Wine

May Showers (of Wine) Bring Happy Hours"Maison de Monaco", of course, translates to "House of Oh My God That's Delicious".It's such a lovely time of year - but not so lovely that it couldn't be made a little lovelier. Tip a glass or few of these fine wines and let their euphoric glow bring a sparkling sense of well-being to sunny and blustery days alike. Also they're super-cheap.

When the decision was made to hold the 2013 Wine Bloggers Conference in Canada, a unique opportunity presented itself, and that was to feature only wines of British Columbia during the Live Wine Blogging sessions of the conference. Thanks to a lot of coordination and support from the Wines of British Columbia, this opportunity is becoming a reality, and attendees of the conference will have a chance to taste a selection from 30 different B.C. wines during each Live Wine Blogging session! There are 5 main wine growing regions within British Columbia: Okanagan Valley, Similkameen Valley, Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, and the Gulf Islands. Over 60 varietals are planted on more than 9,800 acres of land across the Province, and of the 214 total grape wine wineries licensed in British Columbia, 132 of them are members of the BCWI representing 95% of wines sold. The Wines of British Columbia website is a fantastic resources for anyone looking to learn about the regions, the varietals, planning a trip to the area, and exploring what B.C. wines are all about. The site is beautiful and expertly put together and organized. Here are some quick facts from the website based on the five main regions: Okanagan Valley 121 Licensed Wineries Top Varietals Planted: Merlot, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay 1931: 1st winery opened 8060 acres planted Similkameen Valley 12 Licensed Wineries Top Varietals Planted: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay 1984: 1st winery opened 691 acres planted Fraser Valley 22 Licensed Wineries Top Varietals Planted: Blattner Reds/Hybrids, Blattner Whites/Hybrids, Pinot Noir, Bacchus 1991: 1st Winery opened 63 acres planted Vancouver Island 35 Licensed Wineries Top Varietals Planted: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Ortega, Maréchal Foch 1992: 1st Winery opened 432 Acres Planted Gulf Islands 9 Licensed Wineries Top Varietals Planted: Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Ortega, Maréchal Foch 1995: 1st Winery opened 115 acres planted As you can see, the Okanagan Valley dominates production of wine out of B.C., and representation during the Live Wine Blogging sessions will reflect these demographics. To see a list of each participating winery during Live Wine Blogging, visit our Sponsor Page or download this PDF. If you are familiar with Live Wine Blogging, you know things move fast. In one short hour, you’ll get a one-on-one introduction from a select number of B.C. wineries and their wines. It is an excellent way for bloggers to get personal introductions from wineries and for wineries to make small-group presentations to bloggers. To best prepare, we recommend spending some time ahead of the LWB sessions on the Wines of British Columbia website learning about the regions and individual wineries, engaging with wineries ahead of time (especially ones that you have a specific interest in), and coming with charged devices and a cleansed palate! To make things easy, here are two Twitter Lists for you to one-click follow to keep track of all participating wineries: LWB White Wine Session LWB Red Wine Session The post Wines of British Columbia to Host Live Wine Blogging appeared first on Wine Bloggers Conference.

May Showers (of Wine) Bring Happy HoursThe Copa Del Rey is an annual Spanish football competition that...you've stopped reading, haven't you? It's such a lovely time of year - but not so lovely that it couldn't be made a little lovelier. Tip a glass or few of these fine wines and let their euphoric glow bring a sparkling sense of well-being to sunny and blustery days alike. Also they're super-cheap.

May Showers (of Wine) Bring Happy HoursHey Toots, I got ya gourmet meat snack right hee-uh!It's such a lovely time of year - but not so lovely that it couldn't be made a little lovelier. Tip a glass or few of these fine wines and let their euphoric glow bring a sparkling sense of well-being to sunny and blustery days alike. Also they're super-cheap.

In any En Primeur campaign there are four key players: the chateaux, the negociants, the merchants and the collectors. For the system to work over the long term, all participants must stand to make money for it to be worthwhile....

Still think that social networks like Twitter aren’t worth your investment of time? Read this for an example and a couple of tools that might help change your mind (disclosure; Vrazon is reseller for the second) What I Wore Today (almost) A post by a friend, Poppy Dinsey (@poppyd) made me think about this issue today. Since I met her, via twitter of course, she has gone on to launch an internet fashion sensation – WIWT (What I Wore Today) and as she says: I have achieved endless things because of tweeting. Twitter is still one of the largest drivers of traffic to WIWT.com, a business I was only able to set up because of an idea that spread through – yep, you guessed it – Twitter. Twitter has enabled me to market my business, my sense of humour, my opinions, my style and my writing to literally millions of people. I’ve been able to work with brands from teeny tiny boutiques and emerging designers to global giants like Vodafone, Universal Pictures and Unilever, often solely because somebody has found me on Twitter. I’ve never once paid a PR agency, but have appeared in nearly all the mags and papers of this country for something or other…again, often simply because of journos following me on Twitter or someone recommending me via Twitter to a journalist who otherwise would never have found me. I know this isn’t your ‘usual’ Twitter experience, but it’s one I’m massively grateful for and lord knows I’ve put a LOT of time into tweeting to make it happen. I didn’t have ANY contacts in fashion, tech or property when I started in each of these industries…but I made sure I made them using Twitter. It has been hard work, but she had a goal, and put in the time and effort. So how might you benefit too? LEAD GENERATION TOOL Lead Generation Sample Today Twitter announced a new feature that will make it MUCH easier to capture important, and USEFUL, information on your audience: Lead Generation Cards. This new tool will allow businesses to embed a small form in a tweet that users can complete and send back with little or no effort. This will allow wine businesses; wineries, retailers, journalists selling subscriptions and so on, to get the three most important bits of data for generating a return on investment in twitter; a user’s name, Twitter handle, and email address. Twitter is great for several things, namely conversations (that you can start, join, or listen-in to), quick questions and answers, and sharing links. However, businesses should have a goal and twitter is not the place for lengthy, detailed explanations, private conversations or selling. Email still is the best way to do this, but if you take them together, you can not only capture people’s email addresses, you can build the kind of relationship that ensures they actually open and read them. INTELLIGENCE GENERATION TOOL Vrazon has discovered a great tool for getting to know the audience you have painstakingly built up with your time spent on twitter, facebook, linkedin and through email; Nimble. Nimble Contact Nimble is an online CRM tool that is specifically built to give you a much broader picture of the people you follow by combining all a user’s profiles on each of these social networks into a single place. You can have thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook, and many professional links on LinkedIn, but combining this information is EXTREMELY hard. They key, of course, is email because it links them all together. An email address is still the most valuable bit of information, even in the age of the social network. All of a sudden, time IS money because you can finally convert effort into leads.

May Showers (of Wine) Bring Happy HoursThis wine is delicious from A to Zin.It's such a lovely time of year - but not so lovely that it couldn't be made a little lovelier. Tip a glass or few of these fine wines and let their euphoric glow bring a sparkling sense of well-being to sunny and blustery days alike. Also they're super-cheap.

Here are my top wine picks from the June 8 Vintages Release. I’ll be posting the rest of my recommendations by Thursday. You can also see my reviews for the May 25 LCBO Vintages Release. You can add my wine picks to your shopping list by clicking on the little shopping cart icon. You can also create a custom list just for this release that will be saved in your account. The LCBO Vintages Catalogue published the following of my tasting notes, the most quoted Canadian source of wine reviews in this release: Posted with permission of the LCBO. Get access to all wine reviews:

Give your summer guests the hard punch they deserve (and spend less time playing bartender) with these big-batch craft cocktails.

From the department of “daddy is allowed to have pregnancy cravings too”… The frito pie burger at HopDoddy “burger bar” in Austin, Texas. Super fun stuff…