Art Predator Drinks Up 1st Wine Bloggers Conference

I’m drinking an iced coffee on a warm sunny day in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, from the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel, host of the First Wine Bloggers Conference and watching cases of wine roll by which they are opening rapidy as they set up for the next tasting of Sonoma wines.

Wine bloggers wander around a bit dazed; the women all seem to be drinking coffee as we all gear up for more wine! I seem to be the only person publicly bloggging; maybe people are in their rooms writing but I doubt it. Last night when Gary Vaynerchuk gave the keynote, he asked how many people in the room have a blog and most of them raised their hands–probably 150 of the 180 people in the room. But when he asked how often people post, only 10 of us post 5 or more times a week. (And yes, I was one of the 10!)

Since I drove in last night (in the new wonderful soon to be written up car!), I have tasted 10 or so Zinfandels from the Dry Creek Valley,  tasted a half dozen wines from New Zealand, walked through the organic and biodynamic winery Quivera with the winemaker Steve Cantor,  enjoyed an incredible lunch of local foods and venison navy bean soup and Quivera wines, and followed by two breakout sessions. My head swims with wine and wine words.

Adventures and details to follow soon–after I taste some more Sonoma County wines! After that, we have dinner tonight at Sebastiani with keynote speaker Alice Feiring author The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization which I recently devoured and can’t recommend highly enough!

Am having a fantabulous time–wish you were here!

P.S. Since they ran out of nametags, I get to wear my Lettre Sauvage letterpress beautiful card around my neck!!