Wine Bloggers Conference Day 3 Pictorial

The 3rd and final day of the conference started by me waking to the sound of a text message from Lenn asking if I was ready to go get breakfast. Thankfully he sent the text because I was out for the count and may have missed the last part of the conference. 🙂 I met up with Lenn at Hanks Creekside, right across the street from the Flamingo Resort. A very nice, small diner that served a mean veggie omlet and hashbrowns. I will also admit that, even though I am a vegetarian, Lenn’s applewood chicken smoked sausage smelled and looked pretty good.

First on the agenda was the unconference – which is a conference session in which the participants set the topics for discussion and form small groups to discuss each one. It was quite interesting and I think it turned out very well. The first two discussions I participated in were how Twitter is affecting comment traffic on blogs and the idea of negative reviews. Keep an eye for future posts looking at these two items. The 3rd session I attended was the “Organic Flow” topic chosen by Nick from Winescholarship.com, where having no topic at all stemmed a variety of discussions. Plus, Lenn started popping the New York wine open so we were tasting by 10am. Go figure!

This is what organic flow looks like

Organic Flowing

After the Unconference we had our final conference organized tasting and with some great Sonoma producers. Again the picture gnomes must have taken the shots that I took of that part of the tasting. After the tasting, we had our last lunch and the organizers each gave a nice little speech and big thank you to all that participated and setup the event.

Joel

After the conference was over, a few of us were invited up to C. Donatiello winery outside of Healdsburg for a private tasting with the the proprietor Chris Donatiello.  I will do a sepearate review on the wines in a separate post, but here are some of the beautiful pictures from the afternoon.

Ready, Set, Taste

Look at all those glasses

The View

Chris (the proprietor) explaining the Aroma Garden

View Two

Kick A$$ Basket Press

After the tasting we headed to an early dinner and some beers with Patrick, Joe (and dudette and baby dude), Lenn, Becky, and Nick at Bear Republic Brewing. Then it was farwell to my conference friends and off to the airport.

Cheers