Takeaways from DrinkLocalWine.com Conference: Missouri Wines – Day 2 Overview
The conference started back up the following morning at the crack of nine o’clock with three sessions, the first moderated by Doug Frost MS/MW on non-vinifera wines of Missouri (We Don’t Need to Stinkin’ Vinifera) followed by Micheal Wangbickler’s panel on creating the buzz on local/regional wines, and Dave McIntyre’s multimedia panel that asked the question: Does Locavore = Lovapour?
Dave started his session with a video on Locavorism taken to the extreme in a segment from the series, Portlandia.It pokes fun at the excesses of the foodie movement. However, we noticed that they didn’t even mention one word about where the wine they shared at the table was from: not a mention grape variety, state of origin, appellation, hillside location, vineyard designation, nothing, nada, zip, zero. See above YouTube video.
These sessions were all interactive and thought provoking particularly for me as I found some lessons-learned from the Missouri Norton winemaking experience applicable to what we are trying to do in Texas with another Vitis Astrivalis-based grape, Black Spanish (Lenoir).
2011 DrinkLocalWine.com Twitter Taste-Off
After the Saturday lunch break the show was mine to emcee with event sponsor, Eric Orange from LocalwineEvents.com. It was the DrinkLocalWine.com Missouri Twitter Taste-Off, featuring twenty Missouri wineries and forty of their wines. After a kick-ass, kick-off to the taste-off, I reminded the tasters of the afternoon’s mantra: Sip, tweet, repeat! Then, Denise Fraser tweeted and shot off a twitpic of me (hot shirt, yes?):
denisefraser: “Texas’ Russ Kane @VintageTexas is moderating #DLWMO Twitter Tasting.”
I had to break the news to the media members in the Twitter tasting that they could not vote for the Peoples Choice Wine, only the Media Choice wine; therefore, confirming something that many people already knew: Media are really NOT people!
There were some great tasting notes for the Missouri wines shouted out via Twitter:
WineKulers: “Adam Puchta Norton: black berry, blueberry aroma, violets, refreshing. palate: dusty cherry, a little fox, a touch of bitter, game. #dlwmo”
chiefwino: “Wow @wenwoodwinechic the Country Estate White is delish. Fresh, tropical, melon, citrus, wet stone, dry finish. Vignoles/Vidal/Seyval #dlwmo”
For more, follow the hashtag #DLWMO on twitter search and read the pages and pages of comments.
But, some were overwhelmed with having twenty wineries and forty wines to contend with and eventually need a little mid-afternoon rest:
After nearly three hours of tasting, tweeting and a brief rest bit for at least one Tweeter, I called for the votes so they could be tallied for the conferring of DrinkLocalWine.com’s Twitter Taste-Off awards: the “LocaPours”, “LocalPours” or “LocoPours” as we started to refer to them. Jeff, I think that you will have to agree that this is a bit better than your first suggestion for the new name of the awards: “The Drinkees”.
The attendees cast their votes, they were tallied and Mike Wangbickler made the presentations of four Locapour awards were presented:
Best White Wine: Chaumette Chardonel
Best Red Wine: Adam Puchta Norton
Media Choice Wine: Chaumette Chardonel
Peoples Choice Wine: Adam Puchta Port
After the award presentations, Jeff made the announcement for which everyone was waiting. He revealed that the next DrinkLocalWine.com Conference in 2012 will feature the wines from the great state of Colorado. Stay posted toDrinklocalwine.com as arrangements are finalized and the venue and conference details are announced.
Saturday evening, after two long days of tasting and tweeting, our group was ready for a break. We found a sushi restaurant, kicked back and had sushi, sashimi, Japanese beer and sake. Mike looks like he is still got a lot to give that evening.
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Stay tuned for : Takeaways from DrinkLocalWine.com Conference in Missouri Wine Country – Part 2: Ten Things I Learned
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