I just got back from Portland, OR, where Mr. WannabeWino and attended the 5th annual Wine Blogger Conference. I’ve been to 4 out of 5 and I’ve learned (maybe?) something at each conference. Some of those lessons continue to repeat themselves (sadly…) and others are new. Here, I present to you a brief overview of what I learned at the 2012 WBC. Overall, Oregon rocked for wine. I wish I could have stayed longer and tasted more. However, I brought home/ordered to be shipped around 4 cases of wine, so I will enjoy the wine treasures for months to come. Without further ado, my top ten “lessons” from WBC 12.
Mr. Wannabe Wino and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary at the Jordan Vineyards Magnum party.
1.) I still look like my picture, but clearly not as much as I used to since I only got that comment a half dozen times this year. 
2.) I love Pinot from Oregon. But I still needed a beer or something to cleanse my palate at the end of the day.
(Image courtesy of The Barley Blog)
3.) I feel like a grandmother of wine blogging even though I’ve only been at it just shy of 6 years. I think the oldest wine blog is only 8 years old though, so the grandfathers aren’t much older.
4.) With that said, this is my 4th WBC, and I still have zero interest in monetization. That horse is dead. Can we please, pl
ease, please bury it?
(Image courtesy of Mutineer Magazine)
5.) You should be yourself at all times, unless yourself involves writing wine reviews, then you should be someone else because wine reviews are boring. (Sarcasm font enabled here in case you couldn’t tell.)
6.) The folks of Carlton, OR have an awesome little town on their hands on and they really banded together to put it all on for the bloggers. I was seriously impressed. (More on this later.)
7.) King Estate KICKED serious ass for the main night dinner.
8.) I need more girl friends where I live. I am so, so missing Thea, Mary, Melanie, Liza, Debbie, etc. I just can’t explain the value of like minded women who will swig out of a bottle, rap to Vanilla Ice, and make wee jokes with you. It’s pretty priceless.
9.) I can taste and fairly evaluate about 40 wines in a day. Max.
10.) I still hate the Wine Blog Awards.
Filed under: Oregon, WBC, Wine | Tagged: Beer, Blogging, Dead Horse, King Estate, Oregan, Pinot Noir, Portland, Wine, Wine Blogs |
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I am extremely impressed that you can taste 40 wines a day. The only time I did anywhere near that, I was “evaluating” nothing fairly or at all by the mid-way pt. And that was long before I began writing about wine.
My favorite, however, is number 8. Nothing like good girlfriends and good wine, is there? To the extreme I rock a mike like a vandal…Cheers!
I second you on #8. So fun hanging out with you smart, talented and fun ladies! Let’s do it again soon!!
We would love to travel and taste various wines from across the states. How many have you been to? Which state is your favorite for hosting these events? We are from PA, and travelled to MI in early August with the hopes of taste testing some awesome MI wines. We found a few “spicy oak” wines that were shall we saying interesting, however, after the first glass we were no longer interested.
I love how #4 and #5 kind of go hand-in-hand. Great post! 🙂