Following Saturday’s breakfast, bloggers will venture forth to observe firsthand the physical beauty of the valley and the superb care with which local wineries maintain their vineyards. Divided into 15 groups of up to 20, participants will be bussed out to join valley winemakers on a private tour of their vineyards and to sample a selection of wines. Panel discussions hosted by the winery or vineyard will allow participants to interact with Walla Walla Valley Wine representatives in an intimate setting. After viewing valley vineyards first hand, bloggers will be treated to an in-depth learning experience.  These panel discussions will allow participants to interact with three winery representatives in an intimate setting and include three wine pours. Then, after a morning of fresh air, gorgeous views and mind-expanding knowledge, it’s time for lunch.  Bloggers will be treated to a unique opportunity to pair local cuisines and current winery releases with their colleagues in a rural setting.

Feel free to jump on any bus you wish on Saturday morning. You won’t know where the busses are going and, once on, won’t be able to switch buses. Bring the steel Walla Walla Water Bottles full of water as you board the bus. Each winery on your tour will have water dispensers available for you to refill your Walla Walla water bottle. Please wear footwear appropriate for walking in the vineyards and come prepared with something to carry information in, to take notes with, and for blogging. Enjoy the ride! For more details see the Wine Bloggers Conference Agenda.

Participating wineries, vineyards and colleges include but are not limited to: Abeja, Adamant Cellars, Basel Cellars Estate Winery, Beresan Winery, Buty, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, CAVU Cellars, College Cellars of Walla Walla, Cougar Crest Estate Winery, Couvillion Winery, DeLille Cellars, Don Carlo Vineyard, Doubleback, Dunham Cellars, Ensemble Cellars, Five Star Cellars, Flying Trout Wines, Forgeron Cellars, Foundry Vineyards, Gifford Hirlinger, JLC Winery, Kontos Cellars, L’Ecole No41, Leonetti Cellars, Les Collines Vineyard, Long Shadows, Mannina Cellars, Northstar Winery, Pepper Bridge Winery, Rasa Vineyards, Reininger Winery, Reynvaam Family Vineyards, River Rock Vineyards,Riverhaven Cellars, Saviah Cellars, Seven Hills Winery,  Skylite Cellars, Sleight of Hand Cellars, Spring Valley Vineyard, Stella Fino Winery, Tamarack Cellars, Tertulia Cellars, Three Rivers Winery, Trio Vintners,Tulpen Cellars, Va Piano Vineyards, Walla Walla Vintners, Waterbrook Estate Vineyard, Watermill Winery, Waters Winery, Whitman Cellars, Woodward Canyon, and Zerba Cellars.

After Friday’s fabulous dinner hosted by Ste. Michelle Wine Estates at the Marcus Whitman Hotel, bloggers will be treated to a rare downtown Walla Walla after-hours event, a Walla Walla Walkabout. This exciting event is presented by our friends at the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and truly represents an exclusive opportunity for wine bloggers to explore the myriad of tasting rooms in historic downtown Walla Walla.  From chic to artsy to traditional, this event presents the full spectrum of the valley’s wine community and demonstrates what makes this appellation unique.

Awarded “Best Main Street” by Sunset Magazine, downtown Walla Walla has wide sidewalks lined with lit shade trees and dotted with classical and modern sculpture.  Vibrant and eclectic tasting rooms abound, all within a very short walking distance of one another and the Marcus Whitman Hotel.  In addition to fabulous wine, visitors can peruse works of art, hear live music and check out distinctive furniture and fashion.

Exclusively for the enjoyment of conference participants, the following wineries will provide tastes of current releases well into the evening: DaMa Wines, Fort Walla Walla Cellars with Kontos Cellars,Nicholas Cole Cellars, Otis Kenyon Wine with Amavi Cellars, Sapolil Cellars withWhitman Cellars, Skylite Cellars with Riverhaven Cellars, Sleight of Hand Cellars with SYZYGY and Trust Cellars, Tru Cellars, and Waterbrook Winery.

WBC Participants will be asked to grab a Walla Walla wine glass and a map that lists the wines being poured at each participating tasting room as they exit Friday’s dinner at the Marcus Whitman Hotel. When the nice folks at the tasting rooms see you with that Walla Walla wine glass, they’ll know exactly who you are.

Cheers!

“About Wine Blogging” breakout sessions will offer something for everyone. Over 300 conference attendees will be offered one of three sessions based on their interests:

• Wine Blogging 101: Basics of blogging, including blog platforms, choosing a subject, adding graphics and video, the economics of a blog and more.
• Advanced Wine Blogging: High-level blogging topics such as dealing with burnout, measuring your visitor statistics, interviews, and more.
• Wine Blogging and the Wine Industry: How do wineries and other wine industry professionals improve their collaborations with the blogging community?

Saturday and Sunday offers participants the opportunity to attend four of the following eight breakout sessions:

• Growing Your Audience From Other Bloggers to Consumers: If the wine blogging world is indeed going to overtake Wine Spectator as the biggest source of information to consumers, bloggers need to grow their audience from just an internal circle of other bloggers to reach the general public. This panel will discuss and share ideas on how you can create and build upon your online influence.
• The Washington Wine Industry: Learn about the history and current status of the Washington Wine industry, including weather, terroir, appellations, varietals, and more.
• Vlogging: Are Video Blogs the real separation between old and new media? Is it time to change your blogs focus from Readers to Viewers? Lets discuss the rise of the importance of DSLR video in creating and hosting pro video for blogs.
• What is the Future of Wine Writing?: Are blogs taking over the wine writing world, is print media still the only medium that affects wine sales, or are online multi-writer collaborations the wave of the future?
• Increasing the Conversion Rate on Your Blog: “Conversion” or getting visitors to your website to purchase or request information is hot in the world of online marketing. The same should be true for your blog. How do you get people to post a comment, subscribe to your RSS Feed, or click on that Google ad link?
• More Effective Writing in Your Blog: Learn how to identify a good story and excel at writing it by doing background research, interviewing sources, proofreading your copy, etc. Our panel of professional wine writers will help you improve.
• Top Gun Blogging: A panel about you, the leader of your digital community, taking it further.  A discourse on making your personal identity resonate, and how to establish a brand as a culmination of your behavior, thoughts and actions. A field blend panel attempts to tackle the many ways to intensify and add poignancy to your blog and your digital presence. Conversion, growth, and click-thru is a function of content + perspective + vision. What are you doing now, what can you be doing, and what should you be aiming for to pioneer your community through words and digital manifestations based on the real world around you?
• Bloggers, Wineries, & PR Firms: As a blogger, how do you best work with wineries and their PR firms? Whom should you call for information? Should you announce yourself before visiting a winery? Learn from PR pros in the wine industry who are already working with bloggers.

The third annual Wine Bloggers Conference is Sold Out. Three hundred wine bloggers and wine industry representatives are registered to attend the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference in Walla Walla, Washington June 25 – 27. Registrations continue to be accepted and names are now being added to a Wait List. Participation is now being allotted on a first come first serve basis from the wait list as space becomes available.

If you are registered and realize you will not be able to attend, please contact us right away. Your registration fee  is 50% refundable through May 25. Perhaps more importantly, your space will be taken by an eager fellow wine blogger on the wait list.

The Wine Bloggers Conference Scholarship deadline for applications is Friday, April 9th. Scholarships will be awarded the following week. The fund is still graciously accepting donations and there are ten wine bloggers out there who will very much appreciate it. Thank you to everyone who has supported the scholarship and worked so hard to make it happen once again!

The post-conference excursion to Red Mountain AVA is still accepting registrations. If you have already registered for the conference but have not signed up for the Red Mountain experience, you can do so by emailing us today at info @ winebloggersconference.org.  If you are adding your name to the wait list simply register for the post conference excursion as well and we’ll see what happens. The pre-conference excursion to the Yakima Valley is sold out.

If you have registered but have not made your travel arrangements yet, now is the time. The Marcus Whitman Hotel is sold out. There is space available at the suggested additional conference hotels and transportation to and from those hotels will be provided.

Thanks for making it a tradition.  The 2008 first annual event sold out at one hundred seventy-five wine bloggers and industry participants. In 2009, two hundred seventy-five attended. Each year boasted wait lists with close to seventy bloggers. The 2010 conference tops them all with three hundred wine bloggers and wine industry participants. We are looking forward to seeing everyone in beautiful Walla Walla Wine country. Cheers!

We are pleased to announce Steve Heimoff as the Friday Keynote Speaker at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference.

Steve is a wine writer in both print and blog form and is perfectly positioned to address the future of wine writing and the interplay of print and online wine journalism. In fact, some of Steve’s blog posts have hit directly on the spat that arose between some wine writers (think Robert Parker calling bloggers “blobbers”) and some wine bloggers. His posts on the subject are insightful, balanced, and well-read. In fact, two recent posts on the subject of wine blogging produced 33 and 29 comments as of this writing – revealing an enviably attentive audience for any blogger.

Steve will use his experience in both the print and online wine writing worlds to address head on the future of wine writing. He will talk about the phenomenal growth of wine blogs and their impact on the wine world. He will discuss the criticisms levied on bloggers by some print wine writers. He will conclude by providing his insights into where wine blogging will fit into the world of wine writing in the future.

Steve Heimoff has been writing about wine for over two decades. He has written for Wine Spectator magazine and produced two books about wine. He is currently the California Editor for Wine Enthusiast magazine and blogs regularly – sometimes stirring up lots of comments – at SteveHeimoff.com.

As of today, 225 people have registered for the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference. We are well ahead of where we were in previous years and on our way to reaching our limit of 300 participants. Last year we limited the conference to 280 participants.

One interesting aspect of this year is we are receiving more registrations from bloggers and fewer from non-bloggers than we did in previous years. 79% of current registrants are bloggers – 81% if you ignore the five spots we have reserved for conference organizers and volunteers. This means, for those of you attending, eight out of ten people you meet will be a fellow blogger.

This compares to last year when 71% of attendees were actually blogging. The rest were organizers, sponsors, media, and wine industry members.

I am confident the difference this year is the conference is in Walla Walla and there are just fewer industry types living in that area than there are in Sonoma and Napa.

Now, I want to be clear that we invite everyone to attend the Wine Bloggers Conference. We don’t “screen” registrations at all. Our sponsors are super important, those industry members who sign up are very interested in wine blogging, and the conference wouldn’t run without our volunteers and our staff. We like the mix.

Having said that, it is quite fun to know that when you are on a bus of 20 people headed to a Walla Walla winery, 15 of your fellow riders are likely blogging about wine or the wine industry, just like you.

The 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference is less than 100 days away! As of today there is space for approximately 75 conference participants remaining. The pre-conference excursion to the Yakima Valley AVA has sold out due to limited capacity. The post-conference excursion to the beautiful Red Mountain AVA remains open for more participants. For precise details on both the Pre & Post Wine Bloggers Conference Excursions click PRE & POST .

If you have already registered for the conference but have not registered for the post-conference excursion you can simply email us at info@winebloggersconference.org to let us know you are interested in doing so.

If you haven’t registered for the Wine Bloggers Conference, what are you waiting for?  Click here to REGISTER .

We were recently in Washington Wine Country scouting the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference Pre & Post Conference Excursions and we were thoroughly impressed. Considering the distance some of you will be traveling to attend the conference and explore the region, we think adding the Pre & Post Conference Excursions to your itinerary is a very good idea. Even if you are from the area, we assure you both excursions will offer a unique and premier introduction to each AVA.  As of today, there are already close to 50 bloggers attending the Pre-Conference Excursion to Yakima Valley and 40 will be enjoying the vineyards and wines of Red Mountain for the Post-Conference Excursion. Incidentally, there are now over 210 registered participants for the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference with space for 300 and we have a little over three months to go.

First, we spent some time with Barbara Glover of Wine Yakima Valley. We met Barb at DuBrul Vineyard where she introduced us to Hugh and Kathy Shiels. Hugh and Kathy are close to this land and they promptly showed us around their beautiful vineyards and shared the history of the valley and its terroir. Afterwards, Barb took us to Prosser’s, Vinters Village where we discussed the Yakima Valley Wines Grand Tasting Event that will take place here on the Pre-Conference Excursion. It was here that we ran into Dick Boushey of Boushey Vineyards. Determining it was time for lunch, we invited Dick to join us and he suggested we meet him at the local brewery for some food and conversation. Dick first started experimenting with grapes here in 1977 and proved to be a wealth of information. Everyone in the valley proved to be well-versed in wine, grape growing, their own history and the terroir. It was a great visit.

After that, we traveled to the Red Mountain AVA and met up with Heather Unwin of Terra Blanca Winery and Estate Vineyards and also of the AVA. Heather’s energy and passion for the region and its wine was apparent from the get-go and immediately she thought it would be a good idea to travel around the AVA to meet a few of the folks we will be visiting on the Post-Conference Excursion. Right away the small size of the Red Mountain AVA becomes very clear but what it lacks in size is made up for by the terroir, climate, grape growers, wine makers, the wine and the view! From the deck of Col Solare with Wendi Warner, the tasting room manager, we determined that we needed to get out and walk through these scenic vineyards across this “shining hill”. From Col Solare to Hedges Family Estate, the vineyard walk traverses Red Mountain itself. Following the walk we sat down with Jim Holmes who first bought 80 acres of desert on Red Mountain in 1972 and planted grapes there three years later; winemaker and owner of Terra Blanca, Keith Pilgrim; and Heather over a very nice glass or two of Keith’s signature blend, the 2005 ONYX. Here we discussed the region, the wine, the people and the Post-Conference Excursion. We determined the right itinerary and timing and decided that we absolutely had to offer bloggers the opportunity to experience the sunset from the deck of the Terra Blanca Winery after the Post-Conference dinner.

For precise details on both the Pre & Post Wine Bloggers Conference Excursions click PRE & POST on the site. If you have already registered for the conference but have not registered for the Pre or Post, you can simply email us at info@winebloggersconference.org to let us know what you are interested in doing. If you haven’t registered for the Wine Bloggers Conference yet and want to do so and add on either or both excursions you can do so when you register by clicking on REGISTER. Space is limited on both the Pre & Post Conference excursion, as well as the conference itself, so if you are interested in making this happen, sooner is better than later. Cheers!

Reno Walsh and I just returned from Walla Walla where we were finalizing details for the upcoming conference. I am actually a Seattle-area native, visited Walla Walla a number of times, and remember it as a pleasant small town. I have to say, the wine industry has really electrified the city. And everyone we met was extremely eager to host the Wine Bloggers Conference.

The Marcus Whitman Hotel is a gem that Walla Walla is lucky to have. Opened in 1928, the hotel is historic and yet has modern comforts. The facilities are excellent and the service first class. Everyone we met at the hotel asked us “What can we do to make your conference better?”

As much as Walla Walla is lucky to have the Marcus Whitman, the area wine industry is lucky to have Elizabeth Calder. Elizabeth, who heads up the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance, took Reno and me around to a number of different wineries and vineyards in the area to show us how Saturday morning of the conference will work. Conference participants will split into small groups of 20 and visit three separate properties to meet with local grapegrowers and vintners and to learn about the area.

The wine industry has really helped Walla Walla grow. The dozen or so downtown tasting rooms provide the town center with a sophisticated look. We’ll visit these on a Friday evening After Hours Party. A number of high-end restaurants have started in the area and we will have restaurants from the local area – and as far away as Seattle – at our Food & Wine Pairing session. The 100+ wineries of the area have had a big economic and social impact and we’ll be in the midst of it during the conference.

When we first broached the idea of holding the conference outside California, we were concerned whether another area would be large enough to host us and attractive enough to draw bloggers to what might be a more distant location. Those concerns are gone. The conference is 2/3 full and we are getting reservations every day from bloggers across North America. If you are deciding whether to attend, now is the time to commit!

- Allan Wright

Each year the Wine Bloggers Conference works hard to balance three things when it comes to providing the right content and experience:

And each year we reach out to you for content suggestions to fill the technical side of the conference content. We want to know what it is you are interested to learn about and from whom. Please send us suggestions that include contact information, if you have it, and clear details on what it is you want to hear more about during one of these three sessions:

Please send us your ideas via an email to info@WineBloggersConference.org ; via a Comment on this blog page (http://winebloggersconference.org/america/), or via a Tweet that includes #WBC10. Content suggestions will be harvested and the best ideas will then be presented to registered participants in the form of a survey in March.

This year we have allocated more time to academia in the form of a 1.5 hour About Wine Blogging session to take place on Friday. This is in addition to 3 hours of the popular Breakout Sessions on Sunday and the conference Keynote Speakers. For more data on the conference itinerary, visit the conference AGENDA.

“About Wine Blogging” Breakout Sessions: We will divide into three groups for a presentation and discussion about wine blogging.  Novice Bloggers will learn the basics of blogging, including blog platforms, choosing a subject, adding graphics and video, economics of blogging, etc. Advanced Bloggers will discuss high-level topics such as dealing with burnout, measuring your visitor statistics, interviewing subjects, and more.  Those who are not blogging will participate in a session on Working with Bloggers that focuses on how wineries and other wine industry professionals can improve their collaboration with bloggers.

Sunday Breakout Sessions: The Sunday breakout sessions will be presentations by industry professionals who are experts on blogging and social media. We will specifically include content geared towards both bloggers and those in the wine industry who wish to begin learning about how to use blogging and social media. There will be two 40-minute sessions running simultaneously (you need to choose which to attend) for three periods  in a row. Breakout sessions are attended on a first come first serve basis and are not assigned or registered for in advance. Sessions details coming soon.

We look forward to seeing you and your content suggestions at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference!

Cheers!