A Loss of Words

( A salsa judge at the World Championship

Chili Cook-off in 2010. )

There are fewer words here than there used to be. I'd bet on that continuing. And this is not a surprise to me.

In April of 2010 when I gave my 18 month old winemaker's journal (blog) a shot in the arm I was full of ideas and energy. It was a birthday present to myself. "Go do something", was the idea. And I did. Over three plus years I have achieved some of what I initially set out to do. I tasted, sampled, wrote, took photos, networked, laughed, sighed, sponged up information, provided education to others and did a fair bit of traveling. I changed courses many times and for many different reasons. I still do most of these things and with gusto! The early goals I didn't achieve have been superseded by so many others, some I have nailed, some I haven't; and some just not yet. Some weeks I wrote a lot and some weeks I wrote less. I wrote, shared, read, shared, commented, debated (argued), shared and along the way I have learned so much!

I continue to enjoy all of the experiences this journey affords me, and most of all I genuinely appreciate the many people I continue to "meet" along the way. I have never met some of these people in person (yet), but there are things we have in common so we get each other enough that we have a great dynamic in a networking context. I continue to carry on relationships with some of the people I've met while others are more often a friendly face in the more business-y realm of food & beverage events. All of them are part of the "family" however weird that ends up being in one city or another. I still look forward to these days.

But I just don't write about this stuff anymore and I don't spend much time on social media plugging my work and keeping tabs on the beverage media. Why? Well, it's complicated I guess.

Late last year (2012) I felt my drive to write about and share my experiences waning. I reformulated my approach, a natural and not unexpected reaction given the 2+ prior years, and kept plugging away. But I wasn't digging it. The idea of throwing a bunch of words together, using a euphemism here, and sharing them as a way of expressing my experiences secondhand just wasn't resonating anymore. Things change and I know myself well enough to know that when I lose interest in something there is nothing good in trying to keep it going. So I won't.

From some reflection I came to realize that my goal of "go do something" was never intended solely to mean blog about my life nor that it should necessarily create something new and permanent. So setting aside some of the activities I picked up while out "doing something" when they no longer interest me is not a crime. It isn't even failure. It is quite the opposite actually. Here is what I am keeping:

• I have more time for dates with friends (yes this is you Margot) where we get to sit around the table eating, drinking and socializing. We all want to do this and we all love it.
• I still make a shit-ton (I saw a joke this week that in the UK that is shite-tonne, he he!) of beer, mead, cider and wine and I share it with friends, all the time!
• When I travel I can strike a better balance of food/beverage visits with other things of interest. Some of it is just baked in. Portland, Oregon and the Oregon Brewer's Festival anyone? Week after next.
• With other aspects of my life (work, family, community) being as dynamic as they are for anyone else my life isn't as harried. I know I can't do everything and I can balance all of what I am doing better now.
• I am less structured and more open to just exploring things. That is what I get out of bed for.
• When I see you I'll have stories. They weren't on the blog so we'll have something to talk about for sure!

It is OK to miss the words. I'll miss my words too, but not because I regret changing my priorities but because when blogging was my priority I really had fun sharing my days with all of you. It is good to have memories that make you smile. I have fun doing lots of different things and following my interests is keeping things plenty exciting so I am sure to keep racking up good memories. See you on the trail!

Cheers!

Jason

Doon, Been, What, Huh? - Matters of Experience

The wine bloggers conference is a lot of things to a lot of people, or it should be. No matter what bent gets you fired up to attend the paramount issue is that you really live the experience. Too much note taking, snapping of photos and digital discourse and the risk of missing the moment increases. Too little time out on the trail and limited socializing can leave one with a sterile experience. The balance is different for everyone, but the pursuit of this balance is a worthy goal for all.

Sentiment about the value experience was presented clearly and without nuance (well, a little) by Randal Grahm in his keynote to open the conference. For my readers who don’t know who Randall Grahm is the information in hisbio will introduced you to this talented, interesting, thought provoking and real voice in the wine world. Grahm has engaged and inspired people with both his wine and his writing. A mélange of both can be found in Been Doon So Long, Grahm's James Beard Award Winning book, and blog of the same name.

I first recognized an old friend in the theme about experience as Grahm posited that wine writing is less about the wine and what the wine evokes in you the writer. His quote that made this point with absolute clarity was “show up for the wine.” Hell yeah! You can’t expect to really have any experience if you don’t show up. Showing up is visceral. Showing up requires senses and is all about the physical. This is not a digital or virtual pursuit. The method of capturing and sharing your thoughts afterword can be digital, but you can’t put that cart in front of the horse that you need to ride to the party.

I captured this section of his keynote on video and posted it to the conference stream a day later. Since returning home the full video, shot by Austin Beaman with whom I enjoyed dinner later that day, has been posted. I’ve embedded it below. Thanks Austin! Grahm has also shared the fulltranscript of his address in a blog post, which is seeing meaningful comment traffic as one might expect.

One of the other perspectives from Grahm’s keynote was the idea that wine writers could take things to another place by focusing on capturing and expressing the beauty in the wine they drink (or also make in many people’s cases), enjoy and write about. I couldn’t agree more, but I’ll admit that I’m not the guy to pontificate on that. I am still working on that part in my own world. What I can say is that the reason I led off with experience and really living in the moment is that without that you can’t expect to begin to experience, recognize or express beauty.

Grahm touched on a lot of other points and the only reason I’m not covering them here is because what I shared above resonated the most for me. The experience I had immediately after the keynote brought these points full circle in that most serendipitous of ways. Watch the video to see what else he said and take from it what makes the most sense to you!

Right on the heels of the keynote was the first round of speed tasting which has the potential to be the least experiential format for wine, but not always. Sokol Blosser poured their Evolution White for my table. I don’t really know what people think of this wine, and I don’t really care. I like it. It makes me happy. This wine and I have history and that history makes me feel all funny when I get to relive it with each new sip. You see Sokol Blosser Evolution was the first Oregon wine I recall having.

That first experience was before I knew anything at all about wine. I picked the Evolution off a wine list while out to dinner with my wife Margot (married maybe 3-4 years at that point) and solely based on the description fitting my anxiety over selecting something that both she and I would enjoy. And we did. The success of the wine came from its work in both elevating our dining experience AND the boost to my confidence in further integrating wine into our lives. It was the very beginning of something that I have come to cherish. As I was sipping this wine I was thinking about my wife, how young we were when we got married (23&24), how much has changed since I first had the wine and how incredible our journey has been since. This all came back immediately and with an energy I could feel.

Relating the above to Alison Sokol Blosser, who poured the wine during speed tasting, brought my experience to a new place. She smiled, thanked me for sharing my personal connection to her and her family and thus my experience was made grander. At the next break in the action I did go find my wife, gave her a big kiss and explained the experience. This wine is even more special for me now. I have fond memories and have connected my experience with the story of the family who makes it.I will be forever connected to this wine. That’s real life and that’s living one’s experience.

( Margot and I enjoying a day trip to the Oregon coastline post-WBC12. )

Several conference attendees (physical and virtual) have begun to share their thoughts on Randall’s keynote. So far the posts have primarily been the journalistic type, here is who Randall is, here is what he said and maybe in their own word why it is important. I suspect more posts will go up, and I sincerely hope everyone will look to see a reflection of his statements in their own lives to decorate their writing; it really would make it so much more interesting.

Passionate Foodie - http://passionatefoodie.blogspot.com/2012/08/beauty-underdogs.html

Vintology - http://vinotology.com/2012/08/the-continuing-odyssey-of-randall-grahm/

Wine Searcher - http://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2012/08/randall-grahm-takes-aim-at-the-wine-industry

Cheers!

Jason

Why I Write About Wine

The only wines that I personally feel I have any expertise with are those that I make myself. I can tell you what I made them from and how, and am I usually the first and only person to study them well enough to provide detailed tasting notes including what might be wrong with them. This is likewise true for the other fermented beverages I also make.

So when I write about wine, and specifically those for which I am strictly the consumer, I typically write about my experiences and how well (or not) the wines “worked” for me in the settings I tasted them in. I do taste many wines on their own, but I also endeavor to pair many with food and share other with friends to see how they might perform socially. I try wines of all stripes and don’t discriminate. I do throw a slanted eye towards wines that have a lot of hype about them, but only because hype creates expectations and expectations skew naked enjoyment. I don’t make up scores or assign ratings and I don’t try to be something more than I am with over the top reviews filled with jargon and descriptors that nobody else is going to make sense of. I likewise don’t care much for scores and ratings from others, but I do listen when people talk about their own experience.

Wine and experience with it as a consumer is personal. Decorating one’s experience with all sorts of seemingly objective and authoritative information in an attempt to increase its perceived value is a fool’s game in my opinion. But wine writers who blast out wine reviews on a daily basis are a dime a dozen, so I guess that message is not as well traveled as it could be.

So why do I write about wine? Because I enjoy it. Honestly, I write a lot less than when I got started several years ago, but that isn’t because I enjoy it less, it’s because I needed to find balance between naked enjoyment (as evidenced in picture below where I am stuffing my face and giving the thumbs up) and a slightly different version that involves notes, research and writing time as is illustrated in the picture at the top of this post. I’m still tweaking that balance, and this effort in itself has its own nuances to offer.

Writing helps me review my own experiences (those I choose to write about) and learn more about what I was sensing and savoring in those moments. Sharing experiences by posting them in a blog is a reason to write, but not because I want people to think anything of me, more because I am hoping that readers might be inspired to seek out worthy experiences of their own; tangents off of what they take away from my scribbling perhaps.

And I’m not talking about linear inspiration like, “hey that wine sounds great and I want to try it too!” I’m talking about things like “He’s making mead flavored with pineapple sage. What the hell is pineapple sage? He says it smells a bit like tropical fruit layered on top of sage with a bit of a field green bent. I’ve got to find some of that and see what I could do with it!” That is actually going to happen by the way. But maybe that’s not your style. How about “After recent trips to the Finger Lakes Jason has shared his enjoyment of the variations in the last three vintages of Rieslings. I wonder what how differently they really are.”  When I’ve done it well, it’s about the experience and not the specifics of any one wine or producer. And if I truly get it right it’s you in a new story that was inspired by something I experienced.

I don’t chase after samples and am not the most active guy on social media working all the connections and taking part in all the virtual tastings. I don’t attempt to get out to all the local events and be part of all the groups for wine lovers and wine writers. When I come across opportunities I deliberately choose to get involved, or not, and why I might make a specific choice is usually a spot decision based on the potential that I might have fun. Actually, it’s pretty much random. That keeps it exciting!

What I do though is think about my experiences. I try to see them as a collection of different moments that as a whole are meaningful because I really lived them. I don’t need to be known for what I’ve done and shared. I’d rather remain relatively unknown, but be exceedingly authentic, enthusiastic, energetic, fun loving and someone others enjoy interacting with. To me that is real and those are the people I want to be with anyway, so for me it just makes sense to do the same.

I’d love it if thoughtfulness and individuality were sought after by the wine industry over site traffic, the size of your social media network and how "active" you are, but then again wine is a business and the visibility of the people engaged by the industry is expected to correlate to the potential for a return on investment. I don’t have a problem with that, I just don’t need to be as tightly woven into it as so many writers and bloggers want to be. For me it is not a business and it is not work, it is fun. It is living and with only those rules I choose to impose on myself and where I answer to nobody beyond me and my family for what I choose to do in this space.

That’s why I write about wine.

Cheers!

Jason

What Comes Next?

I got away to Vermont (the source of the photos) for our first summer trip this past weekend. The best lazy days at the house in VT involve, walks along the nearby wooded dirt roads and hours sitting in the shade catching up on magazines and books I’ve been socking away.

Interlacing all-of-the nothing with new & interesting beverages and effortless meals provided lots of time to consider menus, new drinks and recent food and beverage experiences. It was clearly fate that two pieces I read over the weekend got me thinking about a next evolution in wine and food evangelism, i.e. wine and food blogging.

I have always believed that at the core of every successful and inspiring food and beverage professional is a salesman for the product and the bandleader for the buzz all around it. Having that, the creativity of these chefs, designers, sommeliers, growers, producers and the others around them can create magnetism for ravenous consumers. These actors CAN be magnetic, but only if their creativity and personality show up.

The first piece was the editorial opener for Beer Advocate Issue #65 penned by Jason & Todd Alstrom who founded and edit Beer Advocate for the ranks of the beer geeks everywhere. In “Does Your Local Support Its Locale” Jason and Todd make it clear that local isn’t separate from quality and the “coolness” of the people involved, and only when it has those two things is local beer worthy of unconditional support. Yes, I agree on this point as well. I further expand the point to wine and food too, and yes this means there are rules. No kidding, there always have been rules. For those of us who write about our culinary adventures as fans, we need to take notice. We can’t cheerlead for empty products or ideas and expect to be taken seriously or garner support. We too need to be authentic and bring something interesting to the party!

The second piece was “Is Seasonal Eating Overrated?” in the August 2012 issue of Food & Wine Magazine.

In the article writer Katherine Wheelock pokes at the issue of what to make of seasonal menus; how ingredients get trotted out their respective season and the dearth of creativity many restaurants and chefs bring along with the season’s bounty. Again with the rules. She and the chefs she interviewed state that nobody should be breaking their arm trying to say “good job” to themselves just because their menu tracks the seasons like a sundial. It’s about the creativity exercised on the ingredients and not just because they are in season. Again, authenticity and creativity matter.

So where the hell I am going with this? Authenticity matters. Make it personal. Dig deeper. Be creative. Doing so will net rewards in the relationships you create and the opportunities you find in front of you. That’s where I’m going.

None of us should be writing about boring seasonal lineups of food and wine just because they are seasonal. Why praise chefs who aren’t being all that creative? Do you write about restaurants? Share the ones that really show you something, eat at the others. Wine? Scrap boring reviews and write about the people, the food or the setting. Beer? Same thing. The who and why trumps the what. Wine-making or beer-making? Ask about the why, you can learn the how.

“But I want to share and participate in the community!” Of course, we all do. When you don’t have something interesting to share be a cheerleader for other worthy individuals who do. They get feedback, you learn and the community gets bigger and stronger when we all do this.

I began writing this post soon after I got home from Vermont. The next day I came across a similarly themed post by friend and fellow blogger Richard Auffrey. In “Rant: No More Burgers & Cupcakes” Auffrey opens with the question “Whatever happened to originality?” Read the rest of his post for his thoughts on folks pig piling on food trends and the glut of trendy food that is neither original or interesting. This confirms I am not alone in my feelings and that the game is on.

Cheers!

Jason

Making the Most with What You Have

The year 2011 is in the books (I am writing this on NYE so not quite yet) and looking back it was a great one for the Ancient Fire Wine Blog. I’m new to the wine blogging party in my current format and 2011 was the best of the nearly two years I've been seriously dishing my thoughts on beverages, eats, places to visit to get food & drink, my home brewing projects and odds & ends about the food & beverage industry at large. I’ve enjoyed sharing my experiences immensely and intend to keep on keeping on, but I doubt things will be the same in 2012 on my end and definitely not for readers.

In 2011 I confirmed much of my own suspicions about how my effort at expanding my knowledge and promoting my blog with social media could pay off. I’ve made lots of new connections, attended many events, have sampled fare from all over the world and more people actually read my blog. I cannot complain one bit. My expectations for fun continue to be exceeded. When I’m out an about I’ve come to realize that my blog is the least relevant part of my interest in the world of beverages and food, and since people aren’t running off to read it right when I meet them, it doesn’t matter. That means I can spend less time blogging and I lose nothing.

I started writing in 2008 as a means to share cellar updates from my home wine & beer making projects. I’ve made cider and mead many times as well since then and the projects keep coming. In 2011 I shifted my writing on the wine slice of those projects to Wine Maker Magazine where there is a natural audience for the tales. I’m still making lots of homemade beverages and jump behind the bar at home to mix up cocktails, punches and sample unique spirits from all over the place pretty much weekly. There are two aspects to these activities that are most important and will be the focus of my efforts in 2012.

( My wine cellar in 2009. Multiple by 3X currently. )

( Pressing grapes with friends. )

( The krausen on a batch of freshly brewed beer. Real geek stuff. That's me! )

First, the projects take lots of time. Research time, planning, trials, full batches, application in social settings and finally consideration of lessons learned and the “what nexts”. If I’m going to do some of these things I certainly want to use the time I have to make the most of them. If I don’t want to do them I’ll do something else like read, take a walk or play ball with my dog.

( Mack's Apples Pie Competition in 2011. )

( Survivors Rule! Volunteers, fundraisers, marathon walkers. We've raised almost $75K since 2003. 

Cancer Sucks so we Fight Back! )

Secondly, most importantly, and this is where I am most happy to be reflecting on, I get enjoy these activities with the people in my life that I want to spend time with. Margot and I are learning how to make better beer together. We rock! I am meeting new people in my local area that enjoy the same activities and want to hang out and learn from each other. I can’t pass this up. And all the in-real-life trips that I plan and take will reconnect me with birds of a feather from elsewhere. These are “my people” as Margot calls it.

( Grilled pizza party in the backyard. So much fun! )

( Beer tasting at The Drinkery in Londonderry, NH. )

( Bus 1, 1a and local wine drinkers from the Wine Bloggers Conference in Virginia. No sleep till Portland! )

( Cocktails with friends. Loved working the bar! )

( Wine tastings with friends at home are consistently the most fun events we host. )

So, what next? I am going to write when I’m inspired and tweet when there is a conversation to be had. I’m going to be out there doing all the things that I could write about, but without of the stress of “having” write about them or share them on Twitter. I’ll read about what others are up to when I can. The live story and the live event is where I’m going to be focused. Sorry to all if that means I’ll share less of what I am up to post by post, but on the flip side planning to meet up somewhere for a conference or to crash tasting rooms has us making memories together. See, that’s way better!

( I play a salsa judge on TV. International Chili Championship. )

( Getting out for walks in Vermont is one of the things I look forward to the most. )

( Crashing the beer tent or the tasting bar with friends is always a good laugh! )

( Dinner with WineMaker Conference friends. Cheers to Cheryl & Christina. See you in June! )

( Working local harvests is great way to meet other winemakers and wine lovers. )

( Get out! The beach or the mountains, it doesn't matter. Go! )

( The Boston Brunchers at the Harvard Common Press. )

No decision is made without consequences however, and this one comes with anxiety over spending less time interacting with so many people I’ve met through my blog and Twitter. Less time with the people who have been readers and friends along for this ride. Spending less time blogging and on Twitter means I can’t support the efforts of many others who I have been a reader of as well. It makes me sad, but I've got to deal with that. I've created solid ties locally and those will naturally continue in real life and online. Relationships take time and I have to focus on the immediate ones to focus my passion and enthusiasm optimally.  This is the unfortunate result. This is going to mean some disconnectedness’ for me, and keeping tabs on the buzz about events I attend is going to suffer. The rejiggering here is going to take some careful work.

A huge round of thank you’s and appreciative gestures are due to all my readers, friends, followers, likes, et. al. Sharing my adventures with you, interacting with you in comments and following you as well has been a blast. Cheers to meeting up in front of a glass of something exciting in places along our continued journey’s.

THANK YOU!

One other thought is worth closing with. Making personal choices is the right and privilege of everyone. I applaud any person who makes choices and lives with obvious happiness in the offing. Everyone’s circumstances, personal makeup and resources are different, so each of us has to do what we feel is best for us to make the most of what we’ve got. We also then just need to go do it. It’s the most positive way to live. That is my wish for good health for you in the New Year.

And with that I'm off! Gotta clean and prep for a house full of people on New Years Day.

Cheers!

Jason

Nov. 15th Cellar Update – 2011 Awards, Etcetera

( This my new Cellar Update photo. Shot by my college friend Josh Mazgelis. )

This has been another big year for the Ancient Fire home fermentations. Entering four competitions netted us 13 places including 3 gold medals and a first place among them! Two recent results were for the Northeast Regional Homebrew Competition and the Amenti del Vino Amateur Wine Competition. Congrats to Margot for her Third Place in Stout and our first ever win for beer! We made and won for wine, beer, cider AND mead all in the same year. That’s crushing it!

Northeast Regional Homebrew Competition 2011

First Place – 2011 Orange Vanilla Mead

Second Place – 2009 Cider #4

Third Place – Margot’s FX Stout (2011)

Amenti Del Vino Amateur 2011

Gold – 2011 Dry Creek Chardonnay

Silver – 2011 Peach After Dinner Wine

Bronze – 2011 Yakima Pinot Gris, 2010 Chilean Cab/Syrah

I posted a new page for the Ancient Fire Competition Awards. You can see an inventory of our awards by category and type plus links to the full results of all the competition’s we’ve entered. Four years and 41 medals!

Margot and I brewed again over the weekend. Margot took a shot at an Oatmeal Stout and I went with an Amber Ale with Rye. Margot and I both think the initial gravity on the stout was a bit low but will play it by the book and decide if we need to interfere later. The ryle ale smelled of moderately toasted rye bread, a good sign for the style. I’ve got an IPA Braggot to make coming up and I think putting down a sour cherry Saison might be a nice touch when the warm weather returns next year.

I cleaned through three batches of wine bottles this weekend. And I ordered some as well. We just can’t get, don’t  already have and don’t have enough time to deal with all of the ones we need. And with what we are making will need a lot of clean bottles. Time to buy some. Bottling of the remaining 2010 reds and some early 2011 wines will proceed swiftly this coming week. The 2011 Strawberry in particular needs get bottled so it can show up around the holidays as it always does!

Ancient Fire Writing from Around the Web

My article entitled SensoryPerspectives for the Dry Finish column of WineMaker Magazine is live online. In the article I review the obvious, but not as obvious as you’d think, application of sensory evaluation of wine for winemakers. I find the appreciation of this skill especially helpful for amateurs who are very much learning wine and winemaking at the same time. I’m still learning this way.

As a WineMaker Magazine blogger I have also recently shared the recipe for my Orange/Vanilla Mead, my thoughts on How Artisanal Producers & Products Can Help Us Create a Story for Our Own Creations and a report from the Finger Lakes ahead of the upcoming 2012 annual conference in Itahca. I am very much enjoying writing for an amateur winemaking/brewing making audience who can geek out on some of the things I find interesting in my projects and travels.

There are a couple of tech updates as well.

A mobile version of this blog is live. Browsing to it from your smart phone is all that is required. It was a simple change and posts now show up in a short form in a list from my Droid. I can read the posts, see the pictures and otherwise interact with the content. If your experience with the new mode is underwhelming, please let me know.

Ancient Fire Wines is on Facebook. We’ve had the page for a while and give it some care and feeding, but the traffic is quite honestly not compelling. If by my publicizing it folks want to prove this to be untrue I say bring it on.

I’ll be posting all of the California trip reports tonight so if you haven’t checked them out already you’ll be able to find them on Facebook soon! I’ve also got some Godiva swag to give away and giving Ancient Fire Wines a Like on Facebook will be one of the entry criteria. Stay tuned for that drawing to kick off next week and run into early December and thoughts of sweet treats.

Cheers!

Jason

Foodbuzz Festival Day 2 – Food, Food, Food and Drink!

Day Two of the Foodbuzz Festival brought a food frenzy that challenged me and my stomach nearly to ruin. I ate a lot. I drank a lot. But I also walked around a lot and did what I could do to deal with it. It goes with the territory I guess.

After the content sessions were at an end busses moved us on to the Metreon for the Tasting Pavilion and a sizable assemblage of vendors looking to share their products with the Foodbuzz Community.

I arrived early and started to wander up the block and ran into Jen from Tiny Urban Kitchen. Jen and I are local to each other back in New England, but had yet to meet. I stopped and introduced myself. With nowhere else to go we set off for a walk around the block to share stories and kill time. Within a few minutes I could see why Jen is so successful. She is knowledgeable, has a quick wit and is very personable. I’m so glad I stopped to say hi. Thanks Jen!

While I was standing in line waiting to get into the Tasting Pavilion I joked that I was all set because I was going to head for the drinks first and since everyone else was going to swarm the food tables I wouldn’t have to wait in line. That was not a joke and it turned out to be as true as my gut told me it would be when I said it.

My first stop was to the Dry Creek Wines table. I was heading up to the Sonoma on Monday, and would be visiting Michel Schlumberger located in Dry Creek, but anytime I can try new wines I am up for the challenge. With nobody else at the table I slowly worked through the wines available.

I tasted several Sauvignon Blancs and Zinfandels from 3 or 4 different producers. Both the un-oaked and lightly oak Sauv Blancs were bright and refreshing, with one in particular channeling a good deal of green pepper. The Zins presented a range from juicy and fruit forward to more austere and Old World in style. I realized that I threw the marketing materials from the event in with my swag that got sent home via UPS so I don’t have the names of the producers on hand.

I mixed up the food and drinks from there on. Here is a photo journal of the highlights.

Alaska Seafod Surimi Seafood Lettuce Cups

Halibut and Caramelized Onion Croquettes with Fig Dijonaise. This was one of the most flavorful items I had all afternoon. Can't go wrong with breaded seafood. I didn't realize until I read it in her recap post that Kelly from The Pink Apron crafted this recipe and had been handing them out at the table. Click for her recipe.

OXO and kitchen gadgets galore! When I first walked up just as they were asking a trivia 

question to give away a prize. I hadn't heard the question but had to pick true or false. 

I picked true and won an egg beater. I never found out what the question was!

Mike Kohne of Mercy Wines. I tasted his Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs.

The wines come from Monterey County which is clearly emerging as another

quality West Coast wine growing region.Thanks Mike!

Ashley (The Beer Wench) of Bison Organic Beer was a real hoot! And the Chocolate Stout was well made with solid & rich, but not overpowering chocolate flavor. Another example to tuck away for home brewing projects!

The folks at Drink of the Week had punch and gin & tonics on hand. Both were made with the Bloom Gin. The punch was a riff on the Drink of the Week drink the Bee's Knees that contains lemon, honey and gin. It was a very refreshing drink with the right balance of booze, sour and sweet. Nicely played!

Fentimans's Sodas. I have used their Ginger Beer for Dark 'n Stormy's many times, but had

never seen their other products around. Their non-alcoholic Shandy soda really did taste like

lemonade and beer, just without the kick. I'll be looking for their other products now!

And of course 21st Amendment Brewing. I enjoyed their brews three times over the weekend, and had something different each time. The Allies Win The War is a collaboration brew with Ninkasi Brewing in Oregon. Fashioned from Strong Ale recipes from each brewery, fresh dates and Northwestern hops, this beer is serious business. It is malty & full bodied beer with considerable sweetness and a long, rich finish.

Vanessa Moses doing her thing for Alexia Foods. 

Tyler Florence meeting, greeting and signing books and photos. I didn't wait in line to meet him. 

I left that to the professionals... 

 There were many others tablethat I didn't get pictures at. Several additional notable products were from:

• Rosemary & Sea Salt Walnuts from California Walnuts. Gonna be making these with the fresh dried rosemary!
• Girl & the Fig - Sonoma country restaurant with concentrated and full fruit fig based products. Several of the spreads complimented a roast pork bite they had on the table.
• Vignette Wine Country Soda - I had never thought about naturally fermenting wine grape juice into soda until I had this product. Something new for me to try next year. And low in sugar so they aren't as bad for you as other options.
• Australian Lamb - Lamb isn't something I have that often so I was curious to taste some. The meat was soft and flavorful with just enough of that gameyness that meats beyond beef are known for. I asked how likely it was that I would be able to get Australian lamb at home and it turns out quite a few large grocery chains carry it. Something to look for.

After the tasting pavilion event I headed back to my hotel to relax off some of the food and drink.

During cocktail hour I caught up with Rufus McLain and Pete Spande from Federated Media. Pete and I talked wine for a little while. Jonas from Drink of the Week joined us and of course the convo about alcohol continued. We talked a about punch, the punch bowl flowed earlier in the day, and how it is a hot topic right now. Socializing over a bowl of punch is not new, but it might just save us from boring parties in the 21^st century.

Tyler Florence anchored the gala dinner with a cooking demonstration. He certainly got an appetite whipped up and with nothing to eat on the table I was feeling the beer and wine more than I had wished. I hadn’t eaten during cocktail hour in favor of some good conversation over drinks. Bad choice, this time.

I actually felt bad for Tyler. A good portion of the audience was yapping away while he was demonstrating and entertaining us. But just like the modern movie-going experience it seems like a lot of people don’t act with courtesy and respect in public anymore. Their behavior and it’s reflection on them stands on its own.  

The demonstration was exciting to me primarily because I was watching a celebrity chef in person. I am not as much of a foodie as a lot of the other Foodbuzzers so this type of activity doesn’t really jazz me up the same way. The innuendo-laden tweets during the demonstration were hilarious and I had to jump in and bring dough balls back in from the morning. Despite tweets about Tyler’s meat nobody bit on my balls. I mean the tweets about my balls. No, wait, I mean, whatever!

By the time dinner was half over I was bugging out over all the usages of fantastic and amazing to describe some of the items from the tasting pavilion and dinner itself. Fantastic? Really? What are we trying to say here?

Dinner was catered by the hotel. It wasn’t gourmet and if you had it at a wedding you’d probably bitch, but it would be the same food. Furthermore I felt bad for Alexia because their fries were mangled by the kitchen. If anyone from Alexia is reading this and wants to send me some samples I promise this much, I will cook them correctly, serve them to friends that I have requested objective feedback from and will share what comes of it. Your products deserve at least that much and I am truly sorry that I couldn’t say more while I was at the festival. Shit happens!

So here’s the deal. There are several words that MUST be immediately retired from the food blogger vocabulary. They mean nothing and they are too easy for us to use in order to be part of something when we really have nothing to say. Those words are:

• Fantastic
• Amazing
• Incredible
• Awesome

What I propose instead is that food & beverage bloggers try to delve into their senses a little bit and express what they are smelling and tasting rather than generically branding something as “good”. Some people will cry foul that this is the domain of trained writers. Let me clue you in, it’s called thinking. Try it some time. Writers take thinking to the next step in something called creative expression. You can try that on anytime you want as well. I promise it won’t hurt.

Do I think I am any good at this? Not really, but I know the difference and expect more from myself. I can’t sit idly by while the community I am happy to be part of floats along so much unoriginal and unexpressive communication in play. We ALL need to up our game! I’ll take my medicine along with everyone else. That’s why I think it’s fair for me to say what I’m saying.

I tweeted the following about dinner:

“The food was ok. There is nothing outright bad to say, but that doesn't say much. Catered food is tough, but it can still be good.”

I really didn't have a problem with what I was served. I didn't have any expectations so it could have gone higher but the fact that it didn't is fine. I could have said it was amazing to be nice, but why? What I did say conveyed the reality in front of me and being nice just to be nice is so over. In the end I was distracted with conversation and meeting new people so I didn't really care much about the food.

The one topic I got involved in at dinner and continued conversations about through brunch the next day was the vegetarian/vegan meal for the Saturday dinner. Just so we are clear, I am an omnivore, I’ll eat anything. I have tried some foods, not liked them and will not likely eat them again but that is a preference, not a lifestyle nor medically necessary.

Based on what I saw the catering staff and kitchen were not well prepared to serve as many “alternative” meals as was needed. That’s too bad because Foodbuzz asked about people’s preferences and in the asking there is an expectation. So what should be done?

One idea, thanks Miriam, is to serve a vegan meal to everyone. But why? There are several reasons. First off, it would be cost effective. Buying in bulk for any catered meal keeps the cost manageable and the more the better. Serving the same meal to all maximizes that idea. On top of that consider the creative challenge doing this would represent, and the uniqueness of the meal that could have been presented. It would have gotten everyone talking, even the omnivores like me. Finally it would have been logistically simpler. Cut out the confusion for service. Something for next year and I hope someone from Foodbuzz sees this and considers the idea.

Dessert came and again it was omnivore-centric. I was feeling a bit militant for my underfed peers at this point. Again, there was nothing wrong with dessert, it just didn't inspire me.

My alternative was a bottle of Kurt’s Apple Pie from Moonlight Meadery. It was the dessert in place of dessert that I needed. And my tablemates (Devaki, Greg, Kelly, Shannon and Vanessa) seemed to be agreement. In my opinion it is one of the finest adult beverages being produced in the state of New Hampshire right now and I poured it with that assertion. Vanessa Moses (The Cooking Chicks Chicago) responded to my NH references with, “I've never met anyone who throws down so much for New Hampshire”. Well, we rock. If you’ve never thrown down with anyone from New Hampshire you really haven’t lived. “Live Free or Die” is our motto and quite honestly nobody does it like us! Seriously.

A big thank you is due to Foodbuzz, the sponsors and all of my fellow participants for creating such a fun weekend. I’ve offered my critical feedback and I've also shared my stories of what I enjoyed and the fun I had meeting new people. Good and not so good all wrapped up together. See, I used a meaningless word again, good, but I think you get my point.

And I have to put the following photo in just so Greg can leave me a comment asking me why the hell I did it! Sometimes things just have to be done…

We were having fun and when the work is done that is what it is all about!

Cheers!

Jason

Foodbuzz Festival Day 2 – Treatise on Goals & Where Do We Go From Here?

Day Two of the Foodbuzz Festival brought content sessions, the tasting pavilion and the gala dinner that included a cooking demonstration with celebrity chef Tyler Florence. The morning content sessions will be the focus of this post.

The morning content sessions were held in the event space and conference rooms at Federated

Media headquarters situated not far from Giants stadium. An easy hop down the Muni from Union Square. 

Breakfast was provided, it is a foodie conference after all, and the highlight for me were the Black Pepper and Cheddar Scones. The combination of those two ingredients in a savory scone created a slightly crunchy exterior followed by a slightly spicy dense bread interior. I took one with me to enjoy on Monday morning when I would finally be on my own for food! Oh, and I got to finally meet Chef Dennis (A Culinary Journey with Chef Dennis). 

Get Serious!

The first session was Taking Your Blog To The Next level with a panel of bloggers from the Foodbuzz

Featured Publisher Community that included, Sarah Matheny (Peas and Thank You), Jessica Merchant (How Sweet It Is), Joy Wilson (Joy The Baker), Tracy Benjamin (Shutterbean) and Kath Younger (Kath Eats Real Food). The overall themes for the session, and that of all the sessions I attended, were determine and focus on your goals, be authentic and project what you are passionate about and not just what you think will be popular or is trending to generate hits. These are all worthy and practical themes to guide your actions with.

I think it is important for blogging communities to be honest with themselves, be objective about the rhetoric versus the reality and walk the walk. So when it was asserted, and no amount of tongue and cheek masks the truth here, that everyone was here because they wanted to “generate traffic, get famous and make lots of money” I was sure it was going to be a long day. These weren’t the goals of everyone I asked about them to, and that speaks directly to where I will go next.

Setting Realistic Goals

If I have to bring the objectivity to the party, I will. At the risk of being marginalized by the community because of my critical honesty I am going to explain why I think those goals are antithetical to the themes spoken out of the other side of the mouth, and why they are unrealistic for everyone to expect. And don’t worry, I won’t make my case without offering my suggestions for how we can use the themes as a guide and set achievable goals. To reinforce that point I offer this. A large part of success in any venture is being in the right place and knowing the right people at the right time, or simply put, luck. You can’t manufacture luck. All you can do is be out there with a solid understanding of your goals and a good personality.

The presenters did an admirable job of providing tips on how people might take their blog to the next level, but where we were largely lacking in specific examples the tips came off as less tangible than they could have been. The tip about the necessity of having beautiful photos on your blog smacks of superficiality and form over function in the grandest of ways. You only have to have them if YOU want them and they shouldn’t come at the expense of YOUR voice projecting YOUR experiences in YOUR content. If someone clicks away because the picture isn’t satisfactory to them they aren’t interested in your story anyway. And you blog for because you love it, right?

In blogging making money is largely associated with ad revenue from traffic. If you flip over to book publishing or endorsements that is a different stream and I’ll ignore that here because the former is often a requirement for the latter. Generating lots of traffic is hard work. The tip here was alluded to but not outright stated in raw and detailed form. Plan on working more than a fulltime job on your blog to generate lots of hits and therefore lots of revenue. Having that time and spending it this way is a choice.

In order to reach the biggest audience to generate all of that traffic you will need to tread into the territory of topics that are popular or likely to trend no matter your passion for them. This the psychological aspect behind SEO, tuning your blog position to have the highest identity for search trend hits. That works against your blog being a passionate expression of you. Consider how often you see the same bloggers involved in all the virtual events that draw in people across all sorts of stated focus areas. You have to decide if you want to be part of a small community of like minded people or dispassionately pump out content to chase down traffic with.

You can’t reciprocate the volume of traffic you get past a certain point, it’s just not mathematically possible. To be both a publisher and a consumer is actually two jobs and you only have time for so much of each. Once you reach that point the majority of your traffic is unengaged and the connection to your community is at its apogee. And popular publishers need lots of consumers to stay popular. There is only going to be so much of that to go around as a community grows. This means the possibility you will be a community superstar is greatly diminished. The statistics on communities tell the story, and come in the form of a 1/9/90 rule. For every 100 community members 1 is an active publisher, 9 are active engagers in the community and the other 90 are consumers who engage infrequently. For the sole publisher to be popular that person needs the others members to focus on his content, and not their own content and traffic. They NEED your focus to make their focus more important. You see the issue, right?

I Get It, But What Do I Do?

So what should one do, especially if they still aspire at a chance at popularity and getting paid? The easiest way will be to look for a job in the industry you have passions about. If you have a job that pays the bills and you don’t want to change, you may need to change your goals. Time is the ultimate leveler here, and if you have all the time in the world to invest and to be patient you might end up winning in the end. Unless you plan on “working” all the time you just won’t be able to do it. Once you think about the reality here and fall back on, “but I write my blog because I love it”, you have a lot of options to continue to have fun, build a small and loyal community and be out there for luck to take over.

I will say that as I was doing a bit of review on the content for the post I bounced over to the sites of the presenters and found that Joy Wilson has a recent post entitled Real-Talk Blog Tips that addresses some of the tips offered with a bit of detail. Many of the points are consistent with what I am saying here and the more voices addressing the issues the better.

Write about what excites you. I came back from the Wine Bloggers Conference in July with realization that my passion for wine, beer and spirits had gotten muddied in all of the food projects I had been doing. I had taken on those projects because of my supposed desire to resonate with the Foodbuzz community. I was doing things I was less passionate about. I reset my focus. That refocusing has made me consider my connection to Foodbuzz, but my goal after this weekend is to try and find foodie partners to help co-present food and beverage content that springs from our mutual passions. I made some connections, and I need to make more, that are promising towards this goal.

The points in the above paragraph were reinforced in the Blog Design Bootcamp session when I offered my inner considerations about figuring out how to resonate with the community more. I need to refine my mission statement to include a goal to partner with others to help share my passions and enhance both my own and partner’s blogs. Got it.

Putting Yourself Out There & Making Connections

Whether it is to partner with or because what they do resonates with you, make connections with other bloggers that make sense for you. If they are also looking for birds-of-a-feather to engage you make find they aren’t just traffic, but an influencer for you, and vice versa. How popular they are shouldn’t matter and focusing on that in an attempt to use the association to increase your position in the community is going to reflect badly on you.

Another thing from that session that was on my mind was my focus on beverages and how that makes me unique in the community. I love what I do and know it is where my focus should be. My niche was held out as a positive thing and the advice that I stay true to it was heard loud and clear. Thank you to the Kristin Guy (The Cuisinerd) and the Sabrina Modelle (The Tomato Tart) for their great ideas and advice!

I also attended that session because one of the action items I took away from the Wine Bloggers Conference earlier in the year was a blog facelift. I need to do it and I picked up some tips to kick around as I gear up to tackle this task. I have set this goal for me. I want my own blog to look nicer, and the bonus that it will present better to others is just that, a bonus. The one specific tip I picked up was that when considering a new color palate for your blog you can pick a photograph you particularly like and extract the colors from it. Pretty neat!

One of the underlying an implicit themes in blogging is to make it about you. I think each new blog post should be part of an unfolding story, containing both revelations of the new day and connections to days past, even if those connections aren't directly stated. As an example, over the weekend I visited several brew pubs and beer bars in San Francisco. This is something I love to do. I feel like I can take the pulse of a place through the locally crafted beers. At 21^st Amendment I was hoping to find their IPA named Brew Free or Die. Why? Because my home state of New Hampshire’s motto is Live Free or Die and Brew Free or Die is the name of the homebrew club I belong to. They didn’t have it on tap, but it showed up at the Friday night event which gave me a smile. The beer was good but the personal connection, 21A had to contact the club to ask permission to use the name, was what I was after. I also went to Gordon Biersch specifically because I wanted to try their Marzen, a beer that is a recommended style example for the Marzen/Oktoberfest category of the BJCP style guide. I had judged this category for a recent competition and I wanted to try an example that I can’t get at home. In those two posts, both already live, I continued to follow my passions and connected the activities in them to my life. For readers I hope this helps them better get to know me and the things I am interested in. We should all aspire to tell stories (OUR stories) in our blogs. This is a welcome alternative to the factual and procedural details of cooking, which can be so dreadfully boring without a good story.

The final session was on Effect Social NETworking, primarily a conversation about using Twitter to engage other and promote you and your blog. Facebook and Google Circles were also mentioned. Thank you to Irvin Lin (Eat the Love) and Stella Parks (BraveTart) for their energetic presentation of the subject. Some of the stories Irvin told about his tweet-style (missing words and unintended plays on word let’s say) came across with palpable authenticity.

I didn’t end up getting a lot out of the session being an active Twitterer and frequent considerer of how the tool can be used to market a content brand, but I did pick up one interesting opposition of two ideas. It was stated that the half life of a Tweeted link is about two hours. I suspect this is largely because most people chase followers and clog up their timeline with so much stuff they miss lots of value-laden tweets. Without a shift to using lists (or some other meta-model) to corral followers of varying important topics down into smaller timelines this is not likely to change. From this it could be fairly inferred that you need to tweet the same new content several times, and with a bit of shrewdness maybe at different times of day and on different days, to get the most thrust into your follower base. There has been some industry analysis that supports this idea. What followed however was a comment that resending the same link multiple times risked irrelevance whereby you would be perceived to be creating a lot of noise. These two ideas are somewhat incongruent to each other and might need additional thought to have good sense made of them.

There was also talk about Klout and how it was a good measure of your influence. I have Klout account and have had score averaging in the 50’s for almost a year. It has been as high as 63 and with recent algorithm change I saw it briefly sink into the low 40’s before springing back up. I don’t check it that often and I don’t carry out specific actions in hopes of increasing it. I do what I do and am who I am, and I use the score to help me see the community I am part of in a broad way. Focusing too much on measuring something I do for fun takes away some of the fun. The Klout Perks program is a nice bonus though!

I broke out of the session early to interview Rufus McLain one of the Foodbuzz Community Team members for a future post. Learning more about what they do in support of people like me ended up being hugely valuable for someone flirting with the choice to renew the contract or not.

Conclusions

If bloggers want to get paid like a job, they need to plan on working a job for their blog. Want to be notable for your blog beyond a small group? Refer to the prior sentence. Otherwise, keep doing what you are doing because you enjoy it and the connections you make along the way should create plenty of opportunity for fun. Don’t worry about how much of this, or how do I make more of that, or why is that person more popular than me, you’ll only end up back at the first sentence of this paragraph.

Cheers!

Jason