2012 Wine Bloggers Conference Tips

With the 2012 Wine Bloggers Conference fast approaching, I wanted take a moment to offer some advice to the many first-time attendees. This thoroughly un-comprehensive list has some suggestions and tips to ensure a great experience, but also comes from my perspective. In the coming weeks I'm sure others will be putting out their own blog posts with advice, and I urge you to read them as well.

(img src: http://winebloggersconference.org/america/) 

Back in 2010, I attended the WBC in Walla Walla and was fortunate to have several great bloggers to help me along. Wide-eyed and fresh-faced (well maybe not so much the latter), it was my first time to Washington's wine country, first time meeting so many other bloggers, first time at a conference like that, and first time representing myself as a brand, not just a person. Quite a lot of firsts, no?

The following list is going to meander somewhat, as I list various things I think will help attendees get the most out of Portland's turn at the Wine Blogger's Conference. In the comments section below, please feel free to add in any more tips for attendees.

1. Talk to everyone! - Be social! Remember how social media is an integral part of blogging? It carries over into real life. Have conversations, ask questions, make connections! You'll make lifelong friends and valuable connections.

2. Bring lots of business cards - Seriously I cannot emphasize this enough. Business cards are still vital to getting your brand out there in front of people. Use Moo Cards if you want to be unique. Pack hundreds and watch them disappear! I still have a huge stack from 2010's Conference that I refer to almost weekly.

3. Pack your camera - Whether to record the landscape, conference activities, bottles of wine, or anything else, a camera is truly better than your iPhone or Blackberry. Trust me on this.

4. Do your research - Learn about who you'll be visiting and what wines they produce. Research Portland's vibrant food and wine scene. Read about the history of the Oregon wine industry. Time spent on research will make this experience so much better.

5. Pre-plan! Pre-plan! Pre-plan! - Some things can't be planned, like off-conference pop-up parties. Other things can be and should be planned. Dinner with a group of blogger friends? Plan it. A winery visit? Plan it. What break-out sessions you want to attend? Plan it.

6. SPIT! - Don't be afraid to spit. You'll be around many wine professionals, and there's a reason we spit. Sure it's not the most glamorous or graceful thing, but you will be in front of hundreds of wines (and hundreds of fellow bloggers) so learning how to spit (practice at home with water) will make you look professional and classy. Getting sloppy drunk and passing out in the lobby will do the opposite and it'll harm your brand.

7. Get some rest (on Wednesday and Thursday) - The pace of the WBC is always pretty quick, especially if you're networking and going to outside activities, tastings, and parties. Wednesday and Thursday are good nights to get at least a decent eight hours of sleep if at all possible. Friday and Saturday are marathon days, but they're amazing.

8. Don't forget to eat - Food absorbs alcohol, keeps your energy levels up, keeps you healthy, and tastes damn good! I cannot emphasize enough the importance of exploring the food scene in Portland. From food carts to amazing restaurants like Noisette or Andina, EAT while you're here!

9. Use Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Tumblr - Be social, document your experience! Use hashtags, including #WBC12 to get that tweet in front of everyone else using Twitter at the Conference. Take pictures of wineries, wines, people, parties, food, anything you want. Share with your attendees! Follow new people, add them on Facebook too!

10. Don't feel the need to blog DURING the conference - I noticed a lot of people trying to blog during Walla Walla's WBC and last year in Virginia, but the quality of most blog posts was lacking. Composing a thoughtful, coherent blog post takes time and focus, so instead of trying to find time and focus during a crazy-awesome four day event, take a lot of notes and compose those posts AFTER the conference.

11. Don't wear perfume/cologne/Old Spice/Axe/etc!! - My friend Pamela over at Enobytes Wine Blog pointed this one out and it couldn't be more true. Non-scented deodorant or ant-perspirant is fine, and we encourage that because no one wants to smell body odor. The problem is (and I experienced this at WBC 10) people who think it's ok to wear any kind of smelly perfume or cologne (men are equally guilty!) when a room full of people want to taste wine. DON'T DO IT!


As you can see, this is a list merely from one blogger's perspective. Call it a distillation of thought based upon both experiencing and observing conferences. It's entirely incomplete and biased towards certain points of view but I hope you find a few nuggets of valuable information to help you get the most out of this year's Wine Bloggers Conference.

Don't forget to find me and say hi!

Beau Carufel

Portland Wine Tweetup, March 22nd, With Cave de Lugny

What are you doing on Thursday, March 22nd? If you're a Portland resident, I highly recommend joining us for a night of wine tasting at Taste on 23rd. The wines poured with be from Cave de Lugny, a producer located in Burgundy, France. We'll kick off the festivities at 7:00pm and taste wine, nibble appetizers, and tweet till 9:00 pm. The wine and appetizers will be provided free of charge, all we ask is that you enjoy yourself and tweet about the tasting!

Now, who is the "us"? I was approached by a company called Lush Life Productions to write this post (full disclosure: I'm not being paid to do this) and figured it would be a good way to meet more Portland area wine and food bloggers. As a newbie to the area, I'd love to get more involved in the wine culture here and the chance to drink some Burgundian wines with like-minded bloggers fits the bill perfectly.

What can you do to help? If you're so inclined, some tweets about this blog post would be greatly appreciated, as would any comments or suggestions down below. In other words, getting the info out to the masses! I'd like to get 40 or more people to show up, and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Who is Cave de Lugny? The short story is that Cave de Lugny is a co-op in Burgundy, producing red, white, and sparkling wines. Specifically, the co-op is located in Macon, the AOC of Burgundy which produces the most white wine of the entire region. At present, total production is about six million bottles, spread across red, white, and sparkling wines. Cave de Lugny was in fact Burgundy's first co-operative, founded in 1926. In terms of our discussion, a co-op, is where farmers bring their grapes to the winery where the winemaker takes over and produces the best wine possible. This system is in use in France, Spain, Italy, and many other places around the world, save for the United States.

During the Tweetup, we'll be using the hashtag #CaveDeLugny. All you do is append it to your tweets and then everyone following along will see what you're saying, doing, and most importantly, sipping! I'd also recommend following Pasternak Wine Imports Twitter Account @PasternakWine, they're the U.S. importers of Cave de Lugny. For those new to my blog, my Twitter accounts are @UCBeau and @BeausBarrelRoom, feel free to tweet at me anytime.

So then, that's my pitch to you! Will I be seeing you on the 22nd at Taste on 23rd?

Beau Carufel

Portland Dining Failures at Paley's Place and The Bent Brick

Have you ever heard great things about a restaurant then experienced almost exactly the opposite? How did that make you feel? If you're like me, you probably felt a mix of frustration, sadness, maybe some anger, and even a sense of betrayal. Such is the nature of our emotions when we get our hopes up then have them dashed to pieces on the rock of bitterness.

I generally refrain from blogging about negative dining experiences, preferring instead to use Twitter and/or Facebook to share my story. In this case though, I felt that after two bad dining experiences in the span of about a month, it was time to speak my mind.

My good friend Dan Hammer and his lovely wife were in town this past December, and despite his trip being short, we vowed to get together for dinner at a nice restaurant. He and I both did some research and settled on Paley's Place, in Northwest Portland. To a man, everyone I told about our upcoming dinner had good things to say, noting their food is locally sourced and organic as well as the wine list being very well put together. In the interests of keeping this blog constrained to one page, I'll refrain from any chronological narrative.

Arriving at Paley's, we four were escorted to our table in what seemed like the cocktail lounge. If you've been there, imagine walking in and looking left past the bar, towards the back of the restaurant. Since the occasion was a special one (I get to see Dan only once or twice a year, he lives in White Plains) we both brought bottles of wine. His was a 2008 Sojourn pinot noir, one of his favorite California producers, and mine was a 2002 Kramer Vineyards Rebecca's Reserve pinot noir. I was able to get our server to decant each for us but it would have been nice to have the sommelier come over and say hello too. Becky chatted with our server for a moment, explaining it was her family's vineyard and asking if she (server) would like a pour. All told, we sent back nice sized pours of each wine, and the server did come back to express her enjoyment. What surprised me was that we were charged corkage for both bottles. As an industry courtesy, corkage is usually waived. Also, in my experience, when you send a pour back to the kitchen corkage is often waived. Our party had two industry people, myself and Becky.What bugs me the most is that these people are the same ones going to tasting rooms all over the Willamette Valley (and other places) and expecting their free tasting and industry discounts on purchases. We in the wine industry are happy to extend discounts and are we wrong to hope for some reciprocal discount? I wrote this off to poor server training or poor management.

What I struggled to write off though was the average food. I, like most humans, love salt but use it judiciously. At Paley's, everyone's dish was heavily over-salted. Why? The diners can always add their own salt and I would imagine any kitchen worth their proverbial salt would want diners to taste as much complexity as possible in the food. When everyone at the table notices a problem with their entree and there are three separate entrees, something is wrong. Lastly, upon depositing the check, our server took off for 20-30 minutes, leaving us sitting around waiting for our payment to be processed. For such a heralded establishment, Paley's Place sure screwed the pooch that Saturday night...A good rule: Don't piss off industry people, it gets around. As a restaurant veteran myself, I understand there are variations in the food depending on who is in the kitchen that night, but I really expect more from a high end place.

Refusing to write off Portland's epicurean scene (that would be highly irresponsible), we looked forward to our next outing at a highly regarded place. That outing was this past Saturday at The Bent Brick, located in Northwest Portland. What intrigued me the most was their tasting menu, in the past I've had some amazing meals courtesy of a chef's willingness to prepare his entire menu for us. Again, positive reviews flowed in from all corners. The occasion: celebrating my good friend NubianOR's birthday! She and her husband, along with some mutual friends, had spent a wonderful day tasting wine before making their way back to Portland for this much-anticipated dinner. The experience turned out to be worse than at Paley's Place.

First the good: I liked the decor and vibe at the Bent Brick. They do a lot of things right, creating a fun atmosphere and offering a wine list featuring only Pacific Northwest wines...on tap! I was impressed and happy to be there. Our friend Tamara had been there before and suggested we do the chef's tasting menu. Priced at $55 a piece, it was certainly expensive but she had done it before and told us that there was a lot of food and that couples could split it up and still be full. Of further note, the Oregonian also suggested sharing the tasting menu, reasoning that the amount of food was sufficient for two people.

Here too, Becky and I brought wine, two bottles from Kramer Vineyards. We chatted up our server and sent back a nice healthy pour of the Kramer Vineyards Brut. I'll cut to the chase for their first #fail moment: They charged us corkage, despite there being three industry people, and we are also food and wine bloggers! While I NEVER expect corkage to be waived, within the service industry there is usually a better sense of helping each other out. Also, since we were a party of eight, there was automatically a gratuity charge added. Our server was getting a tip no matter what!

Next, when we presented our request to the server, asking for three tasting menus, to be split by three couples, we were greeted with an exasperated eye roll and the lazy-server anthem "let me go see if it's ok with the kitchen". Apparently the kitchen was able to accommodate our horrifically complex request. So nice of them. But wait! Instead of bringing out three of each of the courses, one for each couple, they decided to screw us by bringing out community-plated courses! By doing this, the Bent Brick got away with serving far less food than we'd normally get. Furthermore out of our party of eight, one couple didn't order the tasting menu but for some reason they had to wait for almost two hours to get their entrees. More issues attributable to poor management? The tasting menu came out at a glacially slow pace, our dinner took almost three hours to complete, which I couldn't believe until I checked the time myself.

(img copyright Becky Kramer 2012)

In the above picture, each person gets one sliver of egg and one sliver each of the assorted pickled vegetables. Yes, I get that it is a "tasting menu", but seriously? For $55? The plate above should have been for one couple, and three just like it should have come out.

Before anyone has ideas that we were trying to get out of there on the cheap, we weren't. Our party ordered a full carafe (that's how they serve their kegged wine) and seven beers. We were happy to spend our money there, provided the experience was worth it. In this case, at the Bent Brick, it was not. I have no interest in recommending that restaurant or returning, despite the cool decor and thoughtful wine list.

At this point I am wondering what is wrong with the service industry here in Portland? Remember, these servers and managers are the ones expecting deals all over wine country and at other restaurants. I've had great meals in Portland, at The Country Cat and Gruner, so I know Portland is capable of wonderful food AND service. In the quest to be relevant though, is managerial proficiency sacrificed? Why is good service so sporadic? I struggle with these two bad instances because I am both a restaurant industry veteran and wine industry veteran, meaning I have a good idea of how things should work. When they don't, I have less sympathy because there really is no excuse for poor service..

The birthday girl herself posted an account on her blog, titled "Dining Debacle". Check it out for another view on our experience at The Bent Brick.

Have you eaten at these restaurants? Share your experiences, good or bad!

Beau Carufel

Dinner at The Country Cat, Portland Oregon

Last night I had a fantastic meal at The Country Cat here in Portland. As a recent emigrant to this city, I've been excited to start exploring the highly regarded restaurants in the area. Living in Beaverton, I'm a short drive into Portland yet also live in a neighborhood that has it's own hidden gems. As I continue to get settled and explore, I'll be writing about some of those cool places to.

For now though, let's start with the amazing dinner my friends and I had last night. I was downtown with Becky, meeting with the always-wonderful Karin McKercher to discuss some business (I'm still looking for a job remember!) and while we had a couple of delicious bottles of wine, including a 2006 Belle Pente Estate Reserve pinot noir and a 2007 Hamacher Willamette Valley pinot  noir, there wasn't any food to be seen! I did really enjoy our venue though, Oregon Wines on Broadway. Great selection, nice staff, and good pricing make this a wine bar I'll be visiting often.

Naturally, after the three of us polished off those two bottles (both of which were quite good, earning a B+ and an A- from me, respectively), my thoughts turned to food. That always seem to happen, but I've no complaints. Becky found out her friend Anna was downtown too, literally blocks away. Anna writes a great food blog, one I highly recommend you foodies check out. She was entertaining H.C., a fellow food blogger from Southern California. Karin took off and the four of us turned our attention to getting something into our growling bellies.






The first place we stopped at, The Woodsman Tavern, has just opened and had an hour wait..minimum. Plus, it looked like every other pseudo-speakeasy run by hipsters with scraggly beards, too much pomade, and tattoos of sparrows on their arms. I rolled my eyes and figured it just wasn't my scene. My jeans weren't tight enough and I wasn't wearing plaid.

Anna then suggested The Country Cat, a short drive down the street, further into Southeast Portland. This neighborhood, called "Southeast" by the natives, is considered an up-and-coming hip place to be. Lots of gastropubs serving nouveau-American comfort food. Take that for what it's worth, I am always skeptical of restaurants that market themselves as such.

Walking into The Country Cat, we saw the place was not crowded and had plenty of open tables. A nice selection of liquor and wine was mounted above the bar, and there was a chalkboard listing beers on tap as well as their "liquor in a jar" special. Our server, Brian, came over quickly enough and we began to order. Anna and Becky led the way, ordering the pretzels to start, while I took a moment to peruse a nicely organized beverage list.

As we sat and chatted, Brian came back with our first wine, a 2010 Grochau Cellars Commuter Cuvee pinot noir. The night before, I tasted this wine with my friends Dan and Chas of Wine is Serious Business and we all enjoyed it. The Country Cat charged $31 a bottle, retail price is around $18 or so. That is how restaurant wine pricing should be. Unfortunately, I saw a bottle of 2010 Bonny Doon Clos de Gilroy for $41 when I believe it sells for $18 off their website. Kind of a bummer that it cost $10 more than the Grochau, yet retails at the same price.

The pretzel was good, it needed more salt on top but had a nice crunchy outside and a warm, soft doughy interior. The portion size was good for two people but I think we should have ordered two. Perhaps other dipping options can be offered too, as I think that a spicy deli mustard would have been a better choice. Still, this was something I'd order again.

Becky brought up that the hamburger at The Country Cat is apparently noteworthy and has been featured locally as one of the best around. Since I'm a bit of a burger fiend, this naturally resulted in me placing an order for the burger, replete with American cheese and bacon. Again I will suggest more variety, this time for the cheeses available on the burger. I may sound snobbish, but a locally produced, artisan cheddar would be an amazing complement to the burger. And what a burger it was! Look at that picture! A bit too much mayo perhaps, but that was made up for by the fact that the burger was cooked to a true medium-rare. Thank god, a restaurant that can do that! The meat to bun balance worked out, and the bacon had a great crunch factor, providing a foil to the rich beef. You Portland burger fans, check this place out.

Those onion rings were epic. As was the catsup, perhaps the most natural-tasting version I have ever had in my life. This plate was so full of epic goodness that I nearly ordered another one. I never do that. Reveling in the meaty glory that is this burger was perhaps Portland's way of saying "welcome kid, it's gonna be a fun ride" to me.

What is a great meal without a great dessert? Check out the picture below, and drool for a while.

Apple pie, almost always incredibly good and a perennial favorite of mine, topped with pecan ice cream and drizzled in caramel. At this point, my synapses began to overload, screaming "this just isn't fair!" at me. But like a champ..or like a boss, I dug in. Great balance between sweet, rich apples and flaky butter crust, and the ice cream had a bit of dry nuttiness which was complemented nicely by the sweet caramel drizzle.

Apologies for the terrible picture quality. Anyone want to give me $100 so I can go buy an iPhone 4? Yea, that's what I thought. Still, I hope you enjoyed reading about my first big culinary adventure in Portland. Thanks to Becky, Anna, and HC for sharing a great night with me. Thanks to Karin for showing me a wonderful new wine bar right in the heart of Portland. This is the start of a great adventure for me.

Beau Carufel

Where Have I Been?

The eight of you that read this blog may have wondered why it's been so quiet lately. After living in San Diego for over 20 years, I packed up and moved to Oregon. Right outside Portland is a small community called Beaverton, where I'm now making my home. The drive north, up Interstate 5, took two days with a stop in Sacramento overnight. Becky had flown down the week previously and was invaluable, helping me pack and load the truck as well as keeping me entertained on the drive up.

Preparing for the move took up a lot of time and energy, so I was unable to get much writing done. As of now, I have four blog entries in the draft queue, but none are fit to print...As if anything I post is ever truly fit to print. In the final weeks of my San Diego life, I tasted through some good and not-so-good California cabernets as well as a lineup of decent carmeneres from Chile. Notes on each of those tastings will be forthcoming. More coverage of my September press trip to Navarra is also on it's way, including some of the best wine I've tasted this year. I've also a slew of single-bottle/winery reviews coming along in the pipeline, and some op/ed pieces I've been brewing in my head for a long time now.

So now that I'm in Oregon, will this blog change much? I hope it only changes for the better, with more commentary on the wine world and fewer cut and dry wine reviews. I don't think I have the energy or drive to write exhaustive articles on every single wine event that goes on, but there are some interesting tastsings coming up that I hope to attend and report to you on.

With that, I ask your pardon for a few more days as I get everything settled into my apartment in Beaverton. I'll be posting up some coverage of the harvest work I did yesterday at Kramer Vineyards, and recapping the aforementioned Curry & Carmenere tasting, as well as the (very) interesting California Cabernet tasting I did a few weeks ago.

Cheers!
Beau Carufel