At the last three wine bloggers conferences, I lucked out both with amazing pre-conference excursions and great conference expeditions as well. In 2010, a small group of us traveled on a press trip Seattle to Walla Walla and back, tasting along the way. In 2012, on our pre-conference excursion we dined at King Estates then learned about pinot noir with Robin Pffeifer, then went by TRAIN from Eugene to Portland where I was on the infamous #cuffedincarlton bus.
In 2013, I joined the Seattle to Lake Okanagan trip by way of the Lake Chelan AVA and went on the OK Falls hike where I discovered Painted Rock which I wrote about here also. When the announcement that Wine Blogging Wednesday #80 was Dry Rose, I didn’t have to think too hard about which wine I wanted to write about: “My Derby Wife” rose Continue reading →
Between preparing for my doctoral classes in ecopsychology and grading my students’ finals, I just had to go into hiding the past two weeks which meant while I participated in a few twitter tastings, I didn’t get any blogging done on this site and very little on my other sites (including Art Predator, Compassionate Rebel, Whisper Down The Write Alley). And yes. pictured with the Don and Sons Pinot Noir vertical from last Thursday’s twitter tasting are just a portion of the research papers and finals I was reading in order to get my grades in!
Even though I am still not completely done with my grading (and there’s another twitter tasting tonight!), today I was doing a little blogging on Art Predator and ended up checking my stats over here to discover that about midnight last night, my blog hit 50,000 page views! Which, for a wine blog like mine, is pretty good! (In contrast, my Art Predator blog, which I started in November 2007, is about to hit 500,000 page views and Compassionate Rebel which was born January 2010 is almost 10,000.) Continue reading →
I asked my fellow wine predators to send me their answers. Henny Kim sends this submission:
In the time before Panem, I guess people my age weren’t allowed to drink alcohol. Haymitch told me as much when he had time to talk between swigs of his awful booze. Imagine a world where the adult didn’t let kids do things because it was considered unhealthy. A world where children weren’t used as pawns for a vicious game of control and survival. I am thinking about this when Gale shows me the bottle he spotted during our hunt outside District 12. The bottle has a curious shape—like what humans used to call a bowling pin—and contains a dark pink liquid, the same shade of my lips when I’ve been running after wild game and a little out of breath and slightly sweaty. The pretty label shows small leaves and lettering, but the words that stand out are a bold black Sofia and then Rose in a girlish pink script. I wonder about how life must have been in a time when people had their names written on their own bottles and about who this Sofia Rose had been, how sad she must have been to discover she’d lost her bottle in the woods. After Gale manages to pop out the cork, he hands me the bottle, but I hesitate, thinking that since my name isn’t Sofia Rose, this drink doesn’t belong to me. Continue reading →
Last month for Wine Blogging Wednesday #78, we got our “viggy on” –which means that, according to host Frank Morgan, over 29 bottles of viognier were opened, tasted, and reviewed on various blogs (including this one). Bloggers wrote about wines from California, Virginia, Australia, Washington, Portugal, and more.
What wine would your favorite fictional character drink?
And she’s offering a prize for the best entry!
I’m going to ask my fellow Wine Predators to email me their stories and I’ll post them here. While the obvious literary guests should have been fellow wine blogger Deb Harkness‘s heroine from Discovery of Witches and her vampire/geneticist wino sweetheart, I invited Professor McGonigle over for Sunday dinner. You’ll have to wait until Wednesday to hear about what we ate and drank and talked about! (Oh, and there might be pictures as well!)
Wanna play? Here are the rules:
Think of a favorite character. Any genre, any timeline, any story.
What wine would he/she/it drink? Tell us about the wine. Work it into the story.
Extra credit for those who write a scene with the wine
Your deadline is Wednesday, July 25th
Leave a comment at Brixchicks #wbw79
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June’s Wine Blogging Wednesday is almost upon us! The theme for WBW#78 taking place next Wednesday June 20 is “Viognier” aka “Get Your Viggy On” hosted by Frank aka “Drink What You Like” which is often wine from Virginia, his home state, and one that is big on “viggy” –Virginia’s “signature” grape. (Seriously!)
I’m down with Viognier, but not hip to “viggy.” Sorry–unless we’re talking about Viggo Mortensen and both Exene and John Doe are in the room and maybe we’re all tossing about lines of haiku or poetry or doing a exquisite corpse or something.
Where do you turn after a bad day at work? Specifically, May’s Wine Blogging Wednesday prompt from host Alleigh from A Glass After Work asks: what glass of wine do you turn to?
Fortunately, I more often than not come home exhilarated after a day –or a night–at work because my “day” job is usually at night: I teach writing at a community college and day after day, night after night, my students amaze me. I have a job where I make a difference in my students lives, and I get to see them learn and grown over the course of the semester, to discover themselves as writers, as thinkers. A single mom of 3 told me that our class activities had shown her, reminded her that she’s more than just a mom, but a person with ideas, and that she still “exists.”
According to the wrap-up on Wine Blogging Wednesday #76, it seems that a number of wine bloggers felt they’d “turned their backs” on the wines of Australia during the past few years and enjoyed rediscovering wines from “down under” that came in under $30. About a dozen bloggers participated in April’s event hosted by Adam Japko of wine-zag.com. Thanks, Adam, for hosting!
May’s Wine Blogging Wednesday host is Alleigh from A Glass After Work who wants to know, what glass of wine do you want after a bad day at work.
In your post, include what wine you open, why you picked that wine to wash away your bad day, and the price (or suggested retail price) of the wine. There are no restrictions on price, country, varietal, etc. The sky is the limit. You just need to give us all the details so we can find the wine for after our own bad day. Continue reading →
At the last three wine bloggers conferences, I lucked out both with amazing pre-conference excursions and great conference expeditions as well. In 2010, a small group of us traveled on a press trip Seattle to Walla Walla and back, tasting along the way. In 2012, on our pre-conference excursion we dined at King Estates then learned about pinot noir with Robin Pffeifer, then went by TRAIN from Eugene to Portland where I was on the infamous #cuffedincarlton bus.
wine predator.............. gwendolyn alley 