Real world vs Twitter

Tonight, the Kiwi and I took part in a wine tasting on Twitter. Interesting concept, one that was dreamt up by three guys, the owner of a wine store in Auckland, a wine writer in Oamaru and a winemaker in Marlborough about two months ago. The deal is simple; you buy a bottle of Fiasco's 'Black Pearl' Pinot Noir, have your first taste at 2000 on April 19th, and post your tasting notes on Twitter.

Here's the feed: http://bit.ly/9UGeH

On the whole, a bit of a success. The wine itself is excellent, not only superbly priced at $20 (special Tweetbunch price, apparently), but it's Aaron's first Pinot of his own, I think, which is a fair achievement in itself. It's actually quite European in style, with a bit more juicy acidity and slightly more forward fruit, but with a great earthiness that NZ Pinots often don't have, certainly not this young (2008).

You lot in the UK probably won't see hide nor hair of it though, as I don't think he makes all that much. Such is life.

And of the event? A great idea, I think, and it went really well. True, there's the lack of face-to-face interaction that's the hallmark of online social interaction, but realistically that takes nothing away from it. You're still chatting away to a group of similarly-minded people, still tasting wine, still enjoying the experience, but with the added bonus of not only being able to talk directly to the winemaker, but not having to leave the house. I know there'll be a few 'social networking stunts our emotional growth' comments bandied about, as there always are, but the long and short of it is that this was a really innovative use of Twitter which worked tremendously well.

I think there may be more in future. Also, we made it onto Twitscoop, but that might be as much to do with the rest of the world being asleep / just waking up as because a few dozen of us were tasting wine at the time :)