Off to the Wine Bloggers Conference

Off to the Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma

We left yesterday for California and had the distinct pleasure to stay in Napa Valley at the home of our friends from Houston – Chuck and Lisa Reid. Their 5 acre vineyard of Cabernet Sauvignon is called Farmhouse Vineyard. Lisa, a local artist in Napa, (www.lisareid.com) shared her latest taste sensation and wine pairing: Orville Redenbachers popcorn with olive oil (pressed from their Farmhouse Vineyard olives) and blackpepper, paired with a wonderful Chardonnay.

After a wonderful dinner and wine with Chuck and Lisa, sleep came easy. It was an early morning today as they were harvesting their cabernet grapes at 6:30 am.

By 10:30 am we were off for The Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, the site of the Wine Bloggers Conference. I will be doing some live blogs later today from the tasting.

We arrived shortly before noon and were treated to a vineyard luncheon and tasting at the Kick Ranch VIneyard on the outskirts of Santa Rosa.

I had the pleasure of visiting with Kent and Kathy Rosenblum (Rosenblum Cellars) and tasting their Kick Ranch Reserve Syrah. I explained that I was a wine writer from Texas trying to understand our “sense of place” and context of Texas wines.

When told that Texas now had 160 wines, Kent indicated that back in the 1960’s California was probably about the same. He said, “None of us had any idea about who we were and what the wine industry would become. But, we had people with ideas and the drive to succeed. Texas can to the same”.

He also felt that using new technology like blogging was a good vehicle to provide information in our developing industry in Texas, much of which are not on the radar screen of rhe mainstream wine industry media.