BC wineries celebrated a vibrant wine tasting on Twitter last night. The positive energy and support from the wine community coast to coast poured out in tweets that came rapid-fire one after the other. A tasting event like this proves what we can build and create together using these new social media tools. Not only did we support our homegrown producers, but we showed our strength and commitment to having access to all of our wines across this country. Ontario wants more BC, BC wants more Ontario and Canada wants more Canada. We were fortunate to have @DanAlbas join us […]
Technology & Wine
Canadian wine community gets behind (and into) BC wine
Here’s a toast to the terrific team of wine reviewers who joined in a terrific wine tasting on Twitter last night. Their enthusiasm and positive energy came through in both their tweets and their reviews for these incredible BC wines (scroll down on the page for each wine to see their notes and scores): Mission Hill Reserve Chardonnay 2010, BC VQA Gray Monk Gewürztraminer 2011, BC VQA Quails’ Gate Chardonnay 2011, BC VQA Eau Vivre Pinot Noir 2008, BC VQA Osoyoos Larose Le Grand Vin 2008, BC VQA Mission Hill Quatrain 2009, BC VQA I raise my glass to an […]
Wines Available in BC Liquor Stores with Stock Check
Do you live in British Columbia or have wine-loving friends who do? We’ve just added several new features on our web site to make shopping easier in the province: – Check how many bottles of each wine recommended on this site are in stock at each BC Liquor Store including both B.C. wines and those from around the world (click on the number of bottles under the picture of the wine bottle) – See only BC-available wines first, not those that are available in Ontario but not BC – If you add your postal code to your private account page, […]
Canadian Restaurant Mobile App by Top Food Critics
By Anne DesBrisay Last spring, I opened an email from John Gilchrist, Calgary’s pre-eminent food writer, asking if I’d be interested in contributing the Ottawa section to a cross-Canada restaurant app he was working on. It was to be a first of its kind, geared to the business traveller, a catalogue of best places to eat as chosen by the leading restaurant critics in eleven cities across Canada. Its working title was Dining in Downtown Canada … good places to eat within a walk or cab from major hotels in our major cities. The idea was simple: you’re in Saskatoon, […]
Social Media: Women on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest
The latest study on social media from Forrester Research surprised me: women are the majority of users on Twitter and Facebook. I expected this to be the case for Pinterest, now the fastest growing social media site, but not for the two largest social media communities. All three social media sites are terrific for sharing wine info, whether it’s a great bottle that you tried recently or a pairing that really worked. Here are those stats… 17 out of 24 social media sites (71%) have more female than male users. Most male-dominated site? Slashdot (87% males), followed by Hacker News […]
Wine & Cheese Tasting Trends #1 on Twitter
I’m still blissfully recovering from our Ontario VQA wine and Canadian cheese tasting on Twitter this Thursday. Our crack team of wine reviewers did an amazing job with their tips, tasting notes and humourous tweets below. As a result, our conversation trended #1 on Twitter: more people were tweeting about Canadian cheese and wine than Jay-Z, Mitt Romney’s wife or any other topic or pop culture icon. Who knew?! The crew will be back again this Wednesday for a live Google + Hangout video tasting. New technology but the old comforts of good food, wine and friends. Please join us […]
Ontario VQA Wine and Canadian Cheese Twitter Tasting
What an amazing tasting last night! on Twitter with Canadian cheeses. A terrific group of wine tasters shared thoughts on the pairings and lots of laughs in a live tweet-up that everyone could join. (They had a whey with curds.) Most amazingly, our discussion trended #1 on Twitter: it was the most discussed topic on Twitter worldwide, more popular than Jay-Z, Mitt Romney’s wife and pop culture icons. Smokin! Join us this Wednesday at 8 pm as we get together again for a live Google + video group wine tasting. How do you participate in the next wine and cheese […]
How to Get Started on Twitter in 5 Minutes
Twitter makes it easy to sign up: Go to https://twitter.com/signup. Enter your name, email and password. Click Sign up for Twitter and choose your user name. That’s it! You can follow a few more steps if you like to fill out profile info, but that’s optional. Next, connect your Twitter account with your account on my site so that we can tweet together: Go to www.nataliemaclean.com/myaccount. Half way down the page, beside the blue button, fill in your Twitter name and click on the button. Ignore the overwrought warning, which is Twitter covering its, umm, bases. This is the standard text for […]
Video: Wine Industry Must Adapt or Face Digital Darwinism Part 2
The flood of e-mails, tweets and Facebook requests to post this second part of this video conversation below with Paul Mabray of Vintank on the wine industry and Digital Darwinism is heartening. Sometimes, you think you’re just talking to yourself … but when Paul Mabray is part of the conversation, people listen. Didn’t catch Part One of this conversation about wine and social media? Pull up a comfy chair, top that glass up and let it play. Here’s Paul’s presentation: Wine + Digital Here are the Robert Mondavi wines that we tasted: […]
Best Wine Apps in Food & Drink and iPhone Life Magazines
The elegant essayist James Chatto names three of his favourite wine sites in the latest issue of Food & Drink Magazine. We’re thrilled to be one of them and he also mentions our mobile wine app with the bar code scanner that gives real-time inventory stock for the liquor stores closest to you. Meanwhile, the latest issue of iPhone Life Magazine names its top 10 wine apps, and we were honoured to be among them.It notes that there are lots of features packed into the app.