A little while back I was given the chance to attend a very special gathering of established winemaker luminaries and taste a whole slew of outstanding wines, courtesy of a very gracious invite by Monica Collins of All Access Napa Valley. I’ve never seen such a lineup of All-Star winemakers, nor the chance to have such access to speak with those that make or have made famous wines such as Kamen, Screaming Eagle, Scarecrow, The Prisoner, Rocca Family and L’Angevin. The event was held at the innovative ACME Fine Wines in St. Helena. Ever since opening their doors in April of ‘03, co-owners and organizers of this event Karen Williams and David Stevens have consistently reinvented the wine retail, storage and event industries. Their efforts have been noticed by numerous newspapers and wine writers.

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.

I’m very excited to be attending the Wine 2.0 San Francisco Expo tonight at Crushpad! I first mentioned the event in my precap a week ago and since then, many more details have been added. I’ll be blogging throughout the event in the WineLog.net sponsered Bloggers’ Lounge, that the WineTwo folks have again provided for this event (thanks Cornelius, Smoke & Co!). Watch this space for further details and updates through to 10pm tonight!

It’s that awesome time again when the Wine 2.0 (Twitter) folks gear up and take over San Francisco! Wine 2.0 San Francisco Expo is taking place on Thursday April 2nd and if it’s anything like the past events…it’s going to be a killer wine shindig!

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.

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.

Last Sunday I had the distinct pleasure of joining Lisa de Bruin (Twitter) of Wine Diver Girl and Hahn Family Wines at the inaugural Hahn Wine Blogger Forum, alongside many of my fellow wine bloggers. Also invited were various other wine people prominent in the new social media wine landscape, including the busy Judd Wallenbrock (Twitter) of Michel-Schlumberger, Drink Charitably and his own Humanitas; John Pianetta of Pianetta Winery in Paso appellation and the man who also straddles many worlds, Jeff “El Jefe” Stai (Twitter) of Twisted Oak and El Bloggo Torcido. Aside from organizer Lisa, Hahn had a few other people in attendance: Evelyn Pool, VP of Marketing; Bill Leigon, President; and most interestingly the Winemaker for many of the wines, the nicely zany Adam LaZarre and the warm-hearted Vineyard Manager, Andy Mitchell.

I caught a ride up with my comrades-(increasingly)-in-arms, the Brix Chicks, Liza (Twitter) and Xandria (Twitter). Thanks for the ride, ladies! We arrived just as the last piece in our chaotic vinous puzzle pulled up, Thea (Twitter) of Vinquire and Luscious Lushes. A few hello’s later and the group decision that we were now “professionally” early as opposed to “unfashionably, do you really need to drink wine so” early…we headed in to the Napa headquarters of Hahn Family Wines.

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!

I’m sitting in the second of the Breakout Sessions at the very first North American Wine Bloggers Conference here in 2008 at the Hotel Flamingo.  I’ve already had yet another whirlwind of a day at the conference and would like to give you all a little taste of what I’ve been fortunate to enjoy today [...]