Recap of the first Wine Bloggers Conference

Our weary and alcohol-soaked traveling party of four arrived back into Austin at around midnight last night after the first annual Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma, CA. This event was a blast – a non-stop, two-day party and blogger love-fest, which Rachael has affectionately dubbed “Wine Camp”.

This was my first large-scale wine tasting ever, and like Hardy said over at Dirty South Wine (one of our new blogging friends from the weekend), the most important rule learned is to “Spit, spit, spit”. I couldn’t agree more, and blessedly it only took me one hung-over morning, not two or three, to figure it out.

At the live-blogging speed tasting, we sat at one of fifteen or so tables in a large banquet hall. Every five minutes, a new wine pourer would come around, introduce his/her wine, pour it, and then those of us at the table would taste, talk, and blog. I must admit that prior to participating, this event didn’t really appeal to me or Neil. We like to think a little bit before we talk, so the speed-blogging element was an obvious conflict. But we participated anyway and just blogged our thoughts a little later during the conference. I’m glad we did, because the round-table discussion combined with the free-loving pours of wine were a perfect “beginning to the conference ice-breaker”.

After a tsunami-tasting of at least a hundred wines from New Zealand (mostly Sauvignon Blancs and Pinot Noirs), we had our first night’s dinner at our hotel, the Flamingo Resort (which we all loved and would revisit without a second thought). The keynote speaker was Wine Library TV’s online superstar Gary Vaynerchuk, whose talk was mostly filled with messages of “just do it” and “all success takes is hard work”.

The second night’s dinner was at Sebastiani Winery, which was very pleasant and offered a great buffet of food. (And the drunken bus ride back to the hotel was a true highlight of my trip.) The keynote address this night was by Alice Feiring. The tone of her talk was very different than Gary’s, and it focused on blogger integrity and finding a unique voice.

If Gary is a business-person, Alice is an artist. Both their talks were, in my opinion, excellent. I couldn’t imagine two better people to speak to us at the first Wine Bloggers Conference, and I applaud the event organizers for really going the distance on this one.

But really, this entire event was hands-down fantastic. We really feel reinvigorated about wine blogging, and we made great friends from all around the country – we particulary enjoyed meeting Hardy from Dirty South Wine, Erin from VinTwined, Xandria and Liza from the BrixChicks, and Denise from WineSleuth. Take care everyone, and we’ll see you next year, for sure!

Check out these related posts:

1. The 2008 Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma, CA
2. Summer fun in 2009: The North American Wine Bloggers Conference or the Montreal Jazz Festival
3. Sensing revolution at the Wine Bloggers Conference
4. Off to the first annual Wine Bloggers Conference
5. Speed tasting at the Wine Bloggers Conference