DC Sip and Twit

Giramondo Wine Adventures hosted a "Sip and Twit" on Wednesday at the Whittemore House in DC. I was skeptical about the benefit that tweeting would add to the tasting event, and I am not sure my opinion changed much.




The way the event worked was pretty simple. To participate, you either had to sign up at the WineTwits website, or you could simply add the hashtag #sptwdc to your Tweets. They had a large monitor mounted to the wall to display Tweets as they happened (well, with a minor delay). You can see my shout out to Breaux Vineyards in the picture below. You can follow along along with the stream of tweets here to get a feel of what wines people liked and didn't like.

I think the concept has merit. In theory this type of testing would give people the opportunity to talk with each other about the wine. Instead of the person pouring the wine dictating what you should taste, a consensus could be developed amongst the crowd. To some extent it was successful, in the pictures below you can see people buried in their phones, tweeting.




I think where it starts to go wrong is with the prizes they were awarding for people who posted the most tweets during the event. When you do something like that, you wind up with too much chaff. If you read through the couple of hundred Tweets linked above, how many of them actually tell you about the wines? How many tell you something useful about what was good or bad? How many of them seem like padding to increase the user's chance of winning (including my own)?

I think one way this process could be improved is by inviting the producers/distributors who are there to open their own Twitter accounts. Again, take a look at the stream of tweets here, the ones that are probably the most useful are the ones that include the wine producer's handle (well, with the possible exception of this one :)).

If guests of the event had a way to easily tag which wine they thought "was dry, with hints of plum" or "tasted like feet" then I think the conversation becomes even easier. At the very least the wine producers who are there get immediate, and frankly invaluable, feedback on their wines.




On the other side of the equation, the wines presented were, generally, very good. I've already commented on the wines from Georgia, and will have more on that in a couple of days (they've graciously agreed to an interview).

Another standout was the wines from Solterra, they offered an excellent Carmenere. Like most Chilean wines, it is also a very good value at about $10.

Local boys Keswick and Horton were there. The newly released Keswick 2007 Heritage was excellent, as was the Horton Chocolate wine.

There were also several good wines from Sicily including a Grillo from Dinari del Duca and the House Jam Barnardo.

The Williams Corner table featured two really good wines the J. Mourat Collection and the Forlorn Hope Mil Amores.

Update: This is exactly, what I was talking about above. Forlorn Hope gathers some of the Twitter comments from the event on their blog.