Talk-A-Vino

Meritage Time!

Let’s start fromt he answer for the Wine Quiz #51 – Hiding in the plain sight, part 2.

In that quiz, you were supposed to identify as many wines/wineries as possible in my fictional writing. Here is the same fragment, with the actual wines shown in bold and underlined:

– Hey, Gloria, Mr. Giribaldi is here. You really have to tell me if you are going to Sicilia with him. The ticket will cost only $890. Your aunt Elena and cousin Ben will be excited to see you. Your great-grand aunt Olga is turning hundred! Everybody will be there. Remember Livio, the blue eyed boy? He was such a little angel… Anyway, he is coming with Virginia, and I’m sure you will have lots of catching up to do. 

– okay, mom, I will go. By the way, if you see Kay, tell him that I’m through with him.

Now, in the order of appearance:

Chateau Gloria – Famous French winery from Saint-Julien

Mario Giribaldi – winery and winemaker in Piedmont

Vega Sicilia – legendary winery from Ribero del Duero, Spain

La Rioja Alta “890” Gran Reserva – one of the top wines from La Rioja Alta

Elena Walch  – great winery and winemaker in Alto Adige region

Olivier Cousin – rebel natural wines wine maker in Anjou area of Loire

Ben Ryè – spectacular sweet wine produced by Donnafugata in Sicily

Olga Raffault – great winery in Chinon

Turning Leaf – Vineyard in California

Hundred Acre – a cult wine from California

Livio Felluga – great Italian producer from Friuli

blue eyed boy – name of the Shiraz wine from the great Australian producer Mollydooker Wines

Ballet of Angels – white wine produced by Connecticut winery Sharpe Hills

Virginie de Valandraud – second label of legendary Château Valandraud (had a mistake in the spelling – should be Virginie and not Virginia, sorry about that)

if you see Kay – red wine from Lazio region in Italy, produced by Jason Woodbridge

Whew, this was a very long answer. I guess it was a tough quiz, as there were not that many players, but – I can tell you for sure I had lots of fun putting it together. VinoInLove came up with 10 good answers, even though many of the names he came up with didn’t match my intended answers, but as I mentioned in the description of the quiz, this will be still qualified. Thus VinoInLove is our winner, and Frank from WineTalks get honorable mention for coming up with 5 right answers. Great job!

Now, to the interesting stuff around the vine web. I got an e-mail from Wine Bloggers Conference, and it lead me to the collection of noteworthy information on Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC) web site. First, a few weeks ago I got an invitation from WBC to complete the wine blogging survey, which I did. Preliminary results are already available here, and you can learn there a few interesting things. For instance, it appears that average wine blogger has 3,418 follower on twitter – I guess I’m well below of an average wine blogger, as I have less than one third of that number. Another interesting fact is that less than 19% of the wine bloggers had being blogging for 6+ years. Anyway, check it out for yourself, and if you didn’t take the survey, you still have time to do it ( you can found the link on that same page with preliminary results). WBC site holds other interesting links – for instance, here is the link for so called Citizen Wine Blogs in America ( which includes both US and Canada) – the WBC web site is definitely worth exploring.

Another important news is that the call for nominations for 7th Annual Wine Blog Awards is now open! It will be open until Sunday, March 31st, so if anyone thinks this very blog worth a nomination, you can do so using this link (needless to say that I will be forever grateful).

Moving on, I still have a few interesting things for you. There are new wines on the market from the state of Washington, produced by Paul Gregutt, who you might know by his blog called Unfined and Unfiltered. The wines are produced under the label of Waitsburg Cellars. While I’m sure it will be difficult to find those wines, at least you can enjoy the descriptions coming under the theme called The Aromatics.

While this might be an old news for many of you, but it is interesting to see that now Parker is suing Antonio Galloni for the breach of contract. The world of wine, as everything else under the sun, becomes anything but boring once the big money start talking. Not sure if wine lovers will benefit, but the lawyers will be able to afford a few extra bottles of Petrus.

Last for today is a local update. I added a few links to the blogroll for the blogs I follow, and I also created a new link category called Wine Travel. American Winery Guide, To-Tuscany, Winerist and Napa Now are the four web sites listed there. If you have a blog or site dedicated to the wine travel, please let me know and I will be glad to add it to the blogroll.

It was a long post – but the glass is finally empty. Enjoy your Wine Wednesday and until the next time – cheers!