Tag Archive - wine conversation

Open That Bottle Night

February 26, 2009 in wine conversation with 1 Comment

Old bottles, lying and waiting

Old bottles, lying and waiting

It is coming up fast, so I thought I’d pass on the tip.

If you’ve been holding on to a bottle or two of wine or Champagne, waiting for that “Special Occasion”, or the “Right Time” to drink it – then wait no longer. In truth, that event or moment very often never materialises, and worse, you could ‘accidentally’ get so frustrated waiting for it to come along that you open it and then realise you have to drink it alone, from a styrofoam cup and match it to take-away pizza – somewhat like a distraught Miles in Sideways.

So, Open That Bottle night (OTBN) was dreamed up in 2000 to create that moment, to place a marker in the diary that means that you will always have a “drink by” moment for those wines. That date is the last Saturday in February, which means 28 Feb 2009. Not only that, but others are doing the same, so you are really taking part in a global quality wine drinking occasion that you can share on Twitter, Facebook, Snooth, Adegga and many other wine social media platforms.

I had planned on doing this on Saturday with a bottle of 1981 or 1982 Rioja from my cellar, and may still do so, but as it happens, the idea of this event prompted me to dig out some bottles and invite some friends over to share them – and beat the deadline. I had a stunning bottle of Nicolas Catena Zapata 1999 (elegant, cassis fruit, soft tannins and wonderful concentration and length, but still with a decade or more in front of it) and even crack open a bottle of Leacock’s Verdelho Madeira from 1971 given to me as a gift (incredible complexity of caramel, banana fruit, nuts and an acidity that smacks you in the mouth and leaves your head spinning and drooling … in the most wonderful way of course).

So, I’ve opened my bottles. What bottles are you tempted to open on Saturday?

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Can you make money on twitter from wine with breakfast?

January 8, 2009 in marketing with 4 Comments

If you have ever heard of Twitter, whether you have joined or not, you’ll probably recognise the truth and comedy in this (click on the image to go to original site and make it larger):

Tweet Your Breakfast

Tweet Your Breakfast - from wheres my jetpack

In summary;

Twitter is really a waste of time because it is full of people with nothing better or more interesting to do than tell you what they had for breakfast.

TRUE! and FALSE!

Yes, there are a lot of people who are talking about what they are doing, what they like, dislike and want information on. Some of it is trivial, some of it is not. But, and this is a BIG BUT, you would be wrong to assume it isn’t valuable.

First, consider that we are all preening social animals, so what we project on twitter says something about us and how we want to be seen. It is important to someone.

Second, it is a shared activity that builds networks of friends and contacts who might then go on and do what you might consider “interesting”, so there is always a benefit in it

Third, let’s put an entrepreneurial hat on for a moment. If there are around 3-4m twitter users (recent estimate) telling you what they are buying, eating and drinking for breakfast, is this not UNBELIEVABLY useful for breakfast providers: coffee brands, cereal brands, diet snake-oil-salesmen, media companies and more?

In fact, I’d go so far as saying that breakfast tweets (and their like) are the most monetisable elements of twitter. No joke.

If you are a wine producer you should already be searching and monitoring the Twitterverse for mentions of your wines or even your direct competitors’. If they are doing it with breakfast, they are probably also doing it with lunch (#lunchtweet) and dinner … including what they drank (the audience is definitely skewed towards a wine drinking profile, see some stats here)

If they mention your wine, the users are doing your word of mouth marketing, FREE. They are also potentially spreading bad reviews (maybe because of corked bottles or poor retail experiences) or misunderstandings about your product or brand. You can easily address these by responding in a timely way. You don’t even need to spend much time on twitter for this benefit, just set up an alert and you’re done. The information comes to you. This is a fantastic opportunity.

If they are not talking about your wine, why not?

The full benefit of Twitter comes from getting involved and becoming part of the many informal networks. There are wine bloggers, wine merchants, journalists, collectors, wine makers and wine consumers already there. They exchange information, link, reviews, suggestions and advice. There are plenty of opportunities to contribute, for example participating in online chats, online wine tastings, or maybe offering a unique view of your wine region. Could you not afford a little time to contribute and therefore also share the benefits? If you do, please link to me (@thirstfowine) and send me a tweet

Twitter is only a tool, still with a limited reach, but a potentially very useful one.

Things to do NOW:

  1. Search for your brands and key terms on Twitter
  2. Check out some wine twitterers (or visit my page and link off to others that you find interesting)
  3. Sign up for an account – OWN YOUR NAME!
  4. Respond to customers in a positive way – but don’t preach or ‘sell’ (not until you have twitter street cred)
  5. Join the fun. Follow some people and get to see how it works first hand
  6. Spread the word and get other interesting people involved

Image above borrowed from Where’s My Jetpack - check it out!

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More BBC Wine Conversations

January 5, 2009 in marketing, wine conversation with 4 Comments

The programme's set, introduced in May 2006, f...
Image via Wikipedia

Must get this post up quickly because I’ve been asked (this morning) to come along to the BBC Working Lunch studios TOMORROW to discuss Wine, Social Media, and specifically the business benefits of Twitter.

Not only that, but I get to share a stage with Annie Mole who will be focusing on the blogging side of things – wow!

How exciting is that? I’d never intended to BE the wine spokesperson on Social Media, only to get to know it to the benefit of the wonderful wineries I work with, and all my wine friends. However, anything I can do to raise the visibility of wine blogging and wine tweeting, then great! After all, this IS the wine conversation.

Of course, one of the main points and examples will be the ongoing developments at Twitter Taste Live

If you are in the UK (or can access the BBC Two), check out the programme that starts at 12:30 tomorrow (6 January, 2009) or watch the iPlayer catch up in the next week.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, if you are reading this before the programme goes out, let me know what you think I should say. Any great examples of where Twitter has helped your wine business – winery, retailer, marketing agency or importer? What about as a wine consumer – has twitter helped you explore wine further? I’d love, in fact am DESPERATE for, your feedback.

Wish me luck!

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How to find your new favourite wine blog

December 19, 2008 in blogs, wine conversation with 2 Comments

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.

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Wineries and Social Media

December 9, 2008 in blogs, marketing, wine conversation with 16 Comments

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.

Wine Conversation 081209

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wine london)

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.

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