’08 US Winebloggers Conference, Oct 24-26, Sonoma, CA
US bloggers conference
As some of you may know, I attended the first annual European Winebloggers Conference (check out my September archive for posts on that ) in Rioja this past August. Well, it was so much fun and I had such a positive experience that as soon as I got back to London, I logged onto OpenWineConsortium and signed up for the US Winebloggers Conference in Sonoma Valley, CA.
The US conference is going to be held at the Flamingo Resort and Spa in Santa Rosa, CA. I thought that the meeting in Rioja was chock-a-block, well the folks out in California have an even more jam-packed schedule for us.
Kick Ranch winery
Starting things off right with a lunch on Friday at the Kick Ranch Vineyard where we will be sampling wines from the following wineries: Bedrock Wine Company,Carica Wines, Enkidu Wines, Loxton Cellars, Lynmar Winery, Pax Wines, Renard Wines, Rosenblum Cellars, Sangliere, Silent Morning Cellars, and Shane Wines.
Later that afternoon there’s going to be a live wine blogging event where we get to try 14 wines from 14 different wineries and we have 1 minute to blog about it! The wineries participating:
Boho Vineyards Bonterra
Clos LaChance James David
Dark Horse Sean Minor Wines
Kanzler Vineyards Capozzi (sponsored but not yet licensed to pour)
Killer / Angel Juice Lionheart
Pinot Evil Twisted Oak
Dr. Konstantin FrankWine Cellars
Some of the other events scheduled over the weekend:
- A Blind Tasting Challenge
- A New Zealand tasting with over 100 NZ wines on show
- Grand Tasting of Sonoma wines – which should be really interesting as I’m woefully ignorant of the wine from my home state
- Blogger breakout sessions with a panel of experts and moderated discussions
- A Blogger Unconference where we bloggers control the content
- Dinner at the Sebastiani Vineyards and Winery on Saturday night
- A Luxe Sonoma Lunch which will feature “a collection of luxury and hard-to-find wines from Sonoma’s most renowned wineries” sponsored by the Sonoma County Vintners and Sonoma Winegrape Commission
- and A vineyard walk sponsored by Zephy Wine Adventure of Sonoma. I don’t know how I’m going
Zephry Adventures
to do that one since we have to be up and ready to go by 9am on Saturday morning!
WHEW! I’m exhausted just looking at that list but I’m going to try and do as much of it as possible. I almost forgot to mention the informal winebloggers invitational where we get the chance to show off different or unusual wines to share with our fellow bloggers, probably on Friday and Saturday night after the official activities are finished.
Wish me luck!