Wine Bloggers Tasting!
Yes! It’s time for another edition of our Wine Bloggers Tasting, and I for one am extremely excited (some might say excitable!) about this; this is the first year we’ve put this event on, and I’m positively thrilled with the results, and given that this will be the last of the four quarterly installments, I am particularly in the mood to celebrate (if for no other reason than the fact we’ll be continuing it again in 2011!) …
For anyone who has either participated in, or followed along with, one of our Wine Bloggers Tastings, you’ll know that I present wines at each event around a particular theme. This time around, I’ll be presenting two groups of wines, with two themes! (more on this below) …
When we did the third edition up at Lytton Springs in September, we opened up the social media portion of the equation, adopted a hashtag, and encouraged some active Tweeting, to rather deliciously educational, sometimes humorous, always delightful results, so we’re going to go for the same again; meaning, if you want to play along at home, just hop on your favorite Twitter platform, and make sure to both use and track #RidgeVineyards. As to WHAT to taste (for those of you in the safety of your own homes) well, see below!
Calling All Cooks!
We launched quite a fun lil’ foody-winey campaign not too long back, which we dubbed Calling All Cooks!. The premise was fairly straightforward: send us your favorite holiday recipe that you pair with a Ridge wine; we’ll taste it, we’ll play judge and jury, and at the end, a winner will emerge. And the spoils? Not only will the winner’s recipe be featured on our website and showcased through our social media platforms, but we’ll actually bring in professional chefs to each of our tasting rooms to recreate the dish on-site, and serve it (with the Ridge wine suggested by the recipe’s author) as part of the last day of our Winter Wine Series event (Saturday, December 18th, 11am-4pm)! Fairly gourmandishly exciting, I’d say … Anyhow, as the process has unfolded, we’re now to the point where we’re down to three finalists. And as a bit of a warm-up to the main event, we’re going to have our bloggers taste the three wines that were selected as pairing companions to the finalist dishes …
The “Three I”
And that’s what we’re going to ask of YOU, our home-playing-along contestants; between 1pm and 3pm PST tomorrow, if you’ve the “Three I” (Inventory, Imagination, Intake) at your disposal, we’re asking you to drink some Ridge, and post some thoughts about holiday pairings! Just use #RidgeVineyards and #CallingAllCooks, and our expert on-site panel will chime in with their perspectives on whatever it is that you come up with!
Remember, all you need is The Three I!
The Magical Oenophile Tour!
Okay, this is, for me, a VERY RARE concession to the Beatles obsessionists out there; in honor of the very recent anniversary of John Lennon’s very regrettable passing, I’ve copped a Beatles reference for the heading of this, the final portion of this post. Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything else, and is not likely to be repeated …
Anyhow, the point is, that the second set of wines we’ll serve at the Wine Bloggers Tasting will indeed have a theme, but no one will no what it is! And the challenge? Figure it out! That’s why it’s magical AND mysterious! Our bloggers will of course be mad with passion to discern the fiendishly subversive sub-structure that underlies my genius-madman structure, but never fear, you too, you armchair oenophiles, will have a chance to contribute your analyses; as we go through the second-set wines, we’ll be tweeting each one, and if you, by flight’s end, can guess the theme, well, I’ll find a way to get you some sort of really, really, really, really dynomite (spelling intentional, Jimmy Walker style) treat!
Again, just watch for #RidgeVineyards tweets, and play along! (Drink along?) Or, light your finger on fire? No, don’t do that …
Rather, just remember, The Three I!
