Good Grape Wine Company

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I had the pleasure of attending the Wine Blogger Conference that took place October 24th – 26th in Santa Rosa, CA. The first thing that jumps out to me about the conference is how organized of an affair it was.  Frankly, my expectations were a lot lower and Allan from Zephyr Adventures and Joel from the Open Wine Consortium over-delivered, particularly on value for my measly $95 out of pocket expense. The value started with the speed dating-like live wine blogging in which groups of vintners had five minutes to pour and give their story and it ended with the Saturday night keynote at Sebastiani with Alice Feiring.  The vineyard walk Saturday morning at Quivera, by itself, was worth $75 to me.  How often do you get a 3-hour pragmatic discourse from a biodynamic practitioner along with three course wine-paired lunch?  Not often enough for me.  The grand tasting of New Zealand and Sonoma wines was another very nice touch.  The whole event was a treat and I have not even begun to talk about the surreal pleasure of meeting online friends for the first time.  Net-net, if there is a second Wine Blogger Conference, I would highly encourage anybody associated with social media and wine to sign-up. Some other thoughts that struck me over the course of three days: • On this blog I have off-handedly questioned both Gary Vaynerchuk and Alice Feiring, the events two keynote speakers – both people proved to be genuinely warm, assured, benevolent lovers of wine and I’m somewhat regretful I have criticized both.  Gary is just fine without me, but my make-good for Alice is to finish reading her book. • I was fearful of talking to Erika Strum because I have really taken her dad, founder of Wine Enthusiast, to task before – call me a wimp, if you will … • I wish I were friends with Josh from pinotblogger in college; we would have had a lot of fun together … and created some havoc, though he already has his jail story. •    Doug Cook from AbleGrape has a very able palate, winning the blind tasting challenge • It’s an interesting dynamic when, unbeknownst to me, I find myself talking with a person who has disagreed with me on my site • It dawned on me that I know more about and have more inherent trust in many wine bloggers than I do with many people I have worked with professionally for years • For an Indiana boy where figs never make the produce aisle, eating perfectly ripe figs from the tree, in a biodynamic vineyard (Quivera) where you know no pesticides are used, is an exceptional treat. • For an Indiana boy where we’re culturally literate, but not always progressive, eating house made salumi at Quivera was also a nice treat • As an avowed non-participant in Twitter, I realized I am missing the boat • What started as Blogging is fragmenting into three camps – social networks, bloggers and Twitter.  Of course, you still have the old guard on the message boards, too along with the tasting note sites … those five constituencies will continue to bedevil wineries trying to harness influence • Social networking relationships are friendly and open, but there is an undercurrent of cliquishness • Large wine companies, who attended the conference in abundance, are still trying to figure out how to get their arms around blogging and social media • To a large extent, blogging has a reached a saturation point regarding how much we can sniff each others exhaust.  In order to grow the medium, consumers need to come to wine blogs in larger numbers.  Depressing statistics about RSS usage (10-15%) means we might be at an inflection point for how to grow the influence portion of blogging • On the heels of “RockawayGate” and my participation on a panel about wine industry and blogger interaction, I get the sense that whomever tries to monetize wine blogging around anything other than straight advertising is in for a long fight and potential pariah status • Robert Larsen from Rodney Strong and Rockaway bought my lunch on Friday.  I was not going to allow him to do so until he noted that Steve Heimoff has taken a free lunch, as well. • On a macro-level, the whole wine blogging conference could be considered an influencing junket – I walked away with a greater appreciation for individual wineries, Sonoma wines, Zephyr Adventures, and BioD.  I am okay with this.  • My favorite wines from the live blogging tasting, in no certain order are:  4 Bear Winery, Bonterra, Clos La Chance and delicious dry Muscat Blanc from James David, and Twisted Oak. • I’m all for progressiveness, yet I’m still trying hard to find the romance and intrigue in wine packaged in tetra paks, logic tells this is better than glass, yet I’m still down for a glass bottle. • Biodynamics is nothing more and nothing less than a religious debate; since I’m an “all God’s creatures” kind of guy, I’m totally open to hearing about BioD from a practitioner like Steven Canter at Quivera • That said about BioD, I do have to arch an eyebrow when I am told there is a BioD consultant in Oregon who installs small dwellings in vineyards for Gnomes.  It is one thing to bury a horn with dung at the equinox and another to build housing for mystical little people. • There is a slight disconnect between Quivera’s BioD practices and the very ripe, high alcohol California-like wines they produce.  I chalk this up to ownership palate preferences, but there is still something incongruent … • If Napa Valley has the reputation then Sonoma has the mojo *Ed Note* to view a couple of the panel discussions, including the one that I was on, go to Caveman Wines.  Michael is also doing a nice job of re-capping the event, as well. http://goodgrape.com/index.php/728/