In the Press


Localwineevents.com Adds E-mail Features

30 Second Wine Advisor

by Robin Garr

Jul 01, 2002 -- If your club or institution is planning a wine event open to the public, you'll be interested to know about a new feature from our friends at LocalWineEvents.com: You can now submit events to this Website - the largest food/wine/spirits calendar in the world - direct by E-mail. The procedure is simple: Include the E-mail address "submit@localwineevents.com" on your E-mail list and LocalWineEvents.com will post it. Visit http://www.LocalWineEvents.com/emailsubmit.php for the details. If you're simply interested in learning about wine-related events in your city or anyplace in the world, http://www.LocalWineEvents.com is the place to go - you can browse the calendars online or sign up to be notified of events in your area by E-mail. .


Website Exposes Local Wine Events To World Stage

California Wine And Food Magazine

by By B.j. Shepherd

Jul 01, 2002 -- Putting together the myriad promoters of wine events and the millions of potential attendees to their events would seem a great idea. Eric Orange thought so, too, and the website he has created to facilitate that meeting is one of the internet’s best. Wine and food buffs can find information about all sorts of wine-related opportunities at www.LocalWineEvents.com. Access to the site is free, both for the consumer and for the organizers of those events. Though the site provides segmented information on other topics of interest to wine fanciers, such as wine vacations, accessories, a classified ad section and includes a great number of links, its core is the easy-to-understand home page. From that point the reader can learn about wine events near his hometown or anywhere in the world, for that matter. Perhaps predictably, California seems to have the greatest number of listings the Napa/Sonoma section alone has 47 at the moment though many other parts of the country are represented. There aren’t too many events listed for Arkansas at the moment, but there is the Altus Grape Fest this week. Apparently the festival is free and promises "tasting of all the local wineries, Bacchus look alike contest, live music and lots more!" Forty-three events are listed for Chicago, but southern Illinois isn’t neglected. The Illinois Liquor Marts promote their 18th consecutive Wine and Food Expo, which will be held in Carbondale this October. The state of Washington has enough listings to require classification on a geographic basis. Clicking on the Columbia Valley section, I discovered that in August, Destiny Ridge Vineyards is sponsoring "A Night Out," which includes a tasting of Washington wines, skeet shooting and a steak and lobster dinner. International happenings are made available, as well. The information is really broad-based, even If it isn’t comprehensive in an "A to Z" manner. From accessing the international listings I’ve found that Australia hosts the Best of Barossa Banquet in Adelaide this weekend. Nothing seems scheduled in Zaire or Zambia, but the U.K. is home to many events. Those in the north of England in mid-September can participate in the York Festival of Food and Drink, for instance. Forty-year-old entrepreneur Orange has a background that includes a diverse experience in the wine industry. Earlier in his17-year career, he worked in retail wine sales, served as a bar manager/wine steward and learned enough about the agricultural side of things to become a vineyard supervisor. More recently he has held management positions with the internet marketer WineShopper.com and with Paterno Imports. In his time he’s certainly seen many approaches to promoting all sorts of wine events. "How do you publicize these events? The options are limited," said Orange in an interview earlier this week. "Well, put ‘em all in one place," he thought "and I’ll do reciprocal links, too." The two-year-old website has received great response from its users. The concept seemed almost too obvious to Orange, but not all segments of the wine industry are on board the bandwagon yet. "If I get 100,000 people a month visiting our site, wineries will be lining up to buy ads," Eric said he thought as he began the endeavor. That line hasn’t yet begun forming, but his numbers haven’t yet reached the 100,000 mark. Currently, LocalWineEvents.com is drawing about 35,000 site visitors a month—a very respectable figure and growth continues. Consumers love the site and, if wineries are still slow to grasp the value of his idea, other aspects of the wine business are not. "The people who understood it the fastest were the retailers—the fine wine shops—and the restaurants," he said, mentioning the Tribeca Grill in New York City, Farallon in San Francisco, Sam’s in Chicago and Spec’s in Houston as businesses who’ve posted events with him. Sotheby’s even promotes their auctions on his site. The "local" nature of LocalWineEvents.com is perhaps too narrow a definition of its value. Orange reports that wine fans traveling on business or on their vacations often use his service to find what’s going on in areas where they wouldn’t otherwise be familiar with the wine scene. Not charging entities posting their events, nor charging wine fans for accessing that information, the business has limited opportunity to generate revenue. "I’m not making any money," reported Orange, "but I’m definitely paying the bills."


A Jug Of Wine And Thou.

Women's Own Magazine

May 01, 2002 -- Wine tasting is all the rage these days. There could well be a vineyard in your state. The cost of a tasting, where they let you sample several glasses, explain the virtues of each, and give you a little nosh to clean your palate, is usually anywhere from $0 - $25. What? No vineyards nearby? Chances are a fine restaurant in your area will be hosting a wine tasting event in the near future. Calla restaurant with a great wine list to find ont (or visit localwineevents.com).


Food, Wine And Bottles Of Milk

Southwest Village News

by Jamie Mock

Feb 26, 2002 -- Eric Orange sits at his computer, the world at his fingertips through a DSL connection on the internet. He types out a few e-mails to California, New York, Slovenia...and then he hears his two year old son cry, and gets to go see what's wrong. He comforts his son, confirms with the nanny that all is well, and returns to his study to continue his world-wide correspondence to gain support for the website he started two years ago. LocalWineEvents.com the website that Orange created, is a free service that allows any retailer offering anything to do with wine, spirits, beer or food to post events with a link back to their own website.

Read More


What's Online

Houston Chronicle

by Cay Dickson

Feb 05, 2002 -- WHEN WINE -- Be the first person on your block to know all about wine tastings and other wine-related events going on in your neck of the world. LocalWineEvents, at www.LocalWineEvents.com, is the work of Houston resident Eric Orange, who has been in and around the wine business for over a decade. He wanted to find a way to let people post information on wine events as well as find others to go to. All you have to do is choose a city from the drop-down list and you'll find a list of events for that month. There is also a section for wine happenings in other parts of the world. If you would like to stay informed about upcoming events, you can enter your e-mail and you will automatically be notified of new content on that city's page. The site has had 8,000 events posted since July 2000, and continues to expand as wine enthusiasts list information there. Cay Dickson is a Web developer in Houston.



Wine Business Monthly

Wine Business Monthly

Feb 01, 2002 -- LocalWineEvents.com is a free service allowing retailers, restaurants, vineyards, wholesalers, and so forth, to post information about wine, spirits, beer, and food events, with a link back to their own websites for more information. The idea is to simply collect them all in one place so that the consumer can find them more easily, says Eric Orange who runs the site. Orange reports that there have been more than 8,100 events posted since July 2000, with four million hits and a mention in US News & World Report. The site currently averages about 1,000 unique visitors per day, and growing. I don't think I've scratched the surface yet, Orange says. The idea is rather simple: Create one place where consumers can find out about tastings and dinners going on in their area or cities they are traveling to and to provide one place where the industry can post them. An additional feature automatically emails interested consumers in a city when a new event is posted to the schedule. Posting an event is simple and free. Orange started in the wine business as vineyard supervisor for Millbrook Vineyards near Poughkeepsie New York, was later was district manager for Paterno Imports in Colorado, and worked for WineShopper.com before deciding to develop LocalWineEvents.com. Visit them at www.localwineevents.com.


Sitings

Santé Magazine

Jan 01, 2002 -- This fall WineFederation.com unveiled its new Internet advertising group. Located at www.winefederation.com, this site is composed of content from ten of the Web's leading wine-appreciation sites and includes links to information on job searching, international wine news and events, wine prices, chat rooms, and more. The informative pages at www.localwineevents.com, founded by Master Sommeliers Eric Orange and Tory Hurst, have added a "Difficult Wine Questions" contest page, where wine lovers can test their knowledge of their favorite beverage and win $500 in wine or cash. Visitors can also browse the site for wine education classes, wine cellar listings, accessories, purchasing information, and thousands of events. (*Note: Tory and I are not Master Sommeliers. We completed the first of three phases. The second and third phase are substantially harder and we both have the utmost respect for those few individuals in the world whom have completed the rigorous program and can rightly claim the title of Master Sommelier. EVO)


Local Wine Events.com Review

Wineupdate.com

by Guinness Wieland

Apr 14, 2001 -- Before I get started let me say that all opinions contained in this or other review are just that, opinions. The reviewer has no wish to force his likes or dislikes on anyone else, and strongly encourages you to visit the site in question to form your own opinion. Local Wine Events.com Review by Guinness Wieland. The first time I planned to review localwineevents.com I got distracted by some important ranting and raving I had to do. I remember thinking that I wished it were easier to find out if there were events in a certain part of the world, without going through and methodically checking. As if he were reading my mind, I received a notice that a new feature had been added today to do just that, so I thought I had better check it out. Let me be perfectly blunt here. If you don\'t use this site, you are wrong. I advise getting out to as many wine events as possible, and to do so you need to find out where and when they are. Many sites offer such services (including Wine Update), and I think it is good to post your events to as many as possible, as well as looking to many when you want to find something to do. The thing is, some site has to be the best, and LocalWineEvents.com is the one. To carry on with the bluntness, this site is pretty ugly. The reason for this, apparently, is so that it will load fast for the users. An admirable goal on the already burdened internet, but I don\'t know if that excuses the gray and olive green color scheme. Just my personal opinion, but these don\'t seem too appealing in a wine site. Enough with the petty words on color and down to the functionality. The site could not be any easier to use. Because they have concentrated on a very specific task, the site isn\'t cluttered with a bunch of confusing stuff. You simply select your city and go. The content is limited to event postings, and so can\'t be very rich or entertaining, just go elsewhere if that is what you want, this site is a true internet tool. General Site Notes As stated before, the design is not too big on pretty, but it is perfectly functional. Navigation is simple and very well laid out. The links are usually words that say just where they are going. The only real flaw is that sometimes the page is rather too large to fit into the browser window, requiring a little more scrolling than I like. Worth the price, really. Contact information is present but not too obvious, on the bottom of the home page. This site is recommended for anyone who likes wine and is not a recluse. Also useful to anyone with an event to post, since there is no cost to post something. Why not let everyone know? Local Wine Events.com gets a 5-, with the minus for the colors that I wouldn\'t worry about if I were more rational. This site is an example of what the Internet should be, a series of useful tools.


Worth A Mention

U.s. News & World Report

Mar 26, 2001 -- Good morning, Congratulations! Your website, LocalWineEvents.com, is featured as a related link from this week''s U.S. News & World Report article, "Fruit of the vine" on usnews.com. You''ll find the news article and the link to your site at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/010326/nycu/26webmap.htm Sincerely, Melissa B. Marion Melissa B. Marion Marketing Department, usnews.com U.S. News & World Report 1050 Thomas Jefferson St. NW Washington, DC 20007 http://www.usnews.com Phone: (202) 955-2025 Okay, it''s just a mention, but we''re in good company...EVO.


Wineontheweb.com

Mar 01, 2001 -- LOCAL WINE EVENTS www.LocalWineEvents.com is an extremely helpful site which is growing week by week. It is the brainchild of site owner, Eric Orange, who told Wine on the Web that LocalWineEvents.com has been created 'to be the one place where wine consumers can learn about events in their locality without having to register with a dozen different wine retailers. It is also an exciting tool for the wine industry, allowing restaurants, retailers, wineries, wholesale distributors and importers to bring their consumer events to the attention of wine enthusiasts everywhere.' The site also includes link facilities to connect enquirers with industry sites. Wine on the Web hopes this inspired site will really thrive and be strongly supported by the wine industry. Also consumers can help by sending details of any events that have not been publicized.