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.

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.

Another exciting wine festival is coming to Fort Mason this month and I’m very excited to have to have the opportunity to get the inside scoop from the festival Director. Pinot Days San Francisco crushes SF with five days of great, varietally-correct Pinot Noir festivities, starting on June 24th. Lisa Rigisich, together with husband Steve and partners Eric and Teri White are bringing over 200 Pinot Noir producer and vendors of the delicate grape to Fort Mason in San Francisco on Sunday June 28th for the finale Grand Festival Public Tasting, where I will be delighted with the outstanding array of tasty Pinot available to taste!

I think at this point, it comes as no surprise that I like the wines from Carmel Valley and Georis Winery, in particular. They’re my favorite winery, in fact, from my favorite appellation. So, what could be just as awesome as my favorite winery’s, appellation-specific wine? A new wine from the winemaker from my favorite winery in my favorite appellation, of course! Damien Georis, winemaker for Georis Winery (no relation…maybe) has released the second chapter of his personal label, Madeleine.

Making perhaps, one of the biggest viral marketing coups in the nascent wine social mediasphere, Murphy-Goode Winery in Healdsburg has blown up the interwebs with its A Really Goode Job search and marketing campaign. The basics are these:

- Live on the property in northern Sonoma Valley in Healdsburg in a private home.

- Work by using all means of social media to promote Murphy-Goode and its wine and the whole of Sonoma County with the provided camera video camera, handheld device and/or smartphone. You’ll “need” to taste hundreds of wines for free and eat all over the Valley, as well…shucks.

- Get paid 10K/month for a 6 month contract.

Last April Fool’s day, I received what seemed to be a nicely written, yet rather surprisingly nifty wine event invite in my inbox asking if I’d like to meet with Laurent Sauvage, winemaker for the leading family of wines from the Languedoc in the South of France, Robert Skalli Wines. We were to meet with Laurent at CAV, the outstanding wine bar and restaurant along Market in the Opera District of San Francisco (and part-owned by none other than Doug Cook (Twitter), founder of Able Grape).

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 kind folks at Icon Estates have been worried about all of us out here in US wine-drinker land. They realized back in March that tax time is hard on all of us wine grunts, particularly this year when everyone is still reeling from watching their life savings (and future wine purchasing potential) shrivel by -40% and see a world filled with recession and job loss. They realized that everyone’s day or night (or both!) can be brightened by wine, however and put together a great list of wines to have while stumbling through filling out your requisite tax forms: Tax Time Wines! Susan and co. at Icon kindly shot out some wine samples for various bloggers to try including the prolific 1WineDude (Twitter, Twitter2), Luscious Lush Thea (Twitter, Twitter2) and yours truly (Twitter), among others.

We’re going to be making many new changes and additions here at WineLog.net this year. One of these is a new series of interviews for our blog called “5 Questions With…” The inaugural interview is with the brilliant young documentarian, Rudolf (Rudy) McClain (Twitter), who recently released a real-world, global response to the backlash seen against Merlot following the release of the quirky, blockbuster 2004 film Sideways, based on the novel by Rex Pickett. Merlove is a documentary about a world’s love of a grape in the wake of a fictitious (and ironic) slandering, a discovery of a love wine and an understanding of the nuances of terroir.

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!