I love an idea that can go viral.
Or maybe it already is viral and people will now just write about it…more. Comparative wine tastings: The sales reps at Hahn, in particular one extremely forward thinking, brilliant and sassy New Yorker/Aussie, Shannon Marshall, (twitter @perthgirl) rep is motivating groups in the beverage industry in NYC to gather …perhaps quarterly…to “start a quarterly comparative tasting (blind?) where we have some of our wines against our competitive set…and get as many people involved in respective regions? i.e.a group of NY distributor sales people and I meet at a lounge and taste the wines, write a few words of comment…and post our results.”
Other wineries on twitter connected with the bloggers’ during Hahn’s tasting Forum and said, ” Hey, I want to do that too!”. Winery folks that were there said, “I’ll host one!” (Twisted Oak, Michel Schlumberger, and others). And other participants, bloggers and winemakers are talking about bringing bloggers and consumers together for tastings. Informative, educational, access to the wine maker, wine bloggers, and most importantly, a blast of an experience that heightens our experience of wine and each other. Said beautifully on the Kilted Blog: “...the best part is – you actually bring the “social” in social media. At the end of the day, its all fine and dandy to excel in social media in the online sense – but what really matters, down at the core of it, is being social with real human beings.“
And how cool would it be to taste a flight of wines with a group of wineophiles, winemakers, vineyard managers, wine bloggers and your friends? That, my friends, would be CRAZY fun, and there’s so much to learn and enjoy. Really, these people have a gift, a passion and lucky us, they want to share! The content, the conversation, the wine experience…you don’t often get that confluence of visceral, intellectual and social high all in one event.
Photos provided courtesy of Chris Butts: The Kilted Blog.
I love the idea of getting bloggers AND regular consumers together. Like it was said at the WBC and at the forum this past Sunday, wine bloggers are seemingly just talking to each other…
A tasting that combines all entities would be educational for all three. It would be a great way to promote your blog or wine brand and it could be a fun thing for the typical consumer to learn more about wine (or a fun thing to do while vacationing in wine country). This is definitely an idea worthy to be pursued.
We already know we have a great time when we get together, this way we can show consumers that not all wine brands and journalists are stuffy.
I think these comparative tastings / group tastings are great.
I’m currently getting a bunch of samples of wine that probably isn’t exactly to my palate, but I know lot of people who would like this style of juice- I’m getting together small groups to taste these samples blind and give their opinions. I think this is a much better idea than just me saying “too much fruit and vanilla…”
I will plan to organize something for some of our New Zealand wines early in the new year.
That is CRAZY awesome! Please come back and post even a LINE or LINK to your posts about this viral experience with wine. Peace, Love and Wine!!!
[...] to the on-going meta-discussion of these topics. A subsequent post by said blogger also dives into Comparative Wine Tasting in more detail. Essentially, Comparative Wine Tastings are scheduled tastings, typically [...]
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