Friday, June 25 2010

Wine Bloggers Conference 2010

How cool is that? Icy, really.

It's been a whirlwind 24 hours at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference. First, the drive down from White Rock to Walla Walla took a bit longer than I thought it would--but that was fine, since the drive was beautiful and the scenery was superb.

Rainforest or desert, Washington is beautiful in all directions

I chronicled my adventure last night at Basel Cellars over on my Unreserved blog.It's a stunningly gorgeous place, with great cellars and soaring architecture. The wines are pretty big--not really my bag, as I'm all about elegance, but they're really stretching some boundaries with their intensity and fruit.

Of course I got to bed early, in order to register and take advantage of the educational opportunities. Like drinking at 10 am. I picked up my bag o' swag, which fortunately included a pile of USB thumb drives. This is a new trend at conferences, since you can include thousands of pages of advertising, information, literature and pictures in a cutesy little package that people will hold on to and - for a long time. I'm especially grateful since I go through dozens of the silly things every year.

Books, corkscrews, bottles of wine and USB drives: what else does a blogger need?

Ah, yes, drinking at 10 am. I ran the table at Mollydooker (more hyper-intense wines), drank all of the sherries at Gonzalez Byass and sampled anything offered. It's a tough life, but it's a good life if you don't weaken.

Your mustache says no, but your wine says, YES!

In short order I got interviewed by Winebizradio, and a did a sit-down video diary blog for WBC, which I'll be able to link to on the WBC YouTube channel later on. Then it was time for lunch, and a Taco Truck tasting! Wine isn't the first thing that comes to mind when you're food pairing with tacos (agua fresca!) but the icy chilled glass of fino went perfectly with the spicy lengua sopa I got.

 

 

A truck full of burritos, sopas, tacos, tortas and other heavenly delights

Organised by the local chamber of commerce, a half-dozen taco trucks showed up and dispensed Mexican-y goodness to all. Washington state has a strong Mexican community, based on migrant farm workers following the harvest north, coming from California through Oregon, stopping here to put down roots. The taco truck is a noble and and splendid expression of their cuisine and their practicality. And, dang: tacos are awesome!

A smile that only a taco can bring

'

Nom nom nom!

After tacos I just had time to powder my nose and then it was straight into the keynote address by Steve Heimoff.

Not a great picture, but the man never doesn't look pensive.

He had a lot of interesting things to say about the gulf/differential between traditional print media and bloggers. I didn't agree with everything he said, but it was fascinating to hear an old-media guy working to bridge the emergent phenomena of bloggers. I'm pretty sure that he and Tom Wark were comparing notes before the conference. I've heard amateur bloggers talk about democratizing wine writing (and thus eventually de-monetizing the activity until nobody can make a real living at it) and I've heard professional wine writers sneer at the quality of the writing from most bloggers.

There's truth in both positions. Actually, there's lots of truth: sometimes I'm bowled over by the errant nonsense I read from amateurs, parochialism masquerading as considered opinion, going for blood just to delight those who enjoy conflict, and a lot of less-than-refined work. A segment of the pro publishing world is perhaps worse (because they have a wider audience and can inflict more harm), resting on laurels long since ossified, taking money to write favorable reviews for fake restaurants, and sneering as hard as possible at the new communication channel, the blog. Steve negotiated this really well--not easy when you're one of the few old-school print journalists with the stones to do a completely independent blog. Good job, Steve.

Afterwards it was a bizarre but fun session of getting out the 2010 Wine Blog Awards. Tom Wark started these three years ago, to recognise excellence in bloggery, all peer-nominated and judged by serious folks. That's where the serious bit ended, as the presenter was Alan Kropf, editor of Mutineer Magazine. He did a sort of co-presentation with comedian Ben Morrison popping up on a screen from time to time to talk about White Zinfandel and time machines. Seriously. The winner for the best wine blog was  1WineDude. Joe Roberts was truly humble--and very deserving of the award.

And then on to breakout sessions: there were three going on simultaneously, Beginner and Advanced blogging, and blogging with marketing and PR folks. I chose the Advanced bloggery and got a steaming heap of information. Apparently I've missed a few tricks, but there's all the time in the world to correct that . . .

We powered through the Q&A, took a short break, and then launched into one of the most gruelling tasting sessions I've ever done: blogging about 12 wines in 60 minutes. I put the reviews up over at The Unreserved. I fared a bit better than a lot of folks, as many of them weren't used to tasting that many wines and making judgements that fast. I felt justified in bragging a little that I do that sort of thing on a regular basis. Pro winemakers had the edge, but I saw a few of them toss in the towel after three or four wines: with only a 30 second break between wines it was tough to form an impression, much less take notes and blog about it. Still, I'd like to do it again, as it sure enforces disciplined thinking. Luckily, it turns out I am going to get to do it again Saturday at 5 pm with red wines. I should be careful what I wish for . . .

And then on to dinner, a casual affair with sliders and appetisers and all the wine you could possibly drink, and that was most of day one of the official conference. I'm leaving out the bits where I managed to offend a French winemaker, meet a dozen-dozen really creative and insightful people and power-staggered through the streets of Walla Walla like wine-soaked Japanese cinema monsters. Hooboy, somebody has been feeding Godzilla wine for hours!

Posted by Conferential Tim AT 2:05PM

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