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Virginie Boone, of the Press Democrat, shares premier Russian River Valley Pinot Noir producer Ross Halleck’s experience with his first online tasting, the global #PinotNoir Twitter community tasting held in July.  Furthermore, wine country social media specialists, Rick Bakas (St. Supery) and Lisa Mattson (Jordan Winery), also chime in on the benefits of tasting online.  While this form of collaborative wine-tasting is still in its infancy and can certainly improve, below are 5 items that I believe add value to this format.  If you have feedback on how online Twitter (or other channel) tastings can improve, please take this short survey HERE.

1. Complementing the online Twitter tasting with a physical venue.  It’s important to understand that social media isn’t successful when using only online tools.  We hosted our event at Paul’s restaurant in Atlanta with the help of Tower Beer Wine & Spirits, a local retailer, as well as two distributors (Empire and Quality Wine & Spirits).  I think wineries have benefited the most because they can host an event at their winery or tasting room, offer some kind of special just for the event and gain broad brand exposure online.  However, the ability for consumers to follow along while at home or host their own party is also a great option.

2. Engagement directly with other wine lovers as well as direct access to wineries/winemakers.  The twitter tasting gives everyday consumers direct access to other wine lovers and wine experts in their area and abroad.  Furthermore, they have the opportunity to ask questions directly of the winery, and even the winemaker, at times, about the wine they are drinking. This is unprecedented and was practically impossible before unless you visited the tasting room/winery and the winemaker happened to be there.  In many cases, these connections become real long-term relationships.  Vis-a-vis, this gives wineries direct access to new prospects as well as long-time consumers of their wines.

3. Specials.  Discounts or special “taste packs” are often offered by wineries or retailers during the event.  For the Pinot Noir Twitter Tasting we also teamed up with Andrea Robinson who has a new line of stemware.  She allowed us to offer a discount for a set purchase from anyone who participated online and also provided a FREE red stem for all participants who physically attended our Atlanta venue.  I have not yet heard from Andrea about how the event helped in any additional sales of her stemware.  Finally, the restaurant we used for our venue also offered a 10% discount for any participant who joined them for dinner prior to the event.

4. Traffic to venues and websites.  Additionally, the event itself generates a lot of interest, so has been helpful in driving traffic to websites, eCommerce pages as well as physical venues.  Our venue, Paul’s restaurant in Atlanta, sold out in 3 days (80 participants).  The post HERE shows some of the statistics regarding interactivity during the event and this also translated to increases in pageviews, comments and web traffic in the weeks leading up to the event.

5. Having fun.  Ultimately, these events are set up to have fun.  You must realize that not everyone has a presence online or understand tools like twitter.  So, you have to be flexible and be able to accommodate those with and without mobile devices and social media accounts.  It becomes a learning opportunity for those who are new to social media where they can see the reach and interaction that can be experienced via these channels.  We had about a half dozen wineries from New Zealand also participating with us on Twitter during the event and many in the room at my venue were amazed with that concept.  During a Twitter tasting is it easy to see how flat and accessible the world really is these days due to technology.

What has worked well for you and how do you think twitter tastings can improve?

If you don’t want to use a corkscrew, give some of these options a try, but I do not recommend it!

We are celebrating the start of the third year of our neighborhood wine tasting club.  We call it a wine club, but the fact is we have had tequila and Octoberfest beer tastings as well, so it’s very wide open as to the topic and the main goal is simply to get together with our friends and neighbors and enjoy each other’s company.  Oh, and maybe we learn something new about wine, tequila or beer along the way too. 

One way to meet your resolution to taste more wines this year is to host your own tasting.  We recommend hosting a tasting for anyone looking to try new wines and learn from one another.  It is very easy to do and can be as informal or elaborate as you like.  You can see some examples by going to the Pelly Wine Club pages.

Here are some basics to get started with:

1. Relax and don’t try to be an expert or think you need to be one.  Again, it’s about the company and having a learning and/or drinking experience.

2. Take notes.  Taking notes helps you remember the wines you liked and may want to purchase down the road, especially after tasting a lot of wines, the memory of that evening might get a little blurry.    Don’t worry about what your notes say, but rather use descriptions that you know and will recognize.  If it tastes like blackberries and you like that taste, write that down, but I have never tasted gooseberries or elderberries, so I would never use those terms.  Click below for some examples of tasting note cards (Powerpoint .PPT format):            

Bordeaux

Basic

S Hemi

3. Snacks are a good idea both for counteracting alcohol consumption (we talk about spit and dump buckets below) and palate cleansing between wines.  Some foods can mess with the palate such as spicy sausage or certain cheeses, so stick with plain crackers or bread (i.e. French, but NOT sourdough) if you are just doing a blind tasting and not trying to do pairings with food. Often, we will start our parties at 8pm+ so that participants have a chance to eat dinner or something prior to attending the tasting.

4. Don’t have guests bring wine in their own bags.  The host should bag the wines in identical wrapping (i.e. brown bag) and mark them with letters or numbers so that no one will be able to tell which wine they brought.  Sometimes, it helps to remove the foil on the neck, too.

5. Use a light tablecloth, white paper napkins, or white tasting note cards as this will allow for good background material to note the color of each wine.  Note: this doesn’t matter if you are doing more advanced pure blind tasting using black glasses and you don’t want to be influenced by the hue.

6. If you have guests new to the wine tasting experience, remind them to keep each taste to about 1 – 2 oz. and maybe you can show them about how much that is — we’ve had a few folks get kinda sloshed before reaching the last wine in the tasting and there’s certainly not anything wrong with that at our parties for sure — it makes for great stories.  You can remind everyone that after the tasting, they can pour full glasses of their favorites… in most cases, there is plenty of wine left to do this.

7. We prefer to go around the table or room to share some quick thoughts on each wine before moving onto the next one — sometimes we try to guess the wine and I even get lucky once in awhile.  There is no pressure for anyone to share their thoughts or notes if they don’t want to.  If your party is too large and folks are scattered around or you have multiple “stations” around your living, dining and family rooms, this isn’t possible and can wait until the end of the tasting to share notes.

8. Be sure to have some spit and dump buckets around so that guests can dump their wine if they don’t fancy it, or if they would like to reduce the chance of becoming intoxicated.  Professional tasters never consume and always spit as they taste many wines at one sitting and the effects of consumption can affect your ability to evaluate the wine as the night goes on.  We are a consumption tasting club in which almost everyone is drinking along the way and always continue the party into the late hours.  It’s your choice.  No need to get fancy as we use flower vases, pitchers or pots for this purpose.

9. To score or not to score — if you want to add a little competition to your party, have everyone score each wine from, say 1-5, and give the guests who brought the winning wine a small gift (i.e. corkscrew, wine glass charms, wine book, etc.)

That’s it!  Good luck and happy tasting.