A few weeks back, I was treated to an enlightening appellation-specific tasting of Santa Lucia Highlands wines courtesy of the host, Hahn Family Wines. Santa Lucia Highlands sit on the southeast facing slopes of the Santa Lucia mountain range, on one side of the plentiful Salinas Valley. I made the somewhat significant trek down there with my trusty vinopanions, the Brix Chicks‘ Liza (Twitter) and Xandria (Twitter). I hadn’t been down in the area since I was but a wee lad, noshing with me folks, so it was a treat to see the Valley again. It was in all of its late Spring splendor and we enjoyed taking in the bountiful scents of the fruits and vegetables growing near the highway.

The reach and influence of wine bloggers and wine social media mavens have exploded over the last couple of years, particularly in the last 12 months. Major wine critics have have noticed and responded, wineries and all three tiers of the wine business oligarchy have also taken notice and begun to capitalize on that influence (or are already playing catchup). The recent exhaustive and outstanding industry whitepaper by VinTank, Wine & Social Media is the first to encapsulate and quantify this influence and serves as a very important reference for these interactions between wine business, their consumers and the key social media mediators (human and software/websites) of these connections. It is a groundbreaking accomplishment and a signpost of the rapid, continuing maturity of the wine social media sphere.

In the year of their 20th anniversary, St. Supéry Vineyards & Winery (Twitter) hosted the 2nd Wine Bloggers Forum (WBF) at their beautiful Estate in Rutherford, Napa Valley, California on Saturday, 04/04/09. The event continued the spirit of intimate and collaborative blogger and industry interaction that was first started as an offshoot of the WBC that debuted last year. The first WBF was at Hahn Family Estates in their Napa business offices and perfectly organized by the incomparable Lisa de Bruin (Twitter). This latest edition was organized by Lesley Keffer Russell (Twitter), VP of Marketing and Sales at St. Supéry.

The second and last day of our latest Pops & Son Wine Trip series took a dramatic turn, ie, Pops was no longer involved, unfortunately! That cold that was was starting to come over him in the morning of the first day and then really kicked in during the afternoon? Well, it hit big time and he woke up this day feeling terrible…no wine for Pops! Poor guy ended up in bed all day…so our plans changed!

The afternoon of our first day on the 5th Pops & Son Wine Trip continued the vinous adventure that we had started in the morning at Kirkland Ranch and William Hill. As we traveled up Silverado Trail on the Western side of the Valley, we mused about which winery to next visit, as we had plenty of time before our 2:30 appointment with the highlight of the day, Terra Valentine on Spring Mountain. We passed numerous wineries along the way, including many Stags Leap favorites such as Regusci, Darioush and Clos du Val. As we approached the Oakville appellation, Pops asked if I’d ever visited the large contemporary building that housed Miner Family Vineyards. I had not done so and just that easily, we had picked our next winery!

Another year means another crazy adventure in the world of California’s “home” grape! The Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) are having their annual ZAP Festival at Fort Mason on the San Francisco waterfront this weekend. Many events have already occurred in leading up to today’s press and consumer grand tasting. Over 275 wineries, 400 wines, countless other food and wine specialists and 10,000 attendees will participate with food and Zinfandel wines, again making this the largest single varietal wine festival in the entire world!

I will be posting in real-time throughout the event today until about 5pm from the Wine 2.0 Bloggers Lounge (Thanks so much to Cornelius and Abdi from Wine 2.0 (Twitter) and Lisa (Twitter) from Hahn Estates for coordination!). The post will be on the fly and mildly edited for content (especially later ;-), similar to the now famous, Live (Speed) Wine Blogging event at last year’s 1st Wine Bloggers Conference.

Another holiday season means another wonder trip to wine country with Pops. I usually get the week off between Christmas and New Years from the day job and with that extra time I like to spend some quality father and son time spent, well honestly, what else but drinking wine? We also recently added a summer trip to the roster, as one trip is usually not enough for the two of us. We decided to continue to explore parts of Napa that were still new to us for this trip, especially with the economy in a wonderful tailspin.

The first stop of the day was intended to be at one of the best value-driven brands in the marketplace, Cartlidge & Brown off of Green Island Road. Unfortunately, they weren’t open and thus we weren’t able to taste nor pick up Pops’ wine club selections. Seeing as how we were in the Southern-most part of the Valley, we decided to then head over to Kirkland Ranch Winery, off of Jamieson Canyon Rd (SR-12).

After getting both of our outfits squared away, we decided to start the celebration of the end of 2008 with a stop at one of our favorite local steakhouses and cocktail bar, Moresi’s Chophouse in Clayton, CA. Moresi’s is housed in were two historic 1800’s era buildings, now combined, in the long-standing rural enclave of Clayton, CA. Ed Moresi, longtime proprieter of the outstanding family dining and sports bar establishment Ed’s Mudville Grill (check out the amazing collection of sports memorabilia!) son Dom and the rest of the Moresi clan have created a wonderful stop within the small, comfortable downtown of Clayton.

The morning of the second day of the inaugural North American Wine Bloggers Conference presented me with an energetic dilemma: which Vineyard Walk do I partake?? This part of the conference was to be an exciting off-site activity, courtesy of Allan Wright (Twitter), conference organizer and owner of the other main sponsor, Zephyr Wine Adventures. After debating between the many walks/hikes available, I finally settled on the second of the two Dry Creek Valley walks, as it was a tour of the Biodynamic estate of Quivira Vineyards & Winery. I was compelled to visit this winery after the great discussion that I had with Nancy Bailey at the previous evening’s Wine Growers of Dry Creek Valley tasting, of which I have previously written. Not yet knowing the full extent of the amount of physical activity that I might undertake, I literally sprinted over to Longs to get some protein-based snackies and I ran back to hop on the shuttle that was just about to pull out towards Dry Creek.

Day 1 of the 1st annual North American Wine Bloggers Conference started with a whirlwind of activities. I caught a ride to the conference with the very gracious founders of WineQ, Marshall (Twitter) and Brittany (Twitter). We arrived right on time at the conference hotel and center of activities, the Hotel Flamingo in Santa Rosa and made our way in a roundabout fashion to Registration. It was a very surreal and invigorating walk to say the least…just in the 100 yards it took to reach the registration room, I handed out 5 or 6 WineLog.net biz cards, three of those contacts being people that I had met through Twitter or their blog…whew!