Posts Tagged TEXSOM

I can’t believe March 20th will be the first anniversary since the creation of this blog. I started the blog with some goals in mind and they haven’t changed since:

• Help consumers discover wineries they may not know about and they should visit
• Help wineries with marketing
• Help wine related events with marketing

Gloria and I have at this moment visited 125 Texas wineries and have enjoyed every minute. We’re still learning to tell you what the aromas and tastes are in wine, and probably never will be able to, hence the idea of telling about our experiences at the Texas wineries. We were big proponents of the previous Texas Passport Program which started us on the journey of visiting Texas wineries, and look forward to learning how the new program will work.

The blog started out as an extension to my personal website and after a couple months I decided to make it more professional and came up with the name TX Wine Lover. This allowed me to move the blog to http://txwinelover.com, create a Facebook page, and switch to the Twitter account of @TXWineLover.

A lot has happened in the first year:

• Posted about our experiences at 61 Texas wineries
  • More than one winery’s website has put links to my posts about them
• Posted about visiting and comparing Texas wineries with New York State, Illinois, and San Diego wineries
• Attended and posted about special tasting events and food competitions
• Volunteered at wine festivals to help wineries pour their wine
  • Received our TABC Certification
• Told of our experiences harvesting grapes and bottling wine at more than one winery
• Road trip diaries to Driftwood and Hill Country and Fredericksburg wineries
• Attended my first TEXSOM (Texas Sommelier Conference)
• Participated in and helped host some #TXWine Twitter Tuesday events
• Created lists of:
  • Autumn and Spring wine festivals
  • Texas wineries with lodging
  • Texas wineries on Twitter
  • 2012 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Texas wineries with medals which is the only list I know that was done
• Created the first TX Wine Lover awards which seemed popular
• Featured local blogger at Spoken City
• Was a guest on a wine podcast
• Guest blogger on Thirsty Girl website
• Mentioned in other blogs and websites like the Houston Press
• Did a review on a Texas wine but with a viewpoint from many people instead of just my own
• Held our own blind taste test for eight Texas Orange Muscat wines
• Met some great Texas winery owners, winemakers, winery employees, and fellow Texas wine lovers. Some I originally met on Twitter so it was fun to meet them in person.

I guess it has been a busy, but definitely fun year. I have a queue of winery visits to discuss and was always afraid if I wrote about every one we visited, then I wouldn’t have anything else to blog about. From looking at the above list though, I think I should be able to find something.

Already there are plans for the next year. Since a lot of our winery visits were done before the idea of the blog came about, we have had to revisit some of those wineries for pictures, information, etc. before I can write about them, and we have more which need to be revisited. Plus there are wineries which we have not been able to get to yet, not to mention new Texas wineries which are always opening.

I will be attending at least two conferences this year. First up is DrinkLocalWine in Colorado next month and then in August is TEXSOM again. Various other things are planned and it should be another fun year.

I want to especially thank all the people who have tolerated me during the year including the winery owners and winemakers for patience in answering my questions and letting me take photos, but especially Gloria who has had to listen to me talk about Texas wine and the industry in general. Most of all, I want to thank you the reader, for stopping by the website every so often and hopefully enjoying what I write. Please don’t be afraid to give feedback and possible suggestions to keep the blog interesting, and we’ll take this journey together.

I attended the Houston Area Regional Competition of Chefs Under Fire at Rice University in Houston on September 25th. Russ Kane of VintageTexas.com won two tickets to the event but was unexpectedly called out of town, so he asked if I could attend in his place.

Chefs Under Fire presented by Keeper Collection is a cooking competition with three Regional Competitions in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin/San Antonio, and greater Houston areas. Each regional competition delivers one chef to compete in the Chefs Under Fire Final Competition on October 16, 2011 in Austin, TX. Besides competing for the title of Chefs Under Fire Champion, they are also competing for the grand prize of a weeklong stay in Cabo San Lucas from Keeper Collection. This is the third year of the competition.

Anthony Elumn, Emmanuel Chavez, Christina Lee, Harold Wong

Contestants in the Houston competition were Anthony Elumn, Emmanuel Chavez, Christina Lee, and Harold Wong. The judges for the competition were David Grossman (Executive Chef/Owner of Branch Water Tavern), Hugo Ortega (Executive Chef/Owner of Hugo’s & Backstreet Cafe), and Monica Pope (Executive Chef/Owner of t’afia). Being a fan of cooking shows including Bravo TV’s Top Chef and Top Chef Masters, I had previously watched Monica Pope in Season 2 of Top Chef Masters last year. Devon Broglie (Master Sommelier of Whole Foods Market) was the emcee for the event. He is one of only 6 Master Sommeliers in the state of Texas. When I went to TEXSOM (Texas Sommelier Conference) this year, Devon Broglie was also there.

While at TEXSOM I first met Diane Dixon, co-founder of Keeper Collection. She recognized me at the Houston event and made a point to say hello. Diane also introduced me to the special guest sommelier, Vanessa Treviño Boyd of Philippe Restaurant + Lounge who was pouring the various wines available to the guests. Speaking of the wines, there was a nice selection of wines to drink including one Texas wine, Fall Creek’s Meritus. Besides the wine, there was also a nice selection of hors d’oeuvres to eat.

Devon Broglie, Vanessa Treviño Boyd, Hugo Ortega, Monica Pope, David Grossman

The chefs had to prepare a complete dish using a set of secret ingredients announced at the competition while sharing the kitchen with the others. Houston’s secret ingredients were protein sirloin flap steak, heirloom eggplant, Chinese long beans, and Katz coffee. They were required to use the protein and also one of the three other ingredients. They could also use two additional ingredients: pancetta and Worcestershire sauce. In addition to the secret ingredients, the contestants could bring four of their own ingredients to use. The most unique ingredient brought by a contestant was the cereal Cap’N Crunch brought by Harold Wong.

Each contestant had one hour and ten minutes to prepare their dish. The judges then tasted each contestant’s dish, asked questions, and made notes. After all four contestants had presented their dishes, the judges deliberated and returned with their decision. First runner-up was Christina Lee and the winner of the Houston Area Regional Competition was Harold Wong.

The Winning Dish

Overall the event was fun and it was interesting seeing the contestants in action. I would highly recommend attending the Finals in Austin if you are able to do so.

TEXSOM stands for the Texas Sommelier Conference which is in its seventh year and is being held at the Four Seasons Las Colinas in Dallas. It was founded by Drew Hendricks (@drewhendricksms) and James Tidwell (@winejames). It has always been a two day event with excellent wine education. This year a first day was added called the Media & Technology Symposium with the goal of teaching attendees how to stay better connected with each other and consumers. The program for the day included a Social Media Boot Camp, Blogging, and Partnering with Traditional Media. Since I am new to blogging this year, I knew I would learn something from attending the day’s events.

Now I’ll be the first to admit when I started seriously drinking wine last year, I could not tell you what a sommelier was, let alone the correct way to pronounce it. I have even heard people just say “somm.” Surely that is easier to say but perhaps those people didn’t know how to pronounce it either. For your benefit, Webster’s Dictionary says to pronounce it sə-məl-ˈyā.

I signed up for the day and planned my weekend. I have been following and am being followed on Twitter by people who live in the Dallas area or who were planning on going to TEXSOM. I thought what better way to meet these people for the first time and so I worked with Melanie Ofenloch (@melanie0) who lives in the Dallas area to arrange a meeting Friday night prior to the weekend’s events so everyone could meet. It was all set up but unfortunately people couldn’t come because of other commitments or we never heard on Twitter when asked if anybody was going, so it was cancelled. I apologize to anybody else from TEXSOM who showed up and couldn’t find anybody.

I went to Plan B which was to visit CrossRoads Winery (@CRwineryFrisco) in Frisco to meet owners Bob and Darlene Leiker again in addition to Dave Potter (@texasgrapes), who I had not had the chance to meet yet. I had a fun night doing a full tasting of CrossRoads wines and entertaining conversation with all three people. I can’t wait to come back and do it again. We had previously given an award to CrossRoads for “Most Fun at a Winery” and I am proud to say we chose wisely.

Being the usual early bird, I registered at the conference Saturday morning before most people, but it allowed me to watch others come in and the first speaker Tony Jones (@jonestony) get prepared for the seminar. TEXSOM had requested for those who tweeted about the event to use the hashtag #TEXSOM and Tony had set up at http://twubs.com to display rolling tweets using the hashtag. It was being projected and it was interesting seeing what people were saying.

After a while, I started feeling like I really under dressed. Others were wearing suits, dress shirts/slacks, and here I thought a nice polo with good looking jeans was appropriate. I tweeted that comment and one of my Twitter friends, Mark Fusco (@1337wine), who I had seen come in but not yet met in person tweeted, “don’t worry I’m in jeans and a 1337 wine tee.” That made me feel better.

I learned the attendees were not only bloggers but people who owned or worked for businesses that needed to interact with customers. I was sitting next to Lee Fuqua and Courtney Key from FUQUA Winery so they were obviously there from the business side. I had met Lee in June when I visited his winery and it was nice seeing him again.

Drew Hendricks and James Tidwell introduced themselves, welcomed us, introduced Tony Jones, and the day began. Tony talked about social media with the primary places being Facebook and Twitter. He was going to talk about Google+ but even with three hours, there was not enough time to fit it in. He gave some good tips and recommendations on what he thought about social media. The attendees were very interactive so it was an informative session.

One person who had a business and Facebook Page already did not have what Tony recommended, a Facebook Page name for the page so the URL is simply facebook.com/Pagename. He showed the differences with his own and was going to work with her later to set up hers. He showed how he was able to switch between using his personal profile giving comments as himself and then comment as if it was coming from his Page. My tip: you don’t need to go to your Page to make the switch. Simply click the Account menu in the top right, select Use Facebook as Page, and click the Switch button next to the Page you’d like use.

Tony Jones did a great job and the three hours quickly ended. We broke for lunch and I met Russ Kane (@VintageTexas) who I had first met at the Texas Hill Countries road show in Houston earlier in the year. We found the restaurant, had lunch, and headed back for the afternoon’s seminars. I had an empty chair next to me in the morning so Russ took the seat.

Jeremy Parzen and Alfonso Cevola

The first seminar was about Blogging which was held by Alfonso Cevola (@italianwineguy) and Jeremy Parzen (@dobianchi). This was the main seminar I was interested in. They had previously set up a quick blog for all of us called Wine Bloggers Unite and we were encouraged to post to the blog, introduce ourselves, and to keep the blog active.

They also encouraged people to post during the seminar. Russ sitting next to me took on the challenge. It was interesting watching Russ take photos and work with the programs to create his blog post. A number of examples were given for what they define as four different types of blogs. One example given as a pure wine blog was VintageTexas. They introduced Russ and he in turn told them about the post he had just done. Alfonso and Jeremy were given 90 minutes for their seminar and after giving much helpful advice, it was finished way too soon.

We had a short break and then the Partnering with Traditional Media seminar took place. This included a panel of journalists and they offered advice on how businesses should interact with journalists. To be honest, I did not pick up much from this seminar, but as mentioned previously, there were other attendees who were businesses and this was meant for them.

The seminars were then over and it was time to visit the four hospitality suites. Ahh, finally some wine! I went with Russ to the suites and the first one we picked was the one where they were giving out the results of the Introductory Sommelier Course. We met other Twitter friends, Denise Fraser (@DeniseFraser) and Jessica Dupuy (@JDewps), who had taken the exam and were waiting to see if they passed. They both did and were elated when they got their certificates.

Jessica Dupuy and Denise Fraser

We also met up with another Twitter friend, Terry Hill (@Friscokid49), who had also taken the exam and passed. The three of us then ran into Mark Fusco again in one of the hospitality suites. The hospitality suites gave a good variety of wine and I came away with a few names of wines I need to look up later.

Mark Fusco, Russ Kane, Terry Hill, Jeff Cope

Overall, it was a very fun and informative day. I think TEXSOM learned that people really enjoyed the Media & Technology Symposium, and I hope it can be expanded for next year’s event which I definitely plan on attending.