I’m listening now. Great podcast… taped during the 2008 North American Wine Bloggers Conference this past October.

So listen to dr_XeNo on Wine Biz Radio. Also on the podcast are Philip James, Alice Feiring, and Judd Wallenbrock.

After getting both of our outfits squared away, we decided to start the celebration of the end of 2008 with a stop at one of our favorite local steakhouses and cocktail bar, Moresi’s Chophouse in Clayton, CA. Moresi’s is housed in were two historic 1800’s era buildings, now combined, in the long-standing rural enclave of Clayton, CA. Ed Moresi, longtime proprieter of the outstanding family dining and sports bar establishment Ed’s Mudville Grill (check out the amazing collection of sports memorabilia!) son Dom and the rest of the Moresi clan have created a wonderful stop within the small, comfortable downtown of Clayton.

The morning of the second day of the inaugural North American Wine Bloggers Conference presented me with an energetic dilemma: which Vineyard Walk do I partake?? This part of the conference was to be an exciting off-site activity, courtesy of Allan Wright (Twitter), conference organizer and owner of the other main sponsor, Zephyr Wine Adventures. After debating between the many walks/hikes available, I finally settled on the second of the two Dry Creek Valley walks, as it was a tour of the Biodynamic estate of Quivira Vineyards & Winery. I was compelled to visit this winery after the great discussion that I had with Nancy Bailey at the previous evening’s Wine Growers of Dry Creek Valley tasting, of which I have previously written. Not yet knowing the full extent of the amount of physical activity that I might undertake, I literally sprinted over to Longs to get some protein-based snackies and I ran back to hop on the shuttle that was just about to pull out towards Dry Creek.

Last Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of joining Lisa de Bruin (Twitter) of Wine Diver Girl and Hahn Family Wines at the inaugural Hahn Wine Blogger Forum, alongside many of my fellow wine bloggers. Also invited were various other wine people prominent in the new social media wine landscape, including the busy Judd Wallenbrock (Twitter) of Michel-Schlumberger, Drink Charitably and his own Humanitas; John Pianetta of Pianetta Winery in Paso appellation and the man who also straddles many worlds, Jeff “El Jefe” Stai (Twitter) of Twisted Oak and El Bloggo Torcido. Aside from organizer Lisa, Hahn had a few other people in attendance: Evelyn Pool, VP of Marketing; Bill Leigon, President; and most interestingly the Winemaker for many of the wines, the nicely zany Adam LaZarre and the warm-hearted Vineyard Manager, Andy Mitchell.

I caught a ride up with my comrades-(increasingly)-in-arms, the Brix Chicks, Liza (Twitter) and Xandria (Twitter). Thanks for the ride, ladies! We arrived just as the last piece in our chaotic vinous puzzle pulled up, Thea (Twitter) of Vinquire and Luscious Lushes. A few hello’s later and the group decision that we were now “professionally” early as opposed to “unfashionably, do you really need to drink wine so” early…we headed in to the Napa headquarters of Hahn Family Wines.

Day 1 of the 1st annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference started with a whirlwind of activities. I caught a ride to the conference with the very gracious founders of WineQ, Marshall (Twitter) and Brittany (Twitter). We arrived right on time at the conference hotel and center of activities, the Hotel Flamingo in Santa Rosa and made our way in a roundabout fashion to Registration. It was a very surreal and invigorating walk to say the least…just in the 100 yards it took to reach the registration room, I handed out 5 or 6 WineLog.net biz cards, three of those contacts being people that I had met through Twitter or their blog…whew!

This is my first Twitter Taste Live!, #5 The Bloggers Take Over! TTL was started by the man behind the online wine savings outfit Bin Ends Wine, Craig Drollet (Twitter). TTL is an exceptionally innovative integration of the new social media and wine tasting, taking wine to an even greater level of consumer-directed interaction.

I received an invite to the annual Southern Wine & Spirits Pennsylvania portfolio tasting at 5:20 Monday evening. That was the good news, the bad was it started at 6:00 and would take me an hour to get there in rush hour traffic.

I arrived late, around 7:00 but went to the tables with the precision of a skilled surgeon. There were in the vicinity of 300 wines to choose from, so the spittoons really received a workout from me! Below are the wines that made the cut.

B.R. Cohn, Sonoma winery producing wines from a wide array of varietals. Chardonnay 2006, $21, straw color, bright fruit flavors of apple and citrus, with a nice background of vanilla balanced by mouthwatering acidity and a long finish.

Stuhlmuller Vineyards is located at the crossroads of the Alexander, Dry Creek, and Russian River valleys. I am familiar with Chardonnay grapes coming out of their property and being made by Mazzocco vineyards, one of my favorite Cailifornia producers. Chardonnay, Estate 2006, $25, a lovely wine, nice fruit on the nose with nice balanced oak matching the evolving citrus flavors.

(more after the break!)

After finishing up at the last WBC lunch and tasting, the Luxe Sonoma lunch, I headed out with the Brix Chicks, Liza (Twitter) and Xandria to another party, this time hosted by Agent Red and Agent Green (Twitter) of The Wine Spies.

The Wine Spies is a interesting and effective wine sales site that specializes in 1 great wine a day. It helps both the winery to connect directly with its clientele, and allows consumers to discover a new wine each day and at significant, one-time savings. It is extremely effective at getting the word out about small boutique wineries and their choice of wines is top-notch, including some of my own favorites such as Galante (WineSpies) and Parsonage Village Vineyard (WineSpies). Their style of James Bond-ish secrecy and elite info dissemination keeps the wine very accesible and fun, while refusing to compromise on great background and techinical information.

Waking up on Day 3, Sunday, of the WBC was definitely harder to do than the the last! Late night Oak Room tastings in the Flamingo, plus even MORE shenanigans afterward with other kids including Anthony (Twitter) from Farmstead and El Jefe (Twitter) from Twisted Oak led this blogger to be feeling a wee bit tired in the morning!  But, a little water and more promises of wine can do wonders to a lad when he’s down!

The following is intended as a brief breakdown of the last half-day of the conference, whereby I’ll follow-up in the coming weeks with more posts that will detail virtually all of the events.

First up on the agenda was the innovative Unconference, where the bloggers take over!  Tables were setup around the room and each table had a blogger-defined topic to discuss for 15 minutes or so.  Since I, ahem, was not present to help decide those topics, I chose to go to Table 74, the Organic Flow table.  Here we discussed whatever topics might arise and, courtesy of Lenn (Twitter) of Lenndevours, we decided that it was time (somewhere in the world) to try some more wine!  Lenn had a bunch of leftover New York wine and we proceeded to open those suckers up!  I mainly stuck with the ‘07 Rooster Hill Finger Lakes Dry Riesling.  I found it to be a pretty good example of the varietal, with very crisp and dry peach and pear aromas and flavors.

Following the Unconference, I suddenly realized that it was time to check out and madly dashed back to the room to pack.  That squared away, I strolled back to the main part of the conference and proceeded into the final lunch and tasting, the Luxe Sonoma Tasting. This was a chance for (mainly) smaller Sonoma wineries to show their wares.  It included wineries such as Flowers, Siduri, Blue Rock, Jordan, and Montemaggiore.  It also included one of my favorite small producers from this valley, Medlock Ames.

My palate was introduced to Medlock Ames at the Wine 2.0 event, New Release Only, last November. There I tasted their ‘03 Bell Mountain Cab, a tremendously good wine, one of the few 5/5 stars that I have ever given.  Chris Medlock (or was it Ames?) was pouring their soon-to-be-released ‘04 Cab and it is another absolute stunner.  Just as with the ‘03, this had a phenomenal balance and was deeply complex, with various shades of fruit, silky but strong tannins and great acidity.  What a beautiful wine.

Last up on the day and weekend’s activities was the secret rendezvous at the Wine Spies party, a few miles down the road.  This was being put on in conjunction with Cruvee (my Cruvee profile) and intended to broaden the blogger knowledge about the two wine sites and particularly, Levendi Winery.

Alas, I had to meet the Lady in the East Bay for yet another event that weekend and I headed out and back to the real world. I am still having trouble comprehending the incredible time that I had at this event…it was just so life-changing and surreal that it’s a bit hard to believe that I actually attended such a brilliant weekend in the sunny Fall, there in the Sonoma Valley.

I can’t thank the organizers enough! Joel Vincent (Twitter) from Open Wine Consortium and Allan Wright from Zephyr Adventures did an unreal job of pulling this together in just a few months.  Thank you both, as well as all of the great sponsers!  Look forward to many more posts in the coming weeks that will go into more detail about the many events that I attended this past weekend.

As always, if you’d like to list the wines that I tasted at the WBC in your own WineLog, they are all tagged with “WBC2008NA“.  A couple of them are listed below.  Enjoy and please leave a comment telling me about your own WBC or wine-related experiences of late!

Rooster Hill Finger Lakes Dry Riesling 2007

Medlock Ames Alexander Valley Bell Mountain Vineyard Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

I’m sitting in the second of the Breakout Sessions at the very first North American Wine Bloggers Conference here in 2008 at the Hotel Flamingo.  I’ve already had yet another whirlwind of a day at the conference and would like to give you all a little taste of what I’ve been fortunate to enjoy today and have yet to enjoy for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.

After waking up in a surprisingly good mood and feeling a very nice lack of exhaustion, I got ready for one of the many highlights of this conference the Vineyard Walks. There were a lot of hikes to choose from and I have to admit, I had a tough decision to make.  I decided to do Dry Creek Valley II, a vineyard hike, lunch and paired lunch at Quivira Vineyards & Winery.  Quivira is a smallish operation, producing only about 12-13,000 cases annually.  They are a leader in organic biodynamic farming and winegrowing.  I actualy chose this walk because of some very favorable wines that I tasted durign the “unofficial” Dry Creek Valley tasting that was held in Suite 301 the night before and a great conversation that I had with Nancy, the General Manager for the winery.  I chose correctly!  It was a briliiant learning experience for myself and the others that partook of this tour.  We learned from the source of the wines himself, winemaker and a very unique personality, Steven Canter.

The Breakout Sessions have been very informative, especially in regards to my concerns about the ethics and credibility issues surrounding blogging, ie free wine samples, etc. I chose to attend the Wine Blogger Credibility and Wine Industry & Wine Blogger Interaction sessions.
After the sessions are out, I will be attending the Grand Tasting of Sonoma Wines followed by a very intriguing dinner at Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery with a keynote speech by Alice Feiring.

Look for more live posts in the next two days and many more brief precaps and longer recaps in the coming weeks!