Category — Wine Industry Insights

I’d like to introduce this post with a satiric video, that (A) cracks me up, and (B) rings true in so many ways….

Alright so that doesn’t happen to MOST of us when we go wine tasting, but working in the biz for a little bit now has shown me that winery tasting tours can get ugly. Here are five reasons why I believe we should (enjoy and) spit more wine….

1) You will learn more if you spit. When I went to Taste Washington, I tried nearly 350 wines in four hours. When the show was over, I was still on the sober side of things. I took a taxi of course to be sure but there is no way I could have learned so much at that event if I would have schlugged it down all the way.

2) You will not be a jack ass, guranteed. Some people don’t have problems with this, but after working in the industry for some years I’ve seen peoples’ intelligence drop and their “jack ass-nish” rise very quickly with a little wine and hot weather. If you spit, you can laugh at the “other” guy and not be him or her. Spitting wine regularly will also build discipline and aid in preventing Alcoholism*.

3) You will make more educated wine purchases and know what to buy when you get home. The point was to go out and find some great wine right!? These wineries invite you to their estates not to get you drunk but to sell their fine product! Spit wine and build a kick ass cellar with great stories from your experience at the estate, join a few wine clubs, and remember this experience is a privilege not a license to get crunked!
4) You can try more wine! I don’t know why you got out to taste but I know I want to try everything out there! Over six thousand wineries in the US, lots of wine to try and so little time, why not spit so you can squeeze the most mileage out your palette?
5) You will not risk your life or others by driving intoxicated. This is the most important reason to spit wine if you do not have a designated driver. In 2006, there were 13,470 fatalities in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver (BAC of .08 or higher) – 32 percent of total traffic fatalities for the year according to AlcoholAlert.com. Of those 13,000 inexcusable deaths, nearly 2,000 of them were children under 14 years of age. If you are unable to adopt the simple habit of spitting, get a Designated Driver.

Wine tasting rooms in general should be more accomodating for the wine spitting enthusiast. If there is not a spit bucket on hand and easily usable request that the tasting room manager put one in! We all have to step it up when it comes to responsible tasting tour consumption. Lastly, it is always safer to designate a non-spitting tour goer, but if thats not possible, SPIT EVERY DROP, I gurantee your experience will be enlightening and totally fun, you may even get less sleepy so you can taste more freaking wine.

Other great article on how to taste wine without getting drunk.

Cheers,

Lloyd

Love Wine | Spit Wine

*This is not backed by medical research or studies, the author is representing an educated assessment due to the fact less alcohol is entering the blood stream by spitting. Therefore doing less physiologically to drive an alcohol dependency.

Alright so there are a bazillion wine community sites out there and many more probably being developed. Here is a brief accounting of the ones I’ve comes across so far:

Corkd.com, OpenWineConsortium.org, OpenBottles.com, WineChatr.com, Vinorati.com, Winelog.net, Snooth.com and the list will go on for a quite a bit longer if i had the patience to hunt them all down.

Now these sites are pretty good however, I have never been sucked into any of them and I am a community guru in my opinion. The reason none of these sites will explode with users is because they are all too focused at any one type of wine drinker or age group, in this already niched group….the wine drinking group. Whether the site is too focused on the millennials (corkd.com needs to remember what happened to Wine X magazine) and distanced from baby boomers, or the sites are catering to only buyers and not the hardcore reviewers these sites will have a short life span.

Thus this last week I have taken my stab at the Wine 2.0 scene and launched WineSocial.com (I have already built a solid consumer and winery community at AmericanWinery.com, but this takes shape as an “Amazon” like community, and my attempt is to build a “Facebook-ish” community based on social interactions.)

With WineSocial.com I will build a community that encompasses many aspects of the industry, from winemakers to vineyard managers, and casual tasters to Robert Parker wannabes, WineSocial.com will become a hub for many types of wine drinkers looking for many different things, give me two years I expect catching some criticism for this endeavor but I feel that the folks attempting to build wine community sites have missed the boat in many areas. Im not going to go much further into it, just signup and have a good time!!!

Sign Up Here: WineSocial.com!

Lloyd