Swirl, Sniff, Tweet, Eat

The Second Annual Wine Bloggers' Conference that I attended last weekend in the Sonoma and Napa regions of California involved countless wine tastings, gobs of food, fascinating people, dynamic presentations, and gorgeous vistas. It’s a tough job but somebody had to do it.

The three-day event opened with a “live” blogging session. Like speed dating for wine geeks, the session had winery reps and winemakers dashing from table to table with a few minutes at each to present their wines while we tasted, took notes, tweeted, and attempted to blog. One glitch—the Wi-Fi went down taking the “live” out of blogging while giving rise to a tweeting frenzy that Alfred Hitchcock could never have imagined.

Two wines from this event stood out for their relationship to the real world outside the wine realm:

Line 39 Petite Sirah Lake County 2007: From Lake County, a lesser-known wine region neighboring Mendocino, Sonoma, and Napa counties, this juicy and totally drinkable wine has red and black fruits balanced by a touch of oak. At a suggested retail of $10 a bottle it’s the perfect match for the barbeque as well as these tough economic times.

Pinot Evil Pinot Noir 3 Liter Boxed Wine: This Vin de Pays (country wine) from l’ìle de Beaute is made from grapes grown on the mountainous French island of Corsica. I wouldn’t serve this at a dinner party, but what it lacked in character, it made up for in food for thought. According to Better Wines Better World switching most of the wines sold in the U.S. to BIB (Bag-In-Box) containers would save 1.5 million tons of CO2—the equivalent of taking 250,000 cars off the road.

Tags: wine | blogs | California