Live Wine Blogging Round 2 at #WBC17: Red Wines

Every year the Wine Bloggers Conference features live blogging where wineries have five minutes to pour and present their wines to a table of bloggers who then do their best to tweet and take notes. This year there were around 25. or 30 tables with 6-8 people at each. For wineries, it’s a great chance to meet with an engaged group. For bloggers, it tests you to see how well you can taste and find a story to share in five minutes. In the past, I tried to do tasting notes. These days, I am using my camera to take notes and I am more interested in capturing the story and noting whether the wine or the wine’s story caught my interest enough to investigate further.

This year the red wines ranged from Pinot noir to petite sirah and in price from around $20 to around $70. I was able to get 10 tweets up, one about each wine. Continue reading →

WBC17: Walla Walla Here We Come! #WBC18 October 4-7

Announced tonight at the dinner sponsored by Naked Wines that we will be going to Walla Walla WA for next year’s Wine Bloggers Conference!

And the dates will be:

October 4-7 2018!

Hard to imagine that I will be able to attend in the fall at that time … but I can dream right?

150 family owned wineries
charming city yes check
great history where you can walk anywhere

 

and we will be at the wonderful hotel where we were in 2010 as well

but yeah it’s a terrible time of the year for me personally so you probably won’t be seeing me…

 

 

American Wine, American Meal: Duck and Duckhorn Merlot #WinePW

As part of our #MerlotMe extravaganza in October, some of us received six bottles of wine as samples at three price points from Duckhorn Vineyards. Last year we were doing a Jura French wine dinner with food from the region and we figured it would be fine with the Duckhorn wine. While we were right and it was fine, the Jura wines paired with the Jura food was exceptional, while these fabulous Napa Merlot was just ho-hum with that meal

This year for #MerlotMe we wanted to go for Merlot and food pairs that we were confident were winners with Merlot but still a stretch for us in one way or another. That’s what led to this post where we paried two Napa merlot with both salmon and triptip as well as a number of sides.

But for these meal we loved the idea of pairing duck with Duckhorn — and as the Wine Pairing Weekend group is exploring American Wines for an American Meal with an eye on Thanksgiving, we thought this would fit right in.  Continue reading →

Live Wine Blogging #WBC17: White, Rose, Sparking, or THC?

Live wine blogging?

Yes that’s what happened today November 10, 2017 at the Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa: Live Wine Blogging that included a range of white, rose, sparkling and even non-alcoholic pot infused wine!

In live wine blogging, a winery rep, often the wine maker or someone else very close to and knowledgeable about the wine, presents the wine in five minutes to a team of 6-10 avid bloggers who hang on every work and instragram and tweet every moment. Many of us, myself included, used to live blog it, sometimes producing a series of posts about each wine in five minutes or publishing one post about all of the wines. I was always impressed by Chris Watkins formerly of Ridge Vineyards who would tweet his notes in haiku!

These days most of us focus on tweets or instagram posts. For myself, I find that campaign the moment in photos and a few choice words is more valuable but it is different than taking notes. I’ve found I just can’t do them all at the same time: take photos, tweet, and blog.

Also the first year, back in 2008, we tried to live blog white, rose, sparkling and reds and that was just way too crazy making!

These days it is broken up into two sessions, white/sparkling/rose and red. Red wines are up tomorrow!

Regardless of how it is done, it is very intense and you want to get your best game on! For me that also means remembering to bring in crackers to refresh my palate.

Here’s the hour in tweets. Cheers!
Continue reading →

Let’s Talk Teeth! How to Make Your Own Magical Mouthwash

Happy wine writers flash their Petite Sirah stained teeth at Dark and Delicious hosted by PS I Love You

If you are in the wine industry, you need to listen up, because we are going to talk teeth today on Wine Predator.

Talk teeth? Yes, talk teeth RIGHT NOW because over 400 or so industry professionals are gathered in Santa Rosa for the Wine Marketing and Tourism Conference followed by the Wine Bloggers Conference.

And what does that mean? A LOT OF WINE IS GOING DOWN!

Now don’t whine:  I’d rather talk about WINE!

Don’t ask: Who wants to talk about teeth except a dentist or an orthodontist?

Being in the wine industry can be hard on your health. I know– it’s the price we pay for this awesome lifestyle and opportunities to taste amazing wines paired with stunning food!

I mean just look at this recent BRUNCH from Skinner in El Dorado County Continue reading →

Get Your Napa Game On: Celebrating #MerlotMe With Tritip and Salmon

Go Team! Go Merlot Day!

When your team is in the World Series or another BIG GAME , you need to watch it on a really nice screen. Better yet with good friends, good food, and good wine!

Because we don’t have TV, we hit up Myr and Charles and they were happy to host us especially since my husband offers to do most of the cooking! He roasted brussels sprouts, seasoned and BBQ’d a tritip and two slabs of salmon, Myr roasted pumpkins and cooked lentils for a salad, and we all contributed to a cheese tray.

Wait– red wine? and fish?

Continue reading →

Highlights: Wine Marketing and Tourism Conference Santa Rosa 2017

 

So what’s all this Wine Marketing and Tourism about? Here’s the full agenda.

Here are some of my highlights from today’s sessions. Continue reading →