Cork Board comments: October 2007

Happy Halloween! It’s that time again–the last day of the month. Here’s a quick round-up of some of our favorite reader comments from the past thirty days.

October started with a bang following our post about how to quickly and easily turn your wine blog into a Facebook Application.

Jeff was excited about the new tools we pointed out:

Sweet! Man, please share the secret(s)!

I added myself on Facebook, too.

Meanwhile, Erika had a few questions about things:

I used the tool on widgetbox as well to make widgets for both work and my personal site. Did you notice the problem with the Facebook widget creator though? The tool does not embed the widget in a profile, it creates a link to it. It’s a big drawback to their tool! I emailed them and they replied that it’s on their list of things to fix. Did you figure out a work around of any kind?

UPDATE: Erika–the guys at Widgetbox appear to have fixed (or at least be working on) the issue you outline above–you can now embed your Facebook Application in your profile page. If you’re not using Facebook, don’t fret, you can still get your very own version of The Cork Board here.

We previously wrote a review of our slightly less than stellar winetasting experience at Chimney Rock Winery. Reader “PJA726″ shared with us a different experience:

Visited Chimney Rock in late July and had an amazing tasting with Mike in the tasting room. We stayed until almost 6pm…he locked the door at 5, but let us stay and after I joined Club Elevage, we drank some amazing reserve wines. Great hospitality, super-quality wines and an all around great time.

Our entry asking if tour buses and limos made for a less pleasant winetasting experience also got a some great responses. Russ from Winehiker had this to say:

This issue has annoyed me as well, Trevor. It’s one of the reasons I limit my guided wine and hiking tours to no more than 12 people, including myself. As a result, there’s less of a sense of “quantity” to the experiences and more quality, therefore, for everyone, including the hosts we encounter at each venue. Buses? Limos? We take the backroads.

I wrote an article about this back in March 2006 titled Visiting A Winery – 5 Ways to Avoid Learning Anything. It starts as an “April Fools” take on the issue, but becomes a bit more compelling. Enjoy!

Reader “Randy” chimed in with this tidbit:

This is why I try to only taste at smaller wineries that discourage the bus experience. My worst experience ever was at Del Dotto — or should it be termed “Del Blotto”. Nearly everyone was drunk, including the Del Dotto tour guide. It was clearly encouraged to drink to excess, as they sell more wine that way.

“Farley” had this to say:

Hmmmm. Limo tours definitely increase the chances of drunken idiots in the tasting room. But the tasting room staff can still take control. Even though I work at Rosenblum Cellars, located in the East Bay where there aren’t many other wineries in close range, we do often get folks who just toured Hangar One vodka. The staff gives each other a heads up and then pour very small pours, discouraging lingering.

When Google rolled out some new data around it’s RSS reader (the aptly named Google Reader), we took it upon ourselves to research which of the wine blogs had the most Google Reader subscribers. The winner from our very unscientific research? Vinography in a landslide.

“Joel” chimed in to say:

Hey nice find! its a fraction (about 10% for Vivi’s) of what my Feedburner tells me but I’m sure it at least gives an accurate relative measure.

And we also heard from Mr. Vinography himself:

Rule the world? Makes me sound like some sort of evil genius…

These stats are something that, as noted above, bloglines has published for a long time. According to Bloglines I have 211 subscribers there.

And finally, “swirlingnotions” enjoyed our photos showcasing the vineyards during this time of year:

Gorgeous! Isn’t it just stunning this time of year? and the harvest moons . . . oh man.

Until next month…

TechTags Plugin [ Napa | Napa Valley | wine | winery | Chimney Rock Winery | winetasting | Facebook ]