A Portuguese Blogger in America

Living 9000 km from my octogenarian parents and other family, I jump at any chance to visit them – such opportunities are rare indeed!

And what a fun excuse for a trip! – I was to participate in the  2^nd Wine Bloggers Conference (WBC09), amazingly enough to be held in my father’s own backyard – Santa Rosa, California!  My ‘terra natal‘ is Mill Valley, Marin County, from where I embarked over 30 years ago to wander and sail around the world to Asia and Europe, calling many foreign places home until finally rediscovering my own Portuguese genealogy and settling in 1988 at Cortes de Cima.

The conference was a 2½ day nonstop multi-tasking session of wine tasting (there was a continuous succession of Californian Cabernets, Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays)  twittering and following others’ tweets, Blogging and Facebooking, lectures, drinking and eating, networking and more networking. As the numerous social network gurus shared their wisdom from the podium, they were sometimes barely audible above the dull thumping of keyboards, clicking of wineglasses, and the chattering of a roomful of ‘citizen’ wine journalists, high on the opportunity to talk in the flesh and blood to people they only previously knew online- (constantly overheard – “you don’t look at all like your Avatar!”)

The red carpet was laid out for us by the Sonoma and Napa Vintners Associations who bent over backwards to cater for us bloggers – showcasing their top wines at the event, but also by opening wide their doors to receive us at their wineries, uncorking their best wines and lavishing fine food upon us in the company of the owners and winemakers themselves!  A demonstration that the Californian wine establishment is always ready to meet a new challenge, and that they are aware that the tough economic environment warrants a new approach to brand promotion. Leaves one with the impression that whatever rough ride is ahead for the global wine industry in the years ahead, the Californian wine industry will emerge leaner but stronger! European winemakers take note!

Saturday was a very long day spent driving in buses around the Napa valley where we visited the CIA (the ‘real’ CIA), lunched at Cuvaison, dined at Gargiulo Vineyard, and at the Qunitessa Winery tasted an amazing line-up of Napa’s top wines poured by the winemakers themselves.  Weary, with stained teeth and tired palettes, we arrived back at the hotel late and walked straight into the Portuguese wine tasting party sponsored by ViniPortugal with the help of Catavino, and us 2 attendant Portuguese winery bloggers – Quevedo and Cortes de Cima – to announce the upcoming EWBC09 in Lisbon in October.  Us Portuguese wineries have got a hard act to follow, if we are to emulate the great reception the bloggers were given by the Californian wine industry! In these hard economic times more than ever, an opportunity the Portuguese wine industry cannot afford to waste!