Wine bloggers toast the future
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Roughly 100 bloggers toting laptops and other assorted electronic devices turned out at the Flamingo Conference Resort and Spa in Santa Rosa, Calif., for three days of networking, tastings, vineyard tours and, yes, texting, in the company of 75 or so winemakers, winery reps and other industry figures. And to hear the participants tell it, wine writing and reporting, not to mention wine marketing and selling, will never be the same "old media" thing again.
There were some interesting twists:
The idea of speed dating, where you meet as many possible dates at one time and place, was morphed into speed tasting. Reps from 14 California wineries circled the tables pouring their wines for bloggers who sipped, spit and typed in tasting notes on their blogs or Twitter messages. So great was the volume of words generated that on Friday afternoon, "wine bloggers conference" was ranked second on Twitter's theme search -- right behind Sen. Barack Obama. In a blind tasting challenge, the bloggers were asked to identify wines by taste or by written description. Semi-finalists had to write short essays on the wine they were drinking. The finalists had only a minute to suss out their mystery wine then they had to stand before the crowd and identify the wine by variety, vintage and appellation. They also had to describe the wine and offer a food pairing. I was called up on stage to be the tie-breaking judge but there was never any doubt among us that the winner was Doug Cook of San Francisco, who blogs at Able Grape.The conference was organized by Allan Wright of Zephyr Wine Adventures, a Montana company conducting vineyard tours and tastings around the world, and Joel Vincent of OpenWine Consortium, a global online business network.
Wright thought the sessions would help wine bloggers create a better sense of community by literally putting a face to a name. The conference was also designed to underscore to all bloggers that theirs is a “social media” presence that has to be taken into consideration by the wine industry and wine drinkers.
"There’s a new generation of wine drinkers," Vincent said. "Blogging is giving everyone a voice. It's so cheap and easy, everyone can do it."
Photo: Jessica Yadegaran, a features writer for the Contra Costa Times and wine blogger for California's Bay Area News Group, sniffs a wine before typing up her reaction. Bill Daley/Tribune