Clos LaChance had the opportunity to pour at the first annual Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa on Friday. It was held at the very funky Flamingo Hotel and Resort, which I would totally go back to on vacation. Reminded me of a 1970’s hotel where our family would stay en route to another destination…but it ended up being the best part of the trip. The ground floor rooms opened up to the pool and the layout reminded me of those nights when my sister and I would run around, meet other random kids and play Hide and Seek or something like that. But I digress.
Our role in the conference was to pour one wine for the Live Blogging Tasting—i.e. 150 people (a mix of bloggers and sponsors, probably about half and half) sitting at 15 tables, getting 5 minutes with each winery plus 1 minute to write. It was very loud, a little chaotic, but fun in a way. I personally read about 5 or 6 wine blogs regularly, so it was interesting to meet some of those people face to face.
We had to pick only one wine to pour—so we brought out the 2005 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. I walked and talked for 90 minutes while Sean from Benson Marketing Group (thanks!) handed out stuff and kept me flush with fresh bottles.
One of the things I have been reading about on various blogs and heard discussions about at this event was that old wine media is dead/dying and wine blogs are the way to capture eyeballs. I admit that I have been experimenting a bit with our media samples list—I added a few bloggers this past shipment, just to test the waters.
A few thoughts:
1. We (and every other winery out there that has wine to sell) send our wines out to publications for scores. I keep my fingers crossed for a good score—and if I get one, I crow about it to anyone who will listen—we put it on the web site, we put it in the tasting room, we tell our distributors etc—in hopes of selling that particular wine and increasing the value of our brand. And a good score = Point of Sale marketing: a shelf talker (that little piece of paper that goes under the bottle in a retail store) or case card (usually a full sized document pasted behind a case stack). Retailers love nice looking POS—it helps sell the wine without much work on their part. Anyways—to get to the point, I have yet to see a shelf talker with a bloggers score/quote on it. Wine Enthusiast, Wine Spectator, Parker and Wine & Spirits still rule, along with Connoisseur’s Guide (puffs!) and some local pubs in various markets (the SF Chronicle, Chicago Trib etc).
3. The wine blogs that I read the most tend to focus more on issues in the wine industry—personal opinions on wine industry news and somewhat controversial subjects (drinking ages always seems to get people fired up). I also like the in depth discussions about wineries and people. Some blogs focus entirely on a tasting room experience, but digs down deep into it. I just don’t see blogs as the best place for wine ratings—yet. Hence my experimentation with the samples.
In any case, I think the conference was a good one. I was glad we got to participate and enjoyed meeting the bloggers. It will be very interesting to see how this new media translates in the future for this industry and ultimately the producers themselves.
A few of the reviews for our Cab from the bloggers I tasted:
1winedude
Wine Sleuth
Cheap Wine Rataings
Domaine547
Lenndevours
Good Grape, A Wine Manifesto
Vine Views
Wine Case
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