2012 Drink Local Wine Twitter Taste-Off in Denver, Colorado

Kathy and I are preparing for the Drink Local Wine Conference that will take place on Saturday in Baltimore. There will be a number of people attending from around the country and I’m interested in discovering what they think of Maryland wine. Many of those visiting will be writers and they will certainly add their voice to the discussion of Maryland wine. Tomorrow we are picking up Whitney at the airport and taking her to two Maryland wineries. Since we are on a time limit, we will visit Linganore Winecellars and Elk Run Vineyards. Both wineries have been in operation for a few decades and have seen the growth of the Maryland wine industry.

On Friday the media group and guests will visit three Maryland wineries: Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard, Black Ankle Vineyards and Boordy Vineyards. Boordy is the oldest Maryland Winery. Black Ankle and Sugarloaf are much younger, but have helped to raise the standard of Maryland wine. Friday night we will have dinner with other media and guests and drink Maryland wine paired with Maryland foods.

The conference begins Saturday morning. Three seminars are in the morning and another seminar is in the afternoon. Maryland now has over 60 wineries with over 50 open to the public. This number doubled in just the last couple years. What is happening in Maryland to give rise to the wine industry? The seminar sessions will touch on this and perhaps give an answer. From 3:00 pm until 6:00 pm on Saturday there will be a grand tasting of 21 Maryland wineries’ wines. The event is open to the public; however, is now sold out. There is a lot of interest in Maryland wine. At the grand tasting, media and others who wish will tweet about the wines. I suspect that an hour or so into the tasting #DLW13 the hashtag for Drink Local Wine will be trending on Twitter. From the thousands of tweets generated on Saturday afternoon, we should get an idea of how others are reacting to Maryland wine.

Cheers,
Terry