#wbc14

After a day of conference sessions, there is no better way to chill out and wind down than after parties!! With wine!! I'm standing in the hallway headed to one when a gentleman stops me. He asks what's going on. I tell him that there is a party inside and they are serving wine, come on in! We talk a little bit, meaning I asked him several questions because he had a tablet in his hand and looked very important. Come to find out, to me, he was.

I was talking to Roger Noujeim of Quini Wine. I'd heard talk of the app over the weekend from the conference and saw a few of the flyers. I was very interested. He told me a bit more about the app an how you could review wines, add them to a database, share the results with friends. I mention that I'm a professor and this seems like something I could do with my class. Roger lit up! He told me to meet him the next day so we could go over the app in depth.

Unfortunately, I was unable to meet Roger due to conference scheduling but I reached out to him over twitter. (Gotta love social media!!) Long story shorter, we did a conference call in which Roger explained and demo'd the app to me. Quini was developed to take users through a wine tasting in a structured and fun way. They use a flower and based on the shape and the color of the flower, that's how your overall impression of the wine is shown. Wines can be assessed by eye, nose, mouth, finish, and personal opinion. The shape of your flower and a score is given at the end. You can then tweet or email your results.

Quini is perfect to use for my class!! The color coding, the rating system, the aroma and flavor terminology...this is exactly what I was looking for in an interactive system to teach my students about wine descriptors. AND they can track things on their own for me to review later. WIN WIN!! I signed up immediately!!

I can't wait until class starts this fall to show my students! But in the meantime, I will use it to track some of the wines I taste for these weekly twitter chats. But please don't just take my word for it, give Quini wine a whirl for yourself! It is so helpful in getting you comfortable with wine descriptors. A few months of using the app and you too can sound like a pro. Well, maybe not a pro, I've studied wine for years...you can sound like you know what you're talking about :-)

Live Wine Blogging!!

#FLXWine to the fullest! or… Is it too soon to hashtag #WBC15? or… Sometimes Wine + Blogging Does = Wine Blogging

One week ago, I sat down to review one of several wines samples sent to me from Villa Bellangelo Winery.  In particular, I sat down to review this wine…

Bellangelo 2012 Gewürztraminer

Now…

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that it really doesn’t take that long for me to assess and come to a conclusion about wine.  In my video reviews, you’ll see me talk about a particular…

2014 Wine Bloggers’ Conference: My Thoughts

Véraison at Sanford Winery

Santa Barbara County was my third Wine Bloggers’ Conference. I attended for the first time in 2011 in Virginia, just shortly after I created Traveling Wine Chick. My second conference was 2013 in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia with a pre-conference excursion to Lake Chelan, Washington. I am not really a rabble rouser, but more of a polite Southern Belle type…

2014 Wine Bloggers’ Conference: Live Red Wine Blogging

Live Wine Blogging (pic by George Rose with permission, http://www.georgerose.com/)

In my previous post, I shared a bit about the live wine blogging experience. There’s also a part two every year, live red wine blogging. This year, I tasted 11 wines in an hour, almost 12, but I ran out of time. I am not sure if a few of the producers shared some extra wines or what happened, but below is my…

Wine Bloggers’ Conference: Live Wine Blogging of Whites and Rosés

This my third conference and my third time participating in live wine blogging (10+ wines tasted in a hour) and I’ve never actually blogged during it. I am one of those who believes that the wines deserve a little more attention for a more thorough blog post. That being said, I do enjoy the camaraderie of the blogger participants and producers, and I also believe that what I do, which is tweet…