Tips for Hosting a Wine-Tasting Party

3 for me...1 for you! (Courtesy: freefoto.com)

One of the best experiences to come from the Murphy-Goode campaign is meeting some pretty cool and interesting new people.

Ed Thralls is one of them fellers.  You might know him best as @winetonite on Twitter or from his Murphy-Goode application video which he posted pretty early in the process.  Kudos for jumping in feet first there!

I decided to call out a blog post of his from earlier this year on How to Host a Wine-Tasting Party.

I have only been to a few wine-tasting parties at peoples’ homes, but it’s always a real blast and a wonderful way to meet new people and sample everyone’s favorite wines.  “Can you believe how smokey Tina likes her pinot noirs? You’d never know it from the way she dresses!”

To tease his fun post (you’ll be hoping for an invite to one of his parties after reading it!), here are nine bullet points (in my words, but quite close to his own) which get the elaboration they’re due over at his blog:

9 Quick Tips for Hosting Your Own Wine-Tasting Party

International Wine Smuggler?

Yep, that’s me!

According to Frank Gutierrez’s blog, at least, where I guest-posted earlier today.

Check out the post and don’t let my boyish good looks fool you…I’m a customs agent’s trickiest adversary and worst nightmare.

Did I fool you as President of the National Honor Society in high school?  Trick you into believing my altruism when I ran into that burning house to save the kitten named Piddles? (Eh, I just made that up. See?  I’m a fibber, too!)

My thanks go out to Frank Gutierrez.  He’s a fellow VinTanker and all-around great guy – watch and vote for his Murphy-Goode application video – you won’t see a more beautifully-shot entry in the running!

Frank and the ever-awesome Anita.

Millennial Wine Consumer – Matt

(Millennial) Matt...heckuva guy!

Since the wine industry is simply jonesing to court the Millennial generation (those peeps born between 1980-2000) as the next generation of wine consumers, I thought it might be fun to just start interviewing some Millennial friends for their honest opinions!

Winery marketing departments…are you present?  Bueller?  Bueller?

First up is Matt..a smart, fun, hardworking and über-responsible kinda guy.

Before we get started, for future Wine 2.0 shenanigans like this interview, I’d much appreciate your vote for my Murphy-Goode video application.  (All it requires is your e-mail address for a confirmation link.  NO SPAM…scout’s honor.)

THE INTERVIEW

First off, thank you, Matt, for sharing some time away from your fascinating Millennial life.

You’re very welcome.

1. How old are you and how often would you say you buy wine?

I am 22 years old, and still kickin’. I’d say my wine purchasing is fairly frequent. I try to keep at least a bottle of red and a bottle of white on hand most of the time. You never know who might stop by.

2. Have you ever purchased wine online, directly from a winery or online retailer?

I haven’t. I haven’t been drinking wine long enough to have any hard-won brand loyalty so I usually just buy from the grocery store or BevMo. But if there was a wine that I was really a fan of that was only available regionally, I would definitely consider ordering. Otherwise, why wait a week for what you can drive down the street to get?

3. How do you decide which wine(s) to buy if you’re at a store?

Martha’s (Un)Vineyard

Kayaking Stud (but I'm biased)

Just got back this past weekend from a mini-summer vacation where, among other things, I went to an amusement park (Kings Island) with my sister, nieces and nephews…AWESOME time…and then headed over to Martha’s Vineyard for a few days with friends.

Here’s what I didn’t know about Martha’s Vineyard and you may not have known either:

• I always figured it was an upscale Beverly Hills-like place where I’d be self-conscious about the casual clothes I had packed.  NOPE.  Very touristy (or will be once the season really hits).  More of a seafaring feel there to the locals.  Loverly peeps.
• It’s a small-ish island just south of Massachusetts and a skip or two from Rhode Island.  (Land at Boston Logan, take a 2-hour bus ride and then a 45-min ferry to get there.)  Bit o’ travel fatigue, fo sho.
• REALLY good clam chowder.  Duh.
• REALLY good micro-brewed beer. Surprise.
• NARY a single vineyard! At least where you can visit a tasting room and say fancy things like, “Earthy to the palate…with notes of gravel and sawdust.” before someone says, “That’s not wine, that’s my Metamucil you’re tasting.”
• There WAS a vineyard on…wait for it…Martha’s VINEYARD…as late as last summer.  Chicama Vineyards.  It looks nice enough. Apparently it was sold in 2008 but plans changed and now all you get is this.  Tears of sadness.

Great time with friends. We penny-pinched and stayed in several evenings, making dinner (grilled steaks, my becoming-famous brussel sprouts pasta) at the house and catching up over several bottles of red wine.

Quick Trivia: The sunglasses you see on me in the pic?  I have one of the weirdest noggins ever to pass through a birth canal, I think, as I can never find a pair that adequately conform to my noodle.  I mean, it looks normal enough, right?  Not to sunglass companies, apparently.

So where did I find two…count ‘em TWO…pair of sunglasses that actually look pretty good?  PepBoys, an auto parts store, in Dayton, Ohio.  You can’t make this stuff up, folks.

Life is strange.  Luckily for me, as strange as my noggin, at least.

Last week for video submissions for A Really Goode Job.  My week away knocked me behind in the voting so be sure to vote for my application vid if you haven’t yet.  Danke!

VinTank and Their Goode Taste

Heckuva Crew!

When I first heard about the Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent job, my mind raced like everyone else’s did, I’m sure.  You mean I can learn all about wine from harvest to bottle, blog about it, tweet oodles, snap arty shots around Sonoma County, make lots of entertaining (one always hopes) videos, meet amazing people, share their stories…all with a sweet salary…and be EXPECTED to taste hundreds of wines over a six-month period?

Nahhh…there must be a catch.

About the same time as I was daydreaming of this giddy, grape-soaked adventure, I happened upon VinTank’s just-released Social Media Report, a thorough and very accessible white paper on the state of e-business in the wine biz.  What, exactly, it posed, was social media’s role in the future of the industry?

I pored over it, a week or so before even conceptualizing my own video submission for the Murphy-Goode position…and I realized I had found the catch:

This correspondent position was not some lackadaisical tiptoe through the vineyards, there was an entire industry itching to find out how to reach the next generation of wine consumers via the virtual explosion of social media and VinTank was going to lead the charge to help the industry acclimate and succeed in a Wine 2.0 world.

(Time and story ellipsis as it’s getting very late and I have to be awake and alert again in about five hours…oh, and I still have a press release to write tonight.)

Short story: I started engaging Paul Mabray from VinTank out and about on the internet, following him around and asking questions about the report.  He followed me back and kept an eye on me, VinTank announced their support for two very strong Murphy-Goode candidates, Hardy Wallace and Rick Bakas, and then today they announced their remaining VinTank 4+ candidates, eight now all together…one of whom was me!  “What the what?”

I am honored. I am excited. And I’m tired.

But only tired for right now!

Inside I’m aglow and can scarcely stop my mind from playing out all the possibilities with the Murphy-Goode position and beyond.  The opportunities that lie ahead for the wine industry as a whole are intoxicating.  (Poor choice of words.  I swear, I’m sober, just exhausted.)  This really is the beginning of a movement…a Goode Movement, if you will (*wink* to Alina)…and it’s going to be a team effort from the VinTank 4+ to the incredible support of all the other amazing applicants and everyone who already works in and loves the wine industry.  We’re all in this together and I think this ride we’re sharing hasn’t even left the gate.

That being said, I’ll be posting and tweeting as best I can in the next week, but much travel and distraction starts in a few mere hours.

My thanks and respect go out to VinTank tonight, to the other chosen candidates (check out all the VinTank 4+ blogs in the right-hand column) and to the entire pool of applicants who did more than just daydream about a job like this one…they actually took action to make it a reality.  Our collective energy will move this industry step by step…crushing yummy grapes along the way.    Cheers! zzzzzzz