The CIA, No, Not That One…

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerve Editor

On Saturday, bright and early or 9:00am in reality, we loaded onto buses and headed off to the CIA.

No. Not the spys. The chefs. The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, California. Home of the Vintners Hall of Fame. The twenty three inductees are listed here.

We entered the Greystone Cellars building which was originally a cooperative winery beginning in the 1880s and later owned by the Christian Brothers to produce sparkling wine.  The building contains the Hall of Fame, the teaching kitchens, EcoLab Theatre, Wine Spectator Greystone Restaurant, Spice Islands Marketplace, De Baun Theatre, De Baun Café, and administrative offices.  As we made our way up to the third floor conference room, I managed to get pictures of the kitchens… and a spectacular collection of corkscrews.

We were addressed by CIA operatives (sorry, couldn’t help myself) er, officials and then by Barry Schuler, former AOL CEO and Meteor Vineyard owner.  He spoke to us about blogging, social media  and wine.  During his talk he discussed the  about the potential for creating marketplaces for internet content.  I thought his views of versions 1,2 and 3 of the internet were fascinating and seemed to resonate with the rest of the group.  For me, it made me anxious as crossing that line from Web 2.0 to 3.0 is an ongoing issue with me that I am personally trying to achieve.

The next speaker was then by Jim Gordon Editor of Wines and Vines about the upcoming wine issues.  To me, the most important issues related to environmental issues.  Water resources and smoke damaged grapes, to me are offshoots of these concerns.  Questions about barrels and closures also relate to the environment.  Place, in the terroir sense, as always is important and maintaining the climate of a terroir is essential to maintaining viability as a grape producing region.

Soon though, our discussions were finished and it was time to get on the buses and head off for our adventures for the rest of the day.  It had been suggested to me that the bus to be on was #4, however as I approached that bus, the doors were being closed.  So I did what we Neuman’s typically do when trying to figure out which bus to get on or where to park… Go to the last available option..  And that is exactly what I did….

This entry was posted on August 7, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Gretchen Neuman, Road Trip!, Win(e)ding Roads, Wine Bloggers Conference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.