Wineing, Tweeting & Loving #Pinot @UrbanGrape

The social networking site, Twitter, enables users to communicate via short text-based messages called “tweets" and has become a very popular way for winemakers, retailers and consumers to interact with each other.

One of the most appealing aspects of Twitter is the ability to quickly share information to a like minded community by use of a mobile device or smartphone. It is in this way that industry professionals and wine enthusiasts can easily discuss wine with others regardless of his or her actual location.

As such, many use Twitter during organized wine tasting events to offer information on a particular style or bottle of wine as well as to share their personal tasting notes and compare with them others.

An event that typified this use was the very successful Pinot Tweet-Up in which people across the country gathered at local wine shops and homes to taste a variety of Pinot Noirs and tweet their opinions. The Boston area event was organized by wine blogger, Amanda Maynard and hosted at Urban Grape in Chestnut Hill.

The group tasted through a number of Pinot Noirs including those from Silver Ridge, Cooper Hill, Sean Minor, Calera and Flowers. One of the owners of Urban Grape, TJ Douglas, began each wine tasting with a short background on the bottle and why he chose it for the evening.

By combining simple keystrokes and of course, some really great wine, the Pinot Tweet-Up turned out to be an amazing success. Wine lovers from coast to coast were able to share their personal insights to an online community that in the end, likely learned quite a bit from each other.