I had been wanting to catch up with Joe Roberts all weekend at the Wine Bloggers Conference, and it just never really happened. We were all so busy, and on top of all the mayhem, Joe was busy dealing with some sadness on the homefront, as his dog passed away while he was out of town. As a dog owner, [...]

I've never been one to resist peer pressure. I say when the times get tough, do what everyone else is doing. So, in that spirit, here is my "what I learned" post from #wbc10. Please forgive me if I talk a lot about bloggers in this post, but improving my craft as a blogger was really the purpose of the [...]

Yesterday was a packed day, filled with a ton of activity, lots of wine tasting (possibly too much), and an incredible amount of bonding with great new friends from around the country. Pretty early on in the day, I realized that I was going to be too busy having fun to spend much time blogging. Today I'm busy too, but [...]

Finally, the day has arrived. The morning started off with a search for breakfast, a quest that lead the group that I was with to a restaurant whose slowness of service nearly caused me to pass away from hunger. Josh Wade, Steve Paulo, and I met up with David Honig, Rick Bakas, Jeff Lefevre, and Sasha Kadey on the way [...]

When I was making my plans for the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla, it took the Wine Brat all of one tweet on Twitter to convince me that I should just extend my stay and go with the group that was going to be going on a tour of the Willamette Valley before the conference. Today's pre-pre-conference trip [...]

After months of counting down the days, I finally landed in Portland yesterday. I've been anxiously waiting to experience some great Oregon and Washington wine, but more importantly, I've been looking forward to meeting a lot of the friends that I've made online. Yesterday I arrived at the Portland Airport and Tamara Belgard (Sip With Me) was waiting to pick [...]

As I have seen my trip out to the Pacific Northwest next week rapidly approaching, I have started to become somewhat overwhelmed with the preparation still underway, much like my friend Joe describes in his most recent Suburban Wino blog post. Granted, my anxiety is mostly due to the ridiculous procrastination regimen that I have put myself on in the [...]

I woke up last week and came to the sudden realization that we are about two weeks away from my arrival in beautiful Walla Walla, Washington for the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference. This is the event that us wine bloggers wait for, with breathless anticipation, all year long. This is like Christmas for winos, a great opportunity to meet online [...]

Most of us have some pretty strong pre-conceived notions of what boxed wines taste like, with the very thought conjuring up images of Franzia dancing in our heads. Personally, most of my boxed wine experience has featured shockingly un-wine like offerings, but I have been excited to try some of the more recent offerings in this category lately. I really [...]

The minute I decided to write this post, I knew that the title alone might unleash a firestorm the likes of which this blog has not seen before. Wine drinkers are a passionate lot, and there are very strong opinions when it comes to what makes a good wine. I'll save you all a little suspense and say from the [...]