Tag Archives: Rioja

Past Discussions about Wine Future

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I had forgotten about this talk. Ryan Opaz of Catavino, Andre Ribeirinho of Adegga and I got together to share some thoughts during the Wine Future Conference in Rioja in November 2009.

We attempted to broadcast this live, but I’m not sure it went out or was archived. Thankfully our very resourceful Eduardo Benito of VinusTV was present to record the event.

I hope you agree that there are some things worth thinking about (even if you were not at the event itself).

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Live Blogging from the Wine Future Conference in Rioja

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I’m busy live-blogging the Wine Future Conference in La Rioja. You can follow along too, and see what we feel was coming out of the event:

The Wine Show Merry-go-round

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It is a really busy time, and a great time to taste wine.

Today, and for this weekend, I will be at The Wine Show in the Business Design Centre in London showing off some of the wines I represent in the UK on the Wines from Spain stand (come over to say hello), but also speaking to other exhibitors about what they are doing to reach wine consumers, and about their innovations.

Then it is the turn of the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference taking place in Lisbon from the 30th of October to the 1st of November 2009. There are already 117 confirmed participant bloggers from across Europe but also further afield. I am particularly excited to know that we have so many friends from the US and Canada coming too as I have yet to attend the US version of this event. Plenty of great wine and food will be consumed alongside the more serious conference discussion programme.

Then it is back to the UK to take part in The Wine Gang Christmas Fair on November 7th, 2009. There will be literally hundreds of wines there for you to taste PLUS I’ll be helping to showcase some great food and wine bloggers, recording what we get up to on the day and the impressions of the wines.

After that I skip off to Rioja a few times for the Wine Future conference and then a further couple of trips with wine lovers later in November and December.

Somewhere in there I hope to bring you updates on some of the exciting wine developments I’ve been learning about in packaging, research and even games! (more soon)

This blog is not updated every day, but if you want to stay up-to-date (and until I manage to bring it all back into one place) you can follow me on twitter and on the various sites linked above. I hope that somewhere along the way I can taste some of these wines with you in person.

Stay in touch! I may need your help to remind me where I am at any moment.

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London Bloggers Prize Winners

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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!)?

Miss Geeky – Not too late! keep up the efforts, and great to chat to you
>Re:Photo – thanks for the photos and the comments on the videos.
Wadds’ tech pr blog – thanks for the review, hope you liked the presentation
Timinator – glad you like the Vivanco white rioja
Caroline’s Miscellany – thank you so much for your thoughts on wine and particularly for the wine facts of London
A Yankee in London – thanks for the kind words on the presentation, great to see you again
Chris Gilmour’s Diary Vol. 14 – greetings from the short chap on the stool 🙂
Fake Plastic Noodles – shame you didn’t get to try more of the wines, but thanks for the nice comments, and for your support
Jazamatazz – thanks for tasting your first sherry!
Tony Scott – looking forward to our wine/beer/cider tasting in the near future
Chris Reed – ginger and proud – glad you are hooked on the events, and hope you enjoyed your bottle of CVP
Londonist – always great to get a mention on this site, and thanks for the photos Chris!

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 [email protected] (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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New location, same conversation

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Well, here it is! I’ve been meaning to do something to refresh the look and feel, and to implement a few new ideas for my blog for some time. Somehow, life, work and sleep always seemed to get in the way (not to mention wine), so it never happened.

Rioja Autumn Sun

Then I decided to let the experts (Catavino Marketing, whose internet marketing for bodegas, not to mention their expertise and love of Spanish and Portuguese wines have made them well known to all in the vinous blogosphere) take over and do the hard work for me! Result!

I hope you like the technical results – now I must make it worthwhile with some renewed vigour on the content front. If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions or congratulations, please do let me know in the comments – you’ll see we’ve implemented the Disqus plugin and have even more ideas we are working on for this for a future release.

At the moment, those who follow me as thirstforwine on Twitter will know that I am travelling in Rioja, so chances to blog in general about wine are few and far between. I should, however, be able to write a few more posts for my other blog at about Rioja wine and travel (at some stage).

One thing I will definitely be posting about is a UK/European event for Twitter Taste Live to take place in November. I have some great ideas and lots of people interested in helping out, so I will post about that here very soon.

In the meantime, you could do a lot worse tonight than to open a bottle of Rioja (any bottle) and consider the answer to the question I was asked by a visitor only two days ago:

“So, what makes Rioja different from other wines?”

I know my view, but considering how much we drink of the stuff in the UK and around the world, there must be a general sense out there about why we like it so much. What’s your take? Leave me a brief comment.

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