August 2 2007
I guess I could join the Kiwanis club or the local wine enthusiast club for social engagement around the grape. Instead, I choose to blog to get my hobbyist cup filled with wine and peer fraternizing. And, occasionally fun connections happen as a result.
Last week I wrote a post on six blogs that had recently garnered my attention. The Cork Dork was one of the blogs that I mentioned. John from the Cork Dork and I exchanged a couple of emails and by sheer coincidental happenstance (which happens more often in the wine blogosphere than seems possible), John was doing some tasting in Calaveras County—home of El Jefe and Twisted Oak winery.
Via email I casually mentioned that he should swing by Twisted Oak. I mentioned how I liked all of the wines, having tasted through them twice and that El Jefe was himself a bit of a luminary in wine blogosphere (I’m extrapolating a bit here, but the jist was –"Go to Twisted Oak. They’re cool and they make good wine").
Around the same time El Jefe must have sent a note to him, as well, throwing out the welcome mat. Lo and behold, John does pay a visit and he came out the other side of the “twistedness” an hour and ½ later with a new blogging acquaintance and an appreciation for some wines he might not have otherwise tasted.
This is why I like to blog: connecting with people around wine, even if it is digitally. I’ll save the mind-bending notions of “knowing” somebody from their writing, without knowing them personally, but these sorts of stories tend to make my day and give me faith in fellow man.
From the post at The Cork Dork (Found here):
Well, I’m back home now, but need to tell you all about the wine-highlight of my vacation in the Sierra Foothills. Thanks to Jeff at the Good Grape, word got around that I was in the area, (every blogger’s dream) and I got an email invitation to taste at Twisted Oak, near Murphys. Owner, Jeff Stai, aka El Jefe, is also an avid blogger, and obviously very clued in to the Calaveras/Tuolumne scene.
I spent about an hour and a half with Jeff and we tasted through his regular tasting room bottles, then retreated to the 300+ foot-long cave underneath the fermenters to do some barrel tasting.
John goes on to list his favorites from the experience.
It goes without saying, check out The Cork Dork and of course try Twisted Oak wine, and if you’re a reader and not a blogger, well, it never hurts to throw your blogging shingle out there, too in order to see what kind of connections you can make. You can’t put a price on memories, and this little blogging thing has sure helped create some new ones in my repository of positive experiences.
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