WBC ’11

Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

We’ve arrived!   Both Gretchen and I pulled into Charlottesville yesterday evening – Gretchen with a bit more drama behind her than I, but I’ll leave those stories for her.

While the conference officially kicks off in a couple hours, there was a pre-conference International Wine Tasting event last night.  I was too tired to try all the wines being poured, but of the ones I did try, the standout for me was a White Bordeaux, a 60/40 Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon blend that I loved.  Unfortunately I didn’t write down any of the details from the label, so will be spending part of this weekend hunting down that information so I can be sure to pick up some bottles for my cellar.  If anyone knows – please let me know!

Being rather exhausted – and not having seen each other for some time – we didn’t do a lot of mingling last night, leaving that for the next few days.    Everything kicks off this morning with registration and a chance to meet the sponsors at 10:00.    The rest of the day is packed with great events, and I’m particularly looking forward to the Opening Keynote by Jancis Robinson, the Drink Local panel discussion featuring Lenn Thompson of the New York Cork Report (which is also up for a Wine Bloggers Award this year), and the Wine Reception at Monticello.    And tomorrow?   Trips to local Virginia wineries – for once Gretchen and I are visiting the same places, so it’ll be interesting to see how our perceptions differ.  Watch for those posts over the next few weeks.

But to be honest what I’m really most excited about is the chance to meet in person some of my fellow bloggers who I’ve only connected with via Twitter, Facebook, Snooth or other social media venues to date:

• Douglas Traspasso – Chicago Pinot 2.0 – he and Gretchen have known each other for a few years, but Douglas and I have only emailed.   We did try to meet when he was in Connecticut earlier this year, but unfortunately schedules didn’t permit.
• Lenn Thompson – New York Cork Report – Lenn and the team at NYCR have one of my “must read” blogs; it’ll be great to finaly meet in person.
• Gregory del Paiz – Snooth – Greg and I sat across from each other at a wine seminar at the Mohegan Sun Wine Fest a few years ago, although I had no idea at the time.  It wasn’t until a few weeks later when I posted my impressions of the wines tasted that day that he made the connection.  I’ve been a member of Snooth for several years, and have tried to make it down to New York a couple of times for the wine dinners, but it turns out we had to come to Virginia to finally meet.
• Megan Kenney – Wannabe Wino – I’ve enjoyed her blog for a couple years now…
• Tom Wark – Fermentation: The Daily Wine Blog – another person I have “virtually met” through Gretchen, and someone she’s been wanting me to meet for a few years.

There are many other people that Gretchen’s met at previous conferences, so I expect to come home with a much longer list of people to keep in touch with throughout the year.

Look for random posts throughout the weekend about the conference itself – and follow us on Twitter (me: @mtbarrett; gretchen: @mamandesfilles) for conference updates.   And beginning next week, I’ll be publishing my posts from the wineries – including two wineries I stopped at yesterday in Pennsylvania.

 

 

This entry was posted on July 22, 2011 at 12:01 am and is filed under wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.