Talk-A-Vino

Meritage time!

It’s been a while since the last Meritage post, but finally it is back. First and foremost, let’s start with the answer to the wine quiz #110, How Well Do You Know Your Wines, Part 5.

In the quiz, you were supposed to identify 6 wines, using the picture on top of the wine bottle’s cap. Here are the pictures, now with the answers:

When it comes to the results, we didn’t have a winner today (yes, it was a tough one), but I would like to acknowledge M. w. (no web site) and Duff’s Wines for correctly identifying the wine #4, Chappellet. Well done!

Now, to the interesting stuff around the vine and the web!

First and foremost – next Thursday, August 28th, is a 5th annual #CabernetDay. What does it mean for you? You get to celebrate two of the world’s noble grapes – Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc are both included. How to celebrate? Here is an easy schedule for you. First, find the bottle of your favorite Cabernet wine – any country goes. Then, open it on Wednesday, August 27th, and join the #winechat at 9 pm Eastern on Twitter. Then, publish a blog post about your favorite wine on Thursday, the 28th (or share it any way you like in social media), and may be even join some of the parties taking place on August 28th all over the country. Would that work? For more information, you can start with the #CabernetDay facebook page.

Now, which winery do you think has the most influence in social media? This week, it is Chateau Ste. Michelle from Washington. Okay, I’m sure you are not terribly surprised – Chateau Ste. Michelle is one of the biggest wineries in the US, so it makes sense. Care to guess number 2 this week? Think about it before you will continue reading. Done? Okay. And the #2 winery among most engaged in the social media is… Biltmore winery from North Carolina! I understand these are the social media engagements we are talking about, but still – I didn’t expect that. All these data are available through the VinTank service called Social Connect – of course it is intended for the wineries interested in tracking their full social media standing and engagement with the consumers, but the Social Media Index scoreboard was quite interesting to check. Play away!

And the last one for today. I’m sure you heard that instead of taking reservations, some of the restaurants sell tickets for the dinners. Particularly, Alinea and Next, two of the restaurants of the famous Chef Grant Achatz in Chicago, are both selling tickets, with the price vary based on the day of the week, dinner time and number of people in your party  and there is no such thing as party of one at the moment). The ticket system was born out of the need, as phone reservations were just failing miserably, trying to cope with demand of all the guests desiring to score a reservation. Here is the blog post detailing creation of this restaurant ticket system, which is quite sophisticated. Warning – the post is very long, and has terrible color scheme – but still might worth your time. Selling tickets reduced the number of no shows practically to 0, and made sure that the restaurant is always filled to the optimum capacity. I understand this side of things. And I understand that great dinner is an experience, thus selling tickets for dinner is not very different than selling tickets for concert, performance or Broadway musical. But – at the same time, it is only a dinner, right? What do you think? Would you gladly buy tickets for your next dinner?

And we are done here. The glass is empty – but the refill is on its way! Cheers!