Today marks the first day of the Second Annual Wine Blogging Conference in Santa Rosa, California. I was not at last year’s conference and I am excited to take part in the action.
My expectations:
I will be the youngest person in the room. I know, what a weird way to start but I find it to be true that most bloggers average about ten years older than I am. It gives me an instant disadvantage since I have had less life to taste wine, and just about all of the people at this conference will be well experienced wine drinkers - I mean tasters. There are of course exceptions.
There will be more wine here than anyone could taste at once. It cannot be helped, whenever there is such a large concentration of people interested in drinking, thinking, and writing about wine then there is sure to be an over excessive amount of wine to be tasted.
There will be a ton of people who do not work in the wine industry. It is extremely refreshing to meet people who drink wine because they want to, not because it is their job.
There will be a ton of people who work in the wine industry. These people do not just do it because they love wine; they get paid to play with wine. I count myself one of the lucky ones whose job it is to think about wine and its relationship to the rest of the world.
This will be a marketing extrrrrrrrravaganza! That is right; I expect to be marketed to. I expect the California Grape Growers to tell me how amazing the climate in California is for growing grapes. I then expect the Portuguese representatives to tell me how amazing the wines from Portugal are. I then expect to be given enough paperwork to break my back, filled with phrases like “outstanding value” and “exceptional quality.”
I expect to get drunk.
I expect to walk away feeling that I was given an amazing opportunity to meet great people who love culinary experiences, enjoy the company of some of the thought-leaders in the wine industry, and taste hundreds of wines that I might not otherwise of have had a chance to taste.
My expectations:
I will be the youngest person in the room. I know, what a weird way to start but I find it to be true that most bloggers average about ten years older than I am. It gives me an instant disadvantage since I have had less life to taste wine, and just about all of the people at this conference will be well experienced wine drinkers - I mean tasters. There are of course exceptions.
There will be more wine here than anyone could taste at once. It cannot be helped, whenever there is such a large concentration of people interested in drinking, thinking, and writing about wine then there is sure to be an over excessive amount of wine to be tasted.
There will be a ton of people who do not work in the wine industry. It is extremely refreshing to meet people who drink wine because they want to, not because it is their job.
There will be a ton of people who work in the wine industry. These people do not just do it because they love wine; they get paid to play with wine. I count myself one of the lucky ones whose job it is to think about wine and its relationship to the rest of the world.
This will be a marketing extrrrrrrrravaganza! That is right; I expect to be marketed to. I expect the California Grape Growers to tell me how amazing the climate in California is for growing grapes. I then expect the Portuguese representatives to tell me how amazing the wines from Portugal are. I then expect to be given enough paperwork to break my back, filled with phrases like “outstanding value” and “exceptional quality.”
I expect to get drunk.
I expect to walk away feeling that I was given an amazing opportunity to meet great people who love culinary experiences, enjoy the company of some of the thought-leaders in the wine industry, and taste hundreds of wines that I might not otherwise of have had a chance to taste.
