Tag Archives: matching

A devilishly good day

A quick post to point you to the results of the fun wine and food experiment I helped to organise yesterday for Casillero del Diablo, the well known Chilean wine brand.

I’m always looking for interesting new ways brands can promote wine and reach out to new audiences, and when I had the opportunity to create an event for a wine brand like this I knew it could be amazing. The team at Cube put on a great event at The Kitchen run by Michelin-starred chef Thierry Laborde, and my role was to document, host and share some of that event with the wider world.

The event itself was really made a success by the three bloggers who were invited to taste the Casillero del Diablo wines and come up with dishes to match them – then cook them in time for a taste-off with the judges: winemaker Marcelo Papa, chef Thierry Laborde and Carol Emmas from Harpers. The three bloggers were Signe Johansen (@scandilicious), Linda Williams (@goodshoeday) and Louis Villard (@spiltwine).

I managed to use a whole range of ‘social’ tools on the day, but the star was really Posterous – an amazing tool for combining your event content. Check it out! Visit the site to see the videos (using Qik from my mobile), audio interview (using AudioBoo), photos (using Flickr) and the twitter stream (using ScribbleLive) – all toold you should definitely consider using too.

Enjoy!

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Wine, Food and The Muse

You may have experienced a different tone from the posts on this site recently. I have certainly felt the difference when trying to write posts. The main reason, I believe, is that I have not been drinking any wine (with one or two extremely minor exceptions) for the last few weeks because I may need to dash off to the local maternity ward at any moment, so need to be alert.

The excitement and stressful expectation of babies aside, I find that my Vinous Muse has decided to pack her bags and head off on a brief seaside holiday in the interim, and thus my motivation for passionate discourse has abated somewhat.


I’m considering setting myself, and anyone who cares to join in, a challenge: to spend a week eating and drinking ONLY (dinner) dishes & wine matches to be found on UK blogs

Even though I do not post tasting notes on the wines I drink, these wines do inspire me with questions, to do some research or elicit some sort of reaction, and without them I feel like I am missing out on something.

Not drinking, when I normally drink a glass or two most nights, is difficult enough, but not drinking and trying to write engaging content to inspire others to do so, is even more of a torture.

All will be resolved in the next few days (I hope) and normal service resumed.

I’ve been thinking about the kinds of wine drinkers again. I wondered whether it was just me that was really not interested in food & wine matching and tasting notes, or whether there were more of us? I totally understand why one would be interested in combining food & wine writing, but I have yet to be bitten by that bug.

I’m considering setting myself, and anyone who cares to join in, a challenge: to spend a week eating and drinking ONLY (dinner) dishes & wine matches to be found on UK blogs (it must be a blog!). It will require a lot more pre-planning and shopping than I’m used to, but it could be fun and I might learn to appreciate the art more.

Any suggestions on sites to use as sources gratefully appreciated. I already have my friends as Spittoon and Cooksister as inspiration. Any others?

(pictured: my attempt at food & wine matching)

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