Taking the world one wine at a time.
I know what you’re thinking! No sooner do you wrap your head around Facebook, Twitter, Google+, FourSquare, LinkedIn etc ……and another bloody social media network comes along to suck all the life out of you! Thankfully, Pinterest is quite possibly the easiest to understand! The best way to think of Pinterest is as a “social scrapbooking” network, with the added bonus that you don’t have to spend all your weekends at Joann Fabrics! I joined…
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No doubt it’s extremely difficult for any business to maintain a constant stream of engaging content on Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of it; but it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of posting the saaaaaaame old stuff. It’s often suggested that if you can’t post daily, or at least every-other-day, you have no place having a social media presence, at least when it comes to business. I would like to counter…
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Gallo Winery Gets Russian River Valley AVA Expanded. After years of regulatory wrangling, mega-producer E. & J. Gallo eventually emerged victorious in its quest to enlarge the Russian River Valley AVA, in a decision announced by the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade Bureau (TTB) on Nov. 16, 2011, effective Dec. 16. As requested in the petition from Gallo Family Vineyards, the ruling expands the RRV AVA by 14,044 acres (about 23 square miles). The AVA…
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I haven’t written a social media post for a while. I recognize that this is basically a wine website, but I like to throw in the occasional social media article, as it’s a topic that interests me greatly. Also, according to my stats, Facebook is my #3 generator of traffic, (right after organic Google searches, and direct traffic). So there’s a very good chance that if you’re reading this, you found me through one of…
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Fighting the Funk in Funky Wine Scientists in Australia have sequenced the Brettanomyces genome – a breakthrough that will ‘future-proof’ the industry against spoilage by the yeast organism known as brett. Brett is widely know to spoil wine with medicinal or metallic flavors, often described as “funk”. ‘Sequencing the brett genome, which reveals its genetic blueprint, means the Australian wine industry can future-proof its strategy against brett and the risk of spoilage,’ Australian…
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Some of the more frequent visitors to this website may have noticed that my posts have been a little few and far between over this last week. I have good reason, if you care to know what I’ve been working on: – I’ve enlisted a little help in giving the website an overhaul. Nothing crazy, it’s all "back-end” stuff, and there’s probably going to be no major changes that you’ll even notice. The reason being,…
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Believe it or not, me and Sparky go waaaaaaaay back! I’m talking 2009, here! Mollydooker winemaker Sparky Marquis was actually the first ever winemaker I interviewed when I started blogging. This week he came back to Jacksonville for the release of his 2010 wines. The interview was supposed to last about 15 minutes. We ended up talking for closer to an hour. <Sparky starts pouring every-single one of his wines into glasses lined up…
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There’s been so much flying around the Internet with regard to Google’s new social service (Google +), that I thought it warranted a quick post. I don’t want to drag this article out too much, after all this is a wine website; but with me taking such an active interest in social media, I thought it was worth letting you know some of my insights: Google seems to be listening to its audience (customers), unlike…
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I don’t know if there are any avid FourSquare users reading this website, but I thought this might be of interest to you! Location-based social network service FourSquare recently announced their Wino badge, awarded to users after they “check-in” 3 times to what are categorized as wine bars. A nice way of showing your friends what a discerning oenophile you are! Now here’s the interesting part: I think I might have had a large…
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Following on from yesterdays post, the following is part 4 of 4 of a post made by a friend of mine, Lucas Meeker – Assistant Winemaker at Meeker Vineyards in Sonoma. The post originally appeared on professional Q&A website Quora.com. The question Lucas answered was: What are some Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of Owning a Napa Winery? My annotations throughout the article appear in the form of: [Notes like this], and as always I’ve…
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VinPass: Wine Lovers Can Now Check In A new social game called VinPass has just recently launched. It’s an application for wine lovers to "share wine reviews, win badges and earn real rewards. VinPass uses the ‘check-in’ paradigm popularized by location-based social network Foursquare and extended into other areas by the likes of GetGlue (entertainment) and Foodspotting (food). In a nutshell, you check-in to tasting a certain type of wine. If you write…
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Following on from yesterdays post, the following is part 3 of 4 of a post made by a friend of mine, Lucas Meeker – Assistant Winemaker at Meeker Vineyards in Sonoma. The post originally appeared on professional Q&A website Quora.com. The question Lucas answered was: What are some Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of Owning a Napa Winery? My annotations throughout the article appear in the form of: [Notes like this], and as always I’ve…
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