in July
–helped people prepare for Burning Man in August
–went to Burning Man for the 17th time in September and blogged about tastings I held there with wines from Michel-Schlumberger, Twisted Oak, Bonny Doon, and Vino V (watch for another blog post about this escapade soon!)
–attended my first European Wine Bloggers Conference in Portugal in October thanks to Enoforum,
–blogged about the Alentejo region of Portugal in November
–and kept on keeping on in December!
So, let’s have another toast (with a nicely balanced brut J cuvee 20–a not sweet, fresh crisp gently bubbling Sonoma County sparkler from the Russian River Valley!) to the New Year, a new blog URL (http://winepredator.com) and YOU! (Because without YOU, it would get rather boring just sitting here writing to myself…!)
And one last toast–to more adventures in wine! What will 2010 bring for the Wine Predator? And you?
The Wine Blogging Wednesday prompt for December comes from Twisted Oak Winery’s El Jefe–
who naturally adds a twist to it. The point, he says of this WBW, is to come up with your own holiday pairings, and to have fun:
Pick any winter holiday or observance EXCEPT Hanukkah, Christmas Day, Kwanzaa, or New Years Day or Eve, and choose a wine to celebrate it! For purposes of this WBW, the holiday date chosen must be between December 7, 2009 and January 7, 2010. You may also pair a food with your chosen holiday and wine, but that is optional. Here’s the complete Wine Blogging Wednesday #64 prompt on El Jefe’s blog.
So my holiday was a Winter Solstice Santacon which we celebrated on Sunday December 20 with a pre-Santacon brunch serving a BBQ ham. I wanted to serve a sparkling shiraz but it was easier for me to conjure up 25 men, women, and children in Santa suits on bikes than a sparkling shiraz at any price point. I did have a “Biker” zin that seemed appropriate, a Poema cava and a friend promised to bring some sparkling wine and orange juice. So I left it up to the potluck gods to see what came: a bottle of Zonin Proseco which we opened as well as the Poema Cava which ended up on the ride with us.
But what I was curious about, what I wanted to open but didn’t, was the Four Vines 2007 zinfandel “biker” from Paso Robles. Not only was the wine appropriately named for a Santacon Bike Ride, but I was curious how it would go with ham, and just plain curious about it. I’m a huge fan of zinfandel in general, and I love what Eberle does with the varietal so much that I was a member there for a while. (In fact, I have a bottle of 1999 Eberle zin I just found in the cellar; I imagine I need to drink it up soon!)
And there was the fact that Wine Spectator had talked about this wine back in February and tempted me, then in December it showed up on the WS 2009 Top 100 list and my local wine shop had it–so I bought a bottle.
So on Tuesday night, with Wine Blogging Wednesday looming, and only a Zonin Proseco and a Poema cava to brag about in my Santacon post, I broke open the bottle to enjoy with the last bit of Santacon ham, and to imagine how it might have been on Sunday with the Santacon.
Now, we don’t usually drink $20 wines on a week night. In fact, on our budget we don’t often drink $20 wines. But I knew this wine was not going to last long at The Ventura Wine Store and I’d just got an email saying they’d received a few more bottles. I wanted to go for it and buy a few more but figured I’d best taste this one first, you know, to be sure…
Well it was FABULOUS! From my first tentative swirl, sniff, and sip, I was telling the Big Monkey, wow, this stuff is really good! Lots of nice zinfandel character and color: a nice deep cherry red, nicely balanced, some dusty blackberry charm, some cedar, a wonderfully long finish.
Best–it was AMAZING with the ham. The spice and fruit in the zin brought out the spice –especially the clove and sweet smoky flavors in the BBQ ham. It tasted decided different with this wine that it had before. And what an great difference. When they talk about the chemistry of wine and food interacting on your palate, it’s easy to roll your eyes. The Big Monkey didn’t plan to have any wine at all; we thought he’d have some on Weds or Thurs when he’d be off the next day.
But on my insistence, he tasted it. And loved it, even though he’s more of a cab or cab/syrah kind of guy. He liked it so much that when I ran off to hear Dottie Grossman and Michael Vlatkovixh perform with my pal Jeff Kaiser sitting in, he drank up most of the bottle that we’d intended to save!
This well-balanced baby had plenty of structure and tannin to put down for awhile (but how long?) so I left it with the cap on to see how it would hold up. The last half glass on Friday night indicated that by Saturday night it would be a bit too flat and blah.
So really, the bottom line is, this wine hits the spot. It really does. It’s absolutely wonderful for a holiday dinner dominated by ham (New Year’s anyone?) and it’s forgiving for most sides.
As others might be interested in hearing some notes comparing and contrasting the various blogging and tech conferences I’ve attended in the past 18 months, I thought I’d expand a little, edit a little, and post those notes here–with an emphasis on the three Wine Bloggers Conferences I’ve attended of course.
Overall I suspect what’s MOST IMPORTANT to me and to many of my fellow tech oriented conference attendees is reliable wireless–being able to get on-line to tweet, blog, facebook, all that fun social media stuff when we want, are inspired or have the time.
The Wine Bloggers Conferences have failed on this three times now. Thankfully, at the EWBC, my host Enoforum Wines came through by providing Jo Diaz and I portable wireless devices which come with minutes. Jo used hers extensively; I had better luck getting on-line in my hotel rooms then she did–I admit I wasted way too much time on it, especially at the hotel where the EWBC was held. Too often I was trying to get on-line when I would have preferred attending the conference. I did end up paying for internet my last night in Lisbon: 12 hours for about $25 US.
At MacWorld in SF last January 2009 I found it was somewhat reliable around the Moscone conference center but my best bet was getting a press pass and getting online there–they knew enough to make sur ethat if anyone could get on-line it should be the press! I imagine they’ll ahve it dialed in for 2010–not sure yet if I’ll be there to see.
SF WordCamp 2008 and 2009 had PLENTY so we could all have as many windows open doing as much as we wanted all at the same time. Somehow they’ve been able to handle the needs of 700 tweeters blogging and bloggers tweeting; unfortunately, LA WordCamp did not quite have enough but the main problem was that we got kicked off if we didn’t upload anything after 10 minutes. I tracked down someone who could address that so the wireless worked much better in the afternoon.
IN DEPTH ED: At EWBC, I loved the day where we went on the cork forest tour with lunch and tastings followed by a visit to a cork plant. The day offered less drinking and tasting but lots of learning and camaraderie. This intensive, deep learning experience that really stuck with me, and others as well.
GRAND TASTING: As I mentioned in the video, I loved the grand hosted tasting Charles Metcalf did at EWBC. This should be a part of every WBC. Since the next WBC is in Walla Walla Washington, maybe they should have someone who really knows Washington and/or Oregon and/or Canadian wines. Or hey, why not Metcalf and Portuguese wines? Metcalf was fabulously entertaining…and I’d love to taste more Portuguese wines!
SESSIONS: At the EWBC 09, I admit I was very jetlagged Saturday morning and trying to get on-line in my hotel room, and so I missed the first morning sessions Saturday. I missed Friday’s sessions completely as I arrived Friday evening for dinner (about 11pm). I feel like I got more out of the conference sessions themselves at the NAWBC. I think they were more sophisticated, but then again I could have been too jetlagged to get much. I learned more from the sessions in 2008 but then I was still very new to blogging, social media, and wine back then (I’m still new but not nearly!)
SESSIONS 2 I missed Wine Academy of Spain Esteban Cabeza’s sherry, port and madeira tasting on Friday at EWBC as I was enroute but he kindly gave me a brief tutorial. These wines blew my mind. The NAWBC should definitely consider having him do his presentation at the NAWBC in WA as these wines are unknown and unappreciated by many in the US. I am still puzzling over madeira and sherry. Maybe if they were more appreciated here, good ones could be found more easily. (I just found an excellent Solera 1847 oloroso sherry from a local Henry Wine Group distributer. He admitted I couldn’t even buy it around here–I was able to buy it via a tasting at a local restaurant). It’d be great to have some American examples as well–I’d love to try Twisted Oak’s Pig Stai with a Port from Portugal.
KEYNOTES I loved the NAWBC keynotes in 2008 (Alice Feiring and Gary Vaynerchuk) and 2009 I enjoyed having a lunchtime keynote or morning like in 2009–Barry Schuler was unexpectedly brilliant.
BEST? I appreciated in 2009 just relaxing and enjoying the incredible dinner and wine and more intimate gathering and company at Pine Ridge after a long stimulating day instead of having a keynote! The meal at Pine Ridge was one of the best I’ve had in my life.
GIFT BAGS The gift bags at EWBC were slim compared to NAWBC but a lot of the stuff in the NAWBC bag was just “stuff” that I basically recycled.
BRINGING IT HOME 1: Since I live in California and can drive there and back, I’ve been able to bring lots of wine home, open bottles to taste with more leisure and samples. At EWBC I didn’t know how to get any of the wines and bring them back. I went to a grocery store and was overwhelmed and didn’t see much that I had tasted. While in Portugal, I tasted all these amazing wines that now I can’t find in my hometown in California!
BRINGING IT HOME 2 One of the best things a winery did in my three conferences: Michel-Schlumberger gave bloggers who went there on the wine hike a 50% discount; most people on the tour took them up on the offer. I’d encourage the wineries to go even deeper with discounts knowing that we’ll tweet, talk, taste, blog about the wines. So in the gift bags, maybe have a coupon code for deeply discounted wines. Not everyone is swimming in free samples (or wants to be).
BLENDING: This didn’t happen at EWBC or NAWBC but I’ve noticed a lot of interest in blending and blending activities on twitter. I know some WBC participants went to Twisted Oak to do some blending before the conference and that sounded like great fun. I think it would be a blast to do a blending activity/exercise/tasting as an official part of a WBC and EWBC too. I think I would learn a lot about wine/winemaking in the process and it would be fun. We could do it as teams–not self-selected teams but random so we’d meet new people–then we could try and rate the other team’s wine and figure out what was in it!! It would be even better if we could get a bottle of the blend to take home (for free or discounted). Maybe a few of the area wineries would be interested in hosting something like that.
I sent along some other ideas as well but I think 1200 words is enough on this subject!
Ryan Opaz of http://www.catavino.net is moderating a panel on “Social Media Brand Future: New Technologies, New Media, and Publishing” with Esteban Cabezas, Marcio Ferreira, and Evelyn Resnick.
It’s a time of disruption, certainly, as marketing professionals and the products they represent try to find their way in a topsy-turvy world where they no longer get to tell consumers what to think about a product and what to do. Consumers can find out for themselves and expect to be part of a conversation. But how can, how will this all play out?
With help from folks like Ryan Opaz who is bridging the gap by organizing events like the EWBC, suggests Esteban Cabezas of the Wine Academy of Spain. And more people like him (and Esteban too!). We have to get personal, he also says. And that can be uncomfortable for businesses.
Consumers go to the net looking for help in finding find their wine nirvana. Wine bloggers help them do this, points out a woman in the audience.
What’s the role of the wine writer versus the role of the wine blogger? Both are “publishing.”
Big debate raging on who is a professional wine blogger and what that might mean.
As Jo Diaz put it in a tweet, “wineries are having a hard time making sense of all of this media power. Who owns the rights to tell consumers what they’ll like?”
Check out @wineblog.org which is Jo Diaz on twitter for more of her tweets about this session and others. She’s a great tweeter and caught some of the finer points of today’s discussion. She’s also blogging from the conference so go to Jo Diaz’s blog what she’s seeing and saying!
How can you bring quality traffic to your site by assisting search engines in finding it? That’s the topic for the next session at the European Wine Bloggers Conference with Doug Cook of Able Grape’s presentation on Search Engine Friendliness conveniently available for you to see on his site, Able Grape. I will be live blogging as best I can depending on my access to the internet.
Is more traffic better? Doug Cook asks.
No. Traffic that engages your site is better. Does your audience see what you offer as adding value to the web or spamming you?
So how can you reach the people who want to hear what you have to say? How do you connect with people who want to connect with you?
First you have to understand the “long Tail” of search. Lots have been written about this concept. That’s because it really is key and important. When people are searching for something, they will each use a combination of terms which they think will get them what they need. When they land on your site with their search, if they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’re gone, onto the next site which may offer them their holy grail. They are NOT going to search your site to find what you know is there but they don’t know how to find.
So if you want good traffic with meaningful interactions what do you do? Continue reading →
Let’s toast to 2010! And to YOU! Thank you for being a reader of Wine Predator in 2009!
So, let’s have another toast (with a nicely balanced brut J cuvee 20–a not sweet, fresh crisp gently bubbling Sonoma County sparkler from the Russian River Valley!) to the New Year, a new blog URL (http://winepredator.com) and YOU! (Because without YOU, it would get rather boring just sitting here writing to myself…!)
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 