Thank you so much to all those who came to the recent London Bloggers Christmas gathering at Ember, and who took the time to write their thoughts about the wines and link back to the wineries who generously provided the wines to taste.

Here is a list of all the reactions to the event that I could locate (including those who didn’t link to the wineries) that also linked back to this site – who knows what else happened out there (let me know!)?

Chris Gilmour’s Diary Vol. 14 – greetings from the short chap on the stool

The process was to award a “virtual ticket” for each link to a winery blog involved in the tasting, and many were generous enough include links to all the wineries as well as some specific links of their favourites. We are all very thankful for your support.

In all 62 tickets were placed in the draw which offers a pretty good chance of winning, but the ultimate and sole winner* of a case of 6 bottles of Dinastia Vivanco Crianza (offered by me, but through my Rioja winery blog at thirstforrioja.co.uk) is …

Caroline’s Miscellany

Caroline, if you would drop me a line with your address at thirstforwine@gmail.com (or through a comment on this site), I’ll arrange for the wines to be delivered to you asap for you to enjoy. Congratulations!

Thank you again to all the wonderful London Bloggers who participated, to Andy Bargery who allowed me to sponsor this event, to the wineries who provided their wines, my mum & dad (etc.), and finally to those who read this blog and make it fun to write about wine and help to share the love of wine.

* in case you were wondering, I gave everyone an entry in a spreadsheet for each link (up to 8, one for each winery), then assigned each “ticket” a random value from 1-100, sorted on this basis & numbering each entry, then picked a number between 1 & 62. The winning ticket was #16

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Apologies for the delay, but I have rather intermittent access to the internet, so it has been a little difficult tracking and colating the results of the prize from the recent London Bloggers “Winery Bloggers” Tasting (see the last paragraph in this post for the details).

Thank you so much to those who did write a post with their thoughts on the evening with links to the generous wineries who sent their wines! I think I have got them all (or those who remembered to ping me too) and will announce the winner shortly, but thought I would let you know I am working on it

Happy Holidays to everyone in the interim!

A short update to let you in on an exciting development.

There are quite a lot of Wine Blogs out there – by some estimate there are around 1,000, and very few of them have much profile (i.e. traffic) yet. A few (mainly American) sites have gathered a reputation beyond a small circle of followers, such as Vinography, Fermentation, Dr. Vino and Good Wine Under $20, and a few Europeans are also regularly quoted, such as Catavino and Wine Anorak. These are the sites that get mentioned most often in articles about wine blogging online and in print, but they may not represent the kind of wine blog YOU want to read.

How do you find a blog about the wines of India, or a Wine Marketing blog in French?

Last year, Guy Kawasaki launched the popular Alltop into the wine arena with wine.alltop.com (where you will find this site listed, of course) but by its very nature, the site is still limited.

Now, Catavino Marketing has taken this to the next level (with just a little input from friends) by relaunching a great wine blog resource at http://wineblogger.info

The site has existed for around a year, listing the growing number of wine blogs around the world, but with quite a lot of effort, and some nifty programming, Ryan and Gabriella have now categorised these blogs into languages and even some topic categories so you can find the kind of blogs that are most interesting to you. What is great is that you do not even need to visit each one, but you can see the latest 5 posts from each one and even a preview of the post itself.

Of course, the technology and design may not be radical but it IS important because it is a major resource for the wine blogging world, and the kind of thing that no commercial organisation was going to get around to build for us as it is unlikely to make money. We ought to be doubly grateful for the skills and dedication to the wine blogging cause of Catavino Marketing & friends.

I’m certain we will see this site grow as a resource for wine bloggers and those who like to read them over the next few months, so do keep an eye on it, and if you find something new and interesting because of this, do let me know.

BBC Pods & Blogs

A brief note to let you know that for the next few days you can listen to my less-than-dulcet tones on the excellent BBC show called Pods & Blogs

I was invited to speak a little about what is happening online with wine blogs and a couple of pointers for choosing wines for Christmas. Hopefully I can make a return visit in 2009 to update Jamillah Knowles on the news emerging from the 2009 European Wine Bloggers Conference – more news on that very soon.

As I mentioned on the show, there are interesting things underway at http://wineblogger.info thanks to lots of effort by Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino, so keep an eye on that too.

By the way, if that wasn’t already too much of me, I also participate from time to time in another fun podcast on wine called New Wine Consumer with Randulo, Evelyne Resnick (author of Wine Brands), daveac and many other friends including Ryan and Gabriella. Unlike the BBC content, this is archived for longer, so you can check out lots of past episodes as well as the most recent one which happened to be on Spanish wines.

This to be filed under: “It seemed like a good idea at the time …”

What wine bloggers do when they get together

When preparing for the sponsorship of the London Bloggers Christmas Networking meetup I contacted my wine blogging friends with a challenge:

“As you probably cannot make it in person to the tasting, how about making a SHORT video, say 2 minutes maximum, explaining a little about you, your blog and your wines, so that the London Bloggers can learn a bit more about the people behind the blogs?”

Of course, it is a good idea, but despite the fact that some of us have been blogging for ages, and the multimedia capabilities of the blogging platforms and our computers, most of us are firmly wedded to our keyboards. I have never produced a proper film (with editing) before, and nor had anyone else I think.

However, everyone was up for the challenge and we got an amazing reaction and variety of presentations.

My absolute favourite is below, but rather than load them all on this page, please follow the links below to the videos on YouTube – and if you were at the tasting, why not check out the producer of your favourite wine from the night?

Thomas Lippert – Winzerblog.de

[Make sure you check out the credits to this video regarding "Beckham" & "Gascoigne"!]

BTW, this is a picture of Thomas

The other bloggers and their videos (click on the name for the video):

Robert McIntosh :: thirstforrioja.co.uk
My first video (this is take 15 or so!)

Javier Navarro :: tintoralba.com
Javier and some photos of the Cooperative winery near Alicante

Gianpaolo Paglia :: poggioargentiera.com
Gianpaolo, one of the top Italian winery bloggers but now based in the UK, gives us an overview of his wines

Emilio Saez Van Eerd :: casavides.com
Lots of photos of many different aspects of the business and some tunes to keep us humming along (!)

Jose Eduardo J Silva :: cortesdecima.com
Get everyone involved. Vineyards look a little wintry, but these are the guys behind the wonderful Syrah we tasted

Jan Pettersen from Fernando de Castilla talking to Justin Roberts :: jerez-xerez-sherry.blogspot.com (who also writes about sherry here)
Justin cheated (!) and interviewed the guy who made the sherry so we never get to see him, but a nice introduction to this sherry bodega and a wonderful wine

Oscar Quevedo :: Quevedoportwine.com
Uber-youthful Oscar and his mountain bike in the vineyards of the Douro.

Thank you so much to the London Bloggers for the enthusiastic response to last night’s experience and experiment. Presenting wine from wineries that have a blog to fellow bloggers must qualify as some sort of world first, shouldn’t it? [some photos here]

In any case, I want to thank all those who came along, and especially those winery bloggers that sent us the wines to taste and videos to watch. One of my key objectives was to get my fellow London Bloggers to look at wine in a slightly different way, and I think we succeeded.

I will try to upload the video of my brief talk from last night along with a summary of the main points to accompany the slides I’ve already posted at a later date (YouTube rejected my upload this morning!).

I will also give you a link later today to the videos from each of the participating winery bloggers.

However, I did want to post a few thoughts on your reactions to the wines and to wine blogging today and remind you of the competition (see details below).

By far the most controversial must have been the sherry, but sherry is used to it! Some of you bravely tried sherry for the first time which is wonderful. There were a handful who loved it (including me I admit) but 20 year old dry oloroso sherry might be a little like jumping in a the deep end when learning to swim – it is an overwhelming experience!

With the whites, there was an interesting split between those who liked the drier style of the Riesling Kabinett and Vivanco Viura/Malvasia (predominantly the men) and those who liked the richer, fruitier Auslese Riesling (many more of the women).

When it comes to the reds we had clear differences in people’s palates. A number of you came up to tell me that they found the lighter, “peppery” style of the Higueruela wine, made from the unusual all-red Garnacha Tintorera, amazing, whilst others found it wasn’t full-bodied enough for them. What more demonstration do we need that we all like different wines and catch-all recommendations are useless?

I found several fans of Italian wines who were surprised to find a Morellino di Scansano on the list as it is a rare sight still in the UK, but the wine (as well as the bottle and lovely label) was tasting really good.

To be honest, the votes on “favourite red” were quite evenly spilt between the Casa de las Vides CVP (and its unusual bottle), the Dinastia Vivanco Crianza and the Cortes de Cima Syrah. It seems that the cold weather has converted many of us to “red season” and the richer styles were very popular.

Finally, I only had a small taste of the Quevedo Reserva Tawny Port – at one stage I turned around and found a couple struggling to taste the last drops whilst trying to avoid the sediment. Draining a bottle is always a good sign!!

Basically there wasn’t a wine there that did not have a big fan which is great, and a great testament to the diversity of wine and of everyone’s palates.

I have a long list of cards of people I will be in touch with, but please do leave me a comment with your views on your favourite wines as I’m sure the wineries would love to hear it from you directly.

Finally, don’t forget to get in touch so we can chat about wine and your own experiences. I’d love to interview and reach out of the wine bubble to make what we write about more relevant to more of you.

Now, for the competition for those who made it to the tasting last night. There are 6 bottles of Dinastia Vivanco Crianza (delivered to you) available for a lucky blogger who posts thoughts about one or more of the wines we tasted. For every mention of a wine, and link to the winery blog, I’ll allocate you a virtual draw ticket (don’t forget to ping me on this blog so I know you have done it). I’ll make the draw on 21st December so you have a few days to get something up and have a chance of winning.

If I am lucky, and you are seeing this page, it means I have found a way to do some Live Blogging of the tasting.

Please feel free to participate and maybe post your thoughts

Here are a few more details on the talk I will be giving tonight for London Bloggers at Ember. I am probably not going to show these slides, they are more for my reference, but they might jog some memories after the fact! I will post the text of the presentation after the event.

Below you will also find a list of the wines we will be tasting, and the links to the winery blogs that supplied them for you to taste.

There is an added incentive to come along. There will be wine bottles to win for those who dip a toe in the wine conversation! Read on.

The wines we will taste tonight are:

1. Vivanco Viura/Malvasia 2007, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco – courtesy of thirstforrioja.co.uk
2. Riesling Kabinett Trocken 2007, Weingut Clauer (and if you are really nice to me, a taste of Riesling Auslese 2003, Weingut Clauer) – courtesy of winzerblog.de
3. Higueruela 2007, from Sta. Quiteria – courtesy of tintoralba.com
4. Dinastia Vivanco Crianza 2004, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco – courtesy of thirstforrioja.co.uk
5. Bellamarsilia 2007, Poggio Argentiera – courtesy of poggioargentiera.com
6. CVP 2007, La Casa de las Vides – courtesy of casavides.com
7. Syrah 2004, Cortes de Cima – courtesy of cortesdecima.com
8. Antique Oloroso Sherry from Fernando de Castilla – courtesy of jerez-xerez-sherry.blogspot.com (who also writes about sherry here)
9. Special Reserve Tawny Port, Quevedo Port – courtesy of Quevedoportwine.com

And stay tuned for a series of videos we will be showing on the night. I shall link them up here tomorrow for you all to enjoy.