In Vulva Veritas

I am so happy to be here at the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference! It's like the Oscars only everyone's wearing GarAnimals. I can't believe I'm actually in wine country, where they grow grapes and stuff. I tried a couple of grapes right off the vine! Kinda green though. I guess they were grapes for Green Hungarian. Can't wait to taste some Chardonnay grapes, but I hope they're not too oaky.
Wineries' preferred wine blogger, right



What a gorgeous place the Flamingo Hotel is. It's luxurious. And you know how when you go to a zoo and you can smell the flamingos, that sulfury, birdshit smell--they pipe that right into the rooms! Unbelievable. If only we could tweet smells! I'd Twitter a little bit of Flamingo right to you. And I'd bet you'd blame your dog.


I've already met so many famous and influential people here. I admit, it's a little hard to think of things to say when you're so nervous. Tom Wark, yes, THE Tom Wark, came right up to me and offered to take me to Mexico for a week. I think he was drunk. He kept calling me Alice and asking me if I believed "In Vulva Veritas." He was cool though. Turns out he invented the Internet! Then I ran into the guys who publish "Mutineer Magazine." If you haven't heard of "Mutineer Magazine," it's like a wine and beverage publication written for sixth graders by sixth graders. The guys that publish it are really smart. I know this because they kept telling it to me. They want everybody to join the mutiny. Not sure how another untimely wine publication is a mutiny, but, what the heck, I'm in!


I never expected so much attention just because I write a wine blog. It kinda makes all that work I've put in feel like it's paid off. I've posted over 50 entries on my blog this year--that's nearly 700 words! And now I'm here in Santa Rosa meeting all these winemakers and tasting their wines with them. You know what's really cool? None of them even care if I get the facts right when I write about their wines! In fact, they like it better if I don't. As long as I write something nice about the wines, they don't even care if I know what I'm talking about! They're sick of journalists, and I don't blame them for being sick of them. Bunch of snooty nitpickers. Wine bloggers are much cooler. We don't care about the facts. Facts? This is the goddam Internet, where facts go to die. We have something more powerful than facts. We have too much free time.


In a little while we're going to blog Live! I'm so nervous. I've never been Live before. We only have one minute to taste a wine and then blog about it. Not sure that gives me enough time to go to the winery's website and use their descriptions of the wine, but I'll try. I'm not really that good at tasting wine without some notes. And what if I get some kind of wine like Tempraniloo (sp?) or Roossane? How do I know if those are good, or what they taste like? Who am I? Hardy Wallace? (Ooh, ooh, I got to meet him! He was wearing a big Murphy-Goode shirt and holding hands with Steve Heimoff.) But I can type like a bastard, so this should be easy. Maybe I'll get discovered, like Hardy, and get a job at a fancy winery like Murphy-Goode. Lots of desperate wineries here in Sonoma looking for people like me who don't know much about wine but know enough to praise whatever they put in front of us. Like Alder Yarrow of Vinography (he won for Best Wine Blog--he always wins though, he's basically like the Harlem Globetrotters, it's fixed). Alder is every winery's dream blogger. He's like cat litter--no matter what kind of crap you toss at him he makes it all seem fresh and pretty. That's what wineries like. Stupid journalists think it's important to take wines apart, maybe even say something critical of them. That's why wine blogging will replace wine critics--we're much nicer! Who would you send samples to? Not that HoseMaster asshole.


So much more to post about, but I need to go now. I'll write more later. I have to get dressed for the big AWBA gala! I'm going as Uhura.