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I recall the advice from Eric Asimov at the 2011 Wine Bloggers Conference in Virginia. Mr. Asimov suggested that wine writers change the way they write about wine. Don’t use terms such as “hints” or “nuances.” So at the time, when challenged to be creative, I decided to write haiku instead of a more traditional wine description. My first discovery was that the restriction of using 17 syllables works perfectly for writing about a wine on Twitter. After writing one or two haikus, I was able to speed up and write quicker.
At last evening’s dinner, we tried a few wines from Umbria.
2010 Corbora PodereIl Caio haiku
Umbrian white wine
Malvasia, Grechetto
Grassy, lemony finish
2008 Elicius Umbria Rosso haiku
Elicius Rosso
Leather, licorice, dark fruit
Tannins, crisp finish
2007 Marciliano Falesco haiku
Marciliano
Fruity, leather, licorice
Silky tannin wine
2007 Palazone Muffa Nobilis haiku
Golden dessert wine
Honeysuckle floral hints
Flowers in the mouth
Oops, I did manage to get the word “hints” in one of the haikus. However I needed a one-syllable word.
Cheers
Terry
Vacation Over
Our three day vacation in Rome was filled with walking, meeting new people, exploring new sites and prayer. We have a 40-something year-old niece that has a rare form of Leukemia. We stopped at every church we passed including St. Peter’s and prayed for her. We received the first positive news today since she was diagnosed last year.
Today our vacation comes to an end and we start working in ernest. We’ll meet and join the other people participating in our FAM trip to wineries and sites in Umbria and Campania. We’ll also attend and present at the International Wine Tourism Conference in Perugia. Some of our friends and family like to point out that whenever we travel we are on vacation. They don’t see drinking wine, visiting wineries and seeing sites as work. What they don’t understand is that our mindset is on getting a story so we are tuned into the who, what, where, when, how and why. We’re not like that when we are on vacation, however we never turn off the possibility of a blog entry.
Another task of wine travel writers is writing, editing, photography, photo editing and publishing. Now it sounds more like work than vacation. Articles and blog posts just don’t appear out of nowhere. We need our notes from a visit and photos to build a story. We’ll be writing blogs and articles about this FAM trip and conference until the end of February when we attend another conference in Las Vegas.
Writing about wine has its perks. I have a saying, “On our bad days we just swallow.” There is always a challenge to write about each wine as though it is the first wine you taste for the day. I’ve discovered that fresh pineapple can reboot your brain if you start to taste wines and they all seem the same.
So it’s off to work. Real work that includes note taking, photography, listening, asking questions, writing, editing etc.
Cheers,
Terry