It’s that time once again, time to set the alarm for 3:15am in order to write “between sleeps”–not awake, and not asleep. The spoken word video above “How to Write at 3:15am” uses one of my 3:15 poems to describe how to write at 3:15.
I’ve been doing the experiment since 2001, getting up every night during the month of August since 2001, and writing something. Many of my 3:15am poems are here on this site under the category 315 Experiment as well as published on the 3:15 Experiment site and in an anthology of 3:15am Experiment poems, between sleeps.
Here’s another example of a 3:15 poem and video, Jasmine and Jaguar. This was the first video I made; “How to Write at 3:15am” was my second excursion into video.
“See” you at 3:15am tonight and every night this month!
PS Any wineries want me to do the experiment at your site? Invite me to spend the night and we’ll see what conspires!
WBC 09 Day 3: Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County
I already posted about Hardy and company’s inspiring presentation on Sunday about using video to promote your brand, no matter what it may be, and I promise to write about the Washington wines used to entice us up that way for next year’s conference.
So what’s left? Lunch at Dry Creek along with a variety of Dry Creek Valley wines (what a petit sirah from Gustafson!), followed by a vineyard walk at Michel-Schlumberger.
Here are a few pictures from the day, taken with my iPhone, just enough to whet your whistle and get you to come back again tomorrow when I will have a chance to develop this post further!
WBC 09: Sex and the Sauterne
an amazing race
By this time on Saturday night at the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference, you’d imagine I’d be topped out. But no. Sommelier Doug Cook of Able Grape, who poured so many phenomenal wines at last year’s WBC, was at it again: telling stories, pouring, and tasting as fast as live blogging. Instead of taking notes, I grabbed finished bottles to write about later.
There was an unfortunate snafu:
The hotel insisted they needed to close down the conference room. So off we went to a hotel room, about a dozen of us and two cases of wine. Hotel staff wasn’t thrilled with that either, so back we tromped to the conference room provided we vacate by 1am.
sex and the sauterne
Near the end of Doug’s tasting, he presented us with a sauterne. I want to say it was from 1978, because I remember thinking the wine was probably older than Doug. The nose blew my mind–sweet honeysuckle, pear? more! When I took a mouthful and tasted it, tears formed and rolled down my face. I wanted little else than to abandon myself to the swirl of emotions.
I was self-conscious, but there was little I could do: I was caught in public having sex with a sauterne, an orgasm even. I didn’t understand what was going on. It wasn’t that I was drunk. Well okay, by then certainly I was drunk. But that wasn’t what was making me cry, making me feel that way, that ecstasy of emotion.
The wine released every feeling in my heart all at once–all the joy, the sadness, the beauty that this life has to offer–it was all there, almost as if every emotion and everything I’d ever done and that I’d ever experienced was somehow, somehow in that golden glowing liquid.
That sauterne was orgasmic.
I felt connected to myself, to all life, to the universe.
Confused, I was. I couldn’t abandon myself to my emotions or walk away. We had to pack up. I had responsibilities.
So I did the next best thing: I put the box I’d collected, empties, open and closed bottles, including the empty sauterne, and set the box right outside the conference door, along with most of my sample of the sauterne still in the glass. I would finish cleaning up, then retrieve my treasures, retire, and at my leisure later let myself let go and go deep into its golden glow.
Picking up took time, and then I was engaged in conversations, and finally, I headed off to collect the sauterne and the bottles.
The box of wine was gone. All gone. Someone else scored my finds. Drank my sauterne.
So Doug, if you’re reading this, please tell me: what was that sauterne? and how can I possibly replicate that experience?
And readers, please tell me: am I crazy? Have you ever experienced anything like that in a wine?
WBC 09 Day 2: Napa Napa Here We Come!
Napa, Napa, here we come!
Right back where we started from!
Where bowers of flowers
bloom in the sun!
Each morning at dawning
birdies sing and everything!
A sun-kissed miss says don’t late!
That’s why I can hardly wait!
So open up that white bus door
Napa here we come!
OK, so we didn’t really sing this on Day 2 of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference. But by 9:15am we were on various buses headed over the hill from Santa Rosa in Sonoma County to Napa. Some of us, like me, were a little green in the gills by the time we arrived at CIA, the Culinary Institute of America. What’s up with that? I used to have an iron stomach! It’s not just all the wine I had on Friday, really. Someone asked if my ability to handle “winedy” roads had changed since I had a child….yes, yes, there’s the truth.
The wifi at CIA worked like a charm and I wrote three posts while there:
Keynote address by Jim Gordon: Wine Trends Worth Blogging About
Keynote Address by Barry Schuler: “The Future of Blogging and Social Media”
Then we were off again, each bus of eight with a different itinerary and me in charge of herding my busload of wine bloggers from here to there on time.
Our first stop was Chandon, the American arm of the veritable Moet-Chandon, producers of the house favorite and perenially popular “White Star.” Unfortunately, I left my iPhone in the bus so no pictures to share from that stop. We were to get a talk about how Napa has gone green–as soon as we each had our small plastic bottles of water. (I asked for–and eventually received– water in a glass: I have to be dang desperate to accept water in plastic and the trash that is produced for me to enjoy that convenience).
Chandon produces a LOT of sparkling wine. And I guess we should be grateful they are making an effort to be “green.” But honestly, I am unimpressed. Maybe because they are so big, they don’t think they can do otherwise; that they have to rely on technology rather than following traditional by hand methods. Maybe I don’t know enough. It looked like green washing to me.
I heard lunch at St. Supery was amazing, that new tech guru Rick Bakas let them know it would be worth it to go all out for the wine bloggers. At Chandon, the sandwiches were fine, but many of us gazed longingly at the lovely green salad prepared for one of our party allergic to breads
. There was plenty of sparkling wine and it went down easy under the hot sun, and most of us said yes to a second glass to take into the winery. Their new rose was a hit and all gone before I got a chance to taste it as I started with the blanc de pinot.
It took me awhile to herd everyone back onto our bus, but soon enough and not too far off our schedule we were on our way to Trinchero, formerly known as Sutter Home.
Can you say, “White zinfandel has been very very good to me?”
What a gracious host! We stepped off the bus and walked a short ways to a beautiful reception: a crisp, cold sauv blanc served with two kinds of thin crust pizzas and into a room set up with tables covered with cloths, water pitchers and glasses. Servers offered more wine and pizza as we settled into our seats for a panel discussion on “What is value?” As the wifi wasn’t up yet, I took notes the old fashioned way: using word on my laptop–
What is value: Panel at Trinchero
Scott Becker, global wine partners
Larry Stone, Rubicon Estate, gen mgr
He wrote for Chi Tribune, sommelier, wine maker, involved w/Coppola’s, blogged on Wine Spectator site a while a go for awhile. Says hidden expense in restaurant wine is to have a decent sommelier and other human resources; that’s what’s being cut right now with the down economyDavid Stevens, Acme Fine Wine
His store specializes in high end wines, since 95 been in the valley. He reads blogs but thinks it’s inappropriate (it’s cheesy in his words) to comment on blogs even if he thinks info is wrong. Offers unusual wines, small, local, first dibs; people call and want unusual special different bragging rights. Sounds to me like he should be tweeting and blogging about what’s new and exciting that’s coming in.Barry Wiss, VP, Trinchero
He comes from the hospitality industry, lived in Napa since 91, has a blog.
Sutter Home, family owned and operated–co in the world (not sure what this note means–do you?). The Trincheros kept the name Sutter Home because they had no money for paint to repaint the barn, but after making a fortune off of “pink” wine, they can call watever they want whatever they want! The rooms we’re in have been dedicated to the Trincheros; this winery specializes in Bordeaux blends. He wants the perception of really great value: $10 wine they can sell for $5. Gotta make a great product and sell at a great price; selling more wine right now but selling $10 wines.David Stephens is asked what’s hot: Scarecrow hot wine still, winemakers Luke Morlay (spell?), Mark Harold, Ghost block.
Trends—pinot noir, pinot grigio, new regions
Value—are the wineries being responsible to the environment? That’s marketable, something of value to the consumer
9 consecutive RAP awards
How can we get rid of the score and capture the story? Technology provides the answer—enforces it.
Too soon it was time to go; Trinchero closed the deal by handing us sweet boxes of sweets–a chocolate chip cookie, brownie, and a tin of nuts. Next time, I told Barry, I expect to have wifi! He handed me his card, and invited me back to give it a go another time. (Thanks, Barry! I look forward to my next visit!)
From Trinchero, we raced down the Napa Valley to the biodynamic winery Quintessa. Second to arrive, we enjoyed the view and a decent enough sauv blanc. Prince of Wine Walid Romaya took the opportunity to set up a shot; I of course caught him in action.
We descended into Quintessa, strolling the rubber mats acros the catwalk, then down the stairs to the winery floor. An incredible flower arrangement and an excellent selection of cheeses and breads as well as more Quintessa wine like Faust greeted us. I lobbied for a copy of the book, beautifully bound in leather, but I guess I didn’t rate high enough. Who better deserves it than the Art Predator? Oh, well, maybe the next time I visit.
We were the second bus to arrive, but it didn’t take long for the space to throng with people tasting, socializing, mingling as six more buses and another 180 people joined us to taste some 50 Napa Valley wineries represented there.
I’ve learned from attending industry wine tastings in LA that it’s best to have a strategy otherwise an event like this can be too overwhelming: when it’s all good when and where do you start? So I circled the cavernous room, once, twice, doing my best to ignore the enticing wines on display, scoping out who was there and where I wanted to put my attention and my rapidly dilapidating palate.
Ggrich chardonnay was not to be ignored so that’s where I gave in, and I was not disappointed. So nice, so balanced, just what I want in a chardonnay, a perfect place to start. I could have left right then and been happy. But I didn’t have my marching orders yet so next I headed around the bend to Schramsberg which offered a sparkling wine in a dramatic contrast in many ways to the large production house of Chandon where I’d been just a few hours before. Winemaker Keith Houck was a wealth of information and I stood there chatting for quite a while with Russ Beebe who leads walks through various vineyards and keeps a very popular blog, Winehiker Witiculture. Read more…
I was up and at ’em first thing Friday morning July 24 helping Zephyr Wine Adventures and Open Wine Consortium get registration going for all the excited participants of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference.
The Flamingo Hotel lobby was hustle bustle with cases of wines rolling through for set-up in one banquet room for the sponsor reception, and lunch and more wine ready to go in another.
People recognizing each other from twitter and blog handles embraced like the old friends they’ve become via social media–even though many of them had never met in person. Others renewed friendships made at last year’s conference and all the while laptop keys were clicking and iPhones popping.
After the first rush was registered, lunchtime was crazy in a different way: I was being pulled in so many directions!
Getting a Spice Zin tattoo from @insidesonoma…
Tasting Biodynamic wines from Bonny Doon and talking kids with winemaker and President for life Randall Grahm…
Telling the Bottle shock folks how much I enjoyed their movie and appreciated their fine cast…
Collecting a few vinfolio wine tasting books and suggesting they attach a pen to the ribbon bookmark…
Grabbing some mediocre lunch with some exceptional truffles from Sonoma County Winegrape Commission (who needs lunch anyway when there’s truffles and so much wine to enjoy? ummm, me?)…
Checking back in to make sure registration continued to go smoothly…
Looking out for peo
ple who needed to get registered–and people crashing the party! (You know who you are! VinTank’s Asheley Bellville was certainly eyed with suspicion until we knew who she was!)
After lunch, we settled around tables for the Live Wine Blogging, but since most of us were having difficulties getting online, the American Wine Blogging Awards, organized by Tom Wark of Fermentation and sponsored by Mutineer Magazine, came first. Winners received as a trophy beautiful etched decanters by Reidel.
The winners were announced back in March so there were no surprises in who won trophies. Now who received the trophies and how they did it was a bit more fun and listening to them say a few words was well worthwhile–especially since Cellar Rat provided us with some of his stellar syrah to toast the winners with! (One of the best of the weekend, according to Ken Payton on Sunday.)
American Wine Blog Award Winners
According to Tom Wark, on his blog Fermentation,
“The winners in the seven categories each had to be nominated first, then be chosen as finalists by a panel of judges, then be judged both by the public as well as by the same set of judges. There was most certainly some vetting going on.
Best Wine Writing On a Blog
VINOGRAPHY
Best Graphics or Presentation
THE GOOD GRAPE
Best Single Subject Blog
LENNDEVOURS
Best Business/Industry Blog
THE WINE COLLECTOR
Best Winery Blog
MICHEL-SCHLUMBERGER’S “BENCHLAND BLOG”
Best Wine Reviews
BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD
Best Overall Blog
VINOGRAPHY
Alder Yarrow of Vinography acceptance speech came to us via a video due to show up on YouTube and which I will link to ASAP!
The sponsors of the American Wine Blog Awards are
RIEDEL CRYSTAL
MUTINEER MAGAZINE
OPENWINE CONSORTIUM
Next up: Live Wine Blogging. Unfortunately, the wifi continued to be a challenge Read more…
On the way to WBC 09…
Following my nostalgic tasting adventure at Ridge on Thursday–a minerally, bright, balanced food friendly 07 S Cruz Mountains chard, a lively young Dry Creek 07 zin full of black fruit, a 07 Paso Robles zin from 85 year old vines smoother and full of red fruits like cranberry and raspberry, followed by two zin splits: a lively, minty 07 Geyserville zin, and ending with a 06 rich, thick, creamy and yet puckery Lytton Springs–“Baby Beluga” (that’s the name of my 90 white Westy VW van you see in the Ridge lot) and I continued up 101 to Santa Rosa to help conference organizer Reno Walsh and a few other volunteers stuff 265 True-ly nifty natural fiber wine bags with goodies. I can’t wait to try the Kachina Port with the chocolates from the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission or the Pinot Noir Chocolate cherries from Bouchaine using one of several openers we received while reviewing info on one of several removable drives!)
I was going to have a quiet evening reviewing the materials in my bag and munching on chocolates. But then Joel Vincent, one of the organizers and the man behind the Open Wine Consortium, invited me to join a group for dinner at a restaurant he found using Yelp and Twitter.
Ten of us walked down from the Flamingo Hotel to Monti’s restaurant where, as soon as we were seated, everyone turned over their menus to look at the wine list! Read more…
On my way up to the Wine Bloggers Conference 2009 in Santa Rosa Sonoma County CA, I stopped at Ridge. Even though Ridge is probably my favorite winery in Caliornia, partly because I got my start there and partly because they make GREAT wine, I haven’t been back since my last day working in the tasting room a million years ago.
It’s changed quite a bit. For one, there is a tasting room, not just a picnic table set up outside. And there are lots more picnic tables, many of them under a shade structure.
The views are the same–spectacular–and so is the wine. Honestly, I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels up there close to the sky, looking out over the fog fingers to the mountains ringing the SF Bay. And the wine, everything I tasted was lovely, full of perfect impressions of pleasure onto my palate.
I was spurred to visit for several reasons, one being that I discovered Ridge’s blog recently–it was started only a few months ago–and I really liked the writing there.
So I was overjoyed when, even though the tasting room is officially only open on weekends, they let me in–and I spent some time tasting wine and talking wine, writing, and blogging with tasting room manager and chief Ridge blogger, Christopher Watkins, who has an MFA in poetry.
For his one year anniversary at Ridge, he posted a series of poems about life about there. So, in honor of the Wine Blogger’s Conference, and for this week’s edition of the poetry train, instead of offering some of my poetry, I give you Christopher Watkins, who I will be nominating for a wine blogger award next year. Enjoy.
Crisp autumn morning;
a deer heart’s worth of inno-
cence stirs my soul.
In a clearing, the
new wind reminds me, you can
fall off a mountain.
At the insistence
of the wind, thin mountain brush
fidgets, pointing east.
Birdless, the wind-swept
air; snakeless, the cold, dry soil;
empty, my mouth, of words.
As might a painter’s
palette imitate the sky,
I try the mountain.
The wind, stripping our
revisions away, reveals
the first masterpiece.
Stone greets vine-root, brush
greets breeze, sun greets fog — Grateful,
I take autumn’s hand.
If terroir is a
sense of place, then my soul is
a moveable wine.
Here at the Wine Bloggers Conference 2009, I’m watching some crazy videos produced by Hardy Wallace, the new Murphy-Goode guy. He says all you need is a Flip HD camera and away you go, making wine videos. Use some local musicians for music. He makes it look super easy, fun, eminently watchable and enjoyable. Capture it, put a hook in it, make it fun, he recommends. Video can be super short, simple, and captures people’s attention; using video drives that traffic back to your site.
“Lunchtime is the new primetime,” said a New York Times headline in July 2009. And people are doing that watching on-line. On-line video is content, is ads that a consumer chooses to watch. Brands can create compelling content and consumers will search for it, find it, watch it. Read more…
This morning at the Wine Bloggers Conference event at the Culinary Institute of America, we get two keynote addresses along with our crusty croissants and coffee: one by Barry Schuler and one by Jim Gordon.
To stand out as a blogger, according to Jim Gordon, editor of Wines and Vines, know your subject, get the facts from the source, get the facts right, stake a claim and mine it, stay ahead of the pack, and look beyond the blogosphere for topics.
Wine industry trends include
climate change and impacts on wine, especially an increase in fires and how that’s going to come out in the wines; water wars over what will be grown and how water will be used with competition between greens and grapes which may encourage more dry farming
finding local wines stories, and encouraging locapours
14,000-18,000 new acres of wine grapes planted in CA in 2009, much of it pinot noir following the explosion of interest in it after the film Sideways came out
new wine packaging–trying to be more green
Saturday Keynote Speaker: Jim Gordon: The Future of Wine Writing and Blogging. Jim has been covering the wine industry as a reporter and editor for more than 25 years. He credits his stint with the St. Helena Star in the 1980s for introducing him to the wine business and many of its emerging stars. He then went on to be managing editor of Wine Spectator for 12 years and is currently editor of Wines & Vines.
Now we break up into 8 groups, all on different buses for some adventures in the Napa Vineyards–with lunch and dinner too!
In his keynote address “The Future of Blogging and Social Media,” Barry Schuler says wine offers a moment to celebrate.
Well I’ll certainly drink to that!
Barry Schuler @BSchuler took suggestions for topics to cover during his Keynote Address at the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference related to his topic. ”New Technologies and their Application to The Business of Wine” which he’s now giving this morning from 10:30 to 11:15 at the Napa Valley’s Culinary Institute of America on Saturday, July 25th. And since the wireless here works great, I’ll be posting right along as he’s talking!
Schuler calls himself an authentic internet historian, and he’s got the cred for that claim, for sure. According to the conference website, “Barry’s multimedia firm Medior created interactive technologies for AOL; after Medior was acquired by AOL, Barry worked his way up to be Chairman and CEO of that company. Today, as managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, he’s funding next-thing projects in the tech world. Barry also serves on the board of Synthetic Geonomics and is CEO of Raydiance, which is developing laser technology for healthcare use. He and wife Tracy co-own Meteor Vineyard, located in the Coombsville region of the Napa Valley, with winemakers Bill and Darnine Dyer.”
In his talk, Schuler points out:
There is no analog to wine in other businesses.
Every bottle holds a story.
Every tasting is an adventure.
Wine is larger than life.
According to Schuler, there is an insatiable desire for Read more…
art predator 