Oprah.com
by Daphne Oz
While Daphne Oz loves that women aren't afraid to ask directions, take advice or pay attention to their own particular tastes, there is one skill she feels her sisters are lacking: being able to pick a good, inexpensive bottle of wine. There are a few skills I think every woman should have up her sleeve to whip out in times of need. While the basics - ironing, donning stockings without nicking them, blow-drying your own hair -elude me, there is one skill that is often left to the men in our lives to master even though women might actually be better suited for the task. Most among us are able to whip up a simple-yet-sumptuous three-course meal (with our bare hands!), but what about choosing the accompanying wine? No, sir. Not me. To get out in the world and start sampling, visit LocalWineEvents.com, which provides information on local - and often free - wine tastings in your area.
L.a. Wineaux
by Kim Giancaterino
Discover LocalWineEvents.com It's no secret that one of my favorite wine-related websites is LocalWineEvents.com. Each of my Livermore Valley Wine Country Squidoo lenses includes an rss feed of local wine events. Since creating the series more than two years ago, I've noticed that more and more Livermore Valley wineries are taking advantage of LocalWineEvents.com to promote wine tastings and other events throughout the year. For example, here are a couple of events taking place this weekend in the Livermore Valley: On Sunday, May 16 from 12 to 4 pm The Steven Kent Winery & La Rochelle Winery are hosting their second annual Open House. Guests will receive a commemorative Riedel wine glass and a delicious lunch—Grilled Sausage Sandwich with Merrillie-sauteed Onions, Gourmet BBQ Potato & Bacon Salad, and Apricot-Mango Shortbread. Tom Duarte will be on hand to play Latin Guitar music while eight new wine releases make their debut! Full details are available here. On Sunday, May 16 from 12 to 4:30 pm Page Mill Winery (pictured top right) will be hosting their popular b.y.o.b. event. Every third Sunday of the month, visitors bring used and clean wine bottles to the winery. The bottles are then filled, corked, and labeled by winery staff. The cost for this delicious and unique table wine is just $8.49 per bottle. Page Mill Winery offers their current topping blend, so the varietal mix changes every month. Find out more about this event here. LocalWineEvents.com has been around for more than ten years, and is the world's largest calendar of food, wine, beer, and spirits events. Are you curious about wine, food, spirits, or beer events in Australia, Croatia, Denmark, Italy, Macedonia, Tahiti—or anywhere else in the world? LocalWineEvents.com is the world's number one source for information. The website boasts more than 25,000 international Facebook fans! It's easy (and free!) to submit an event for the LocalWineEvents.com calendar. I've included a banner on each of my Squidoo lenses to make it easy for winery owners and staff to spread the word about their latest winery events. You can subscribe (also free!) to LocalWineEvents.com's weekly food and drink newsletter, The Juice. Just fill in the blanks to Get The Juice.
Lifehacker.com
by Jason Fitzpatrick
If you're looking for place to taste a variety of wines and even wine and food pairings, you'll want to check out LocalWineEvents to find local wine tasting events and meals. Unless you're on the mailing lists of the companies and vineyards that put on wine tasting events and meals, you're essentially out of the loop when it comes to finding out about them. LocalWineEvents indexes tasting events by state and city and provides an overview of the event including the cost—whether a flat fee, a per ounce fee, etc.—as well as the menu for the event and whether or not food will be served. In addition each entry has contact details in the form of an web site, phone number, and/or address. You can browse listings in a variety of ways searching by events at a location you enjoy visiting or put on by a particular company whose events you have enjoyed. Alternately you can hit up the local calendar and browse by day to see what's going on during the time you have available. LocalWineEvents is free and requires no signup to use, you contact and pay the event host directly. Have a favorite service for finding out about local food and drink-related events? Let's hear about it in the comments.
Techcrunch.com
by Michael Arrington
The Local Wine Events website may be ugly as sin, but if you're a wine lover, you've probably already got it bookmarked. This is a small ten year old business being run out of Pennsylvania with about a million page views a month. It's a pretty straightforward business. You go there to find local wine events. People who are having wine events pay to list them there, and there is lots of other advertising as well. 1,500 new events are posted each week. Despite their size the site has gotten some big attention. Gary Vaynerchuck had owner Eric Orange on his show last year, and Apple has made their mobile site a staff pick and a Featured Web App for the iPhone. And this small business is profitable. Last year the company, with four employees, had $250,000 in gross profits.
Denver Business Journal
by Ed Sealover
..... Eric Orange was on the forefront of the movement when he launched www. localwineevents.com in July 2000 as a way to alert vinophiles of special tastings at restaurants, liquor stores and vineyards around the Denver area. A wine seller at a Denver company at the time, Orange grew tired of attending tastings where six people showed up only to find later that other wine lovers complained they weren't able to find out about such happenings. What began as a local passion quickly mushroomed into a site that expanded to cities around the country and now features free listings in 504 localities across North America, England and Australia. Orange has relocated to Valley Forge, Pa., but said he finds people not only wanting to know what's happening in their neighborhood but writing to him to find out what is on the calendar in a certain location when they're visiting other cities.
Wine Tonite!
by Ed Thralls
LocalWineEvents.com is a great website that I use quite often to find tastings, wine dinners and other wine-related events in the Atlanta area. After my recent review of the iVisit Sonoma County application on the iPhone, Eric V. Orange, CEO/Founder of LocalWineEvents.com reached out and asked if I’d take a look at their new application too. The app was just released on January 28, 2010 so it practically hot out of the oven. PROS 1. Just like many iPhone apps, this program will be more valuable when you allow it to use your current location. 2. Once you select your location, you are given a list of today’s and future events that are closest to your current location. 3. The Details screen show some good information including the phone number of the establishment that can be pressed and automatically called. You can also view the establishment on a map and even forward the event in an email to a friend. 4. If you know you are travelling to another location other than where you are currently, you can easily select another city in a another country to find events. OPPORTUNITIES 1. The event listing screen always defaults to 30 Mile radius and only has 4 options. It could be helpful, at least in my opinion, if it remembered my previous setting and offered more flexibility in radius options. For example, by having the radius options as buttons at the top, the number of selections are limited. The scroll list type of function could be used and allow more options to be made available, or it could allow the user to type in the radius directly. Personally, I would like the option of 5 mile radius to be made available. In most cases, I will not be travelling 50 miles around Atlanta to go to an event, especially with the lovely traffic we get here 2. Just like I found with the Sonoma County app, the map option on the details screen does not allow the user to get directions that is so common and helpful via Google maps. 3. I’d like to see a website link, if available, for the establishment on the Details page, which is often available on the event page on the website. 4. It may also be very helpful to add a calendar feature which allows the user to specify a date in the future to further filter the event list. If I know I am not available until this coming Saturday and want to see what’s going on then, I have to scroll through the list currently. 5. In addition to the mail feature, it might be nice to include some of the social media links like Twitter or Facebook so that a user can inform their networks they are attending an event and include the event link. 6. Unfortunately, as with many version 1.0 releases, I did stumble upon a few bugs that I am sure will be worked out over the next couple of releases. Some of these still occurred after deleting and reinstalling the app as well as hard-booting the iPhone. Overall, I feel this application can be very valuable for those users looking for wine-related events in their cities while on the go. It can become even more valuable when even more valuable mobile and social features are added including those mentioned above. The more users can do with regard to filtering and finding events, making it easier to get to an event and finally sharing the event with others, the more valuable it will become.
Food And Wine Magazine
by Staff
Check out localwineevents.com. It lists wine classes and free tastings throughout the country.
Orlando Florida Vacation Examiner
by Rochelle Paul
Wine and wine tastings are no longer the bastion of wine aficionados and experts. Everyday folks who simply love the taste, and wish to enjoy wine more than sipping in private over a dinner at home, are stepping out to discover what the world of wine is all about. Fear and embarrassment because one doesn’t know the difference between a Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon is no longer keeping people from all walks of life, stepping out, tasting wines from around the word, visiting wineries, and experiencing wine for more than something to go with fish or beef. Yet how does one find a wine tasting or event?LocalWineEvents.com , an ingenious website from Founder/Developer Eric Orange, has answered the call for those just starting out, as well as those with more expertise and experience. Eric brings to his website, twenty plus years within the wine industry, from literally working in the dirt, learning how to grow grapes, to making wine as Vineyard Supervisor. His career extended as he became a member of the Society of Wine Educators, and serving on the board of the American Institute of Wine and Food. Tapping into the increasing use of the Internet, Eric had several tries at selling wine nationally via Internet, before starting his own site, LocalWineEvents.com. By tapping into the expanding reach of the Internet, Eric and his team have opened up an avenue for exploring wines not previously available. As a marketing platform for local businesses to share their events, to a pathway for those interested in wine to discover more than what’s on their local grocery shelves, LocalWineEvents.com is a valuable tool in an increasingly small world, where distance is a reality, but opportunity abounds. The idea behind LocalWineEvents.com is pretty simple: one website where you can search by state or city for events and festivals. While one can use the site for the locations around their home, it has also opened the venue to anyone, anywhere. Perhaps you live in Chicago, but are traveling to Orlando over the holidays. On a regular basis, keep on top of the range of activities within the Chicago area, even those happening throughout Northern Illinois, Southeast Wisconsin and Northwest Indiana. A range of opportunities, with a range of locations, wines, prices, and chances to taste wine. Prior to your vacation, check out what’s happening in and around Orlando. Perhaps the hotel you’re staying at hosts events. Maybe there will be a local wine shop hosting something while you’re in. Maybe there is an annual festival, and you’ll be in town. The greatest opportunities behind LocalWineEvents.com come from all around the nation, and are opportunities that present themselves to everyone, year round. The website does not discriminate, providing information on beer and spirits as well. Eric Orange brings his 20+ years experience to LocalWineEvents.com(Photo courtesy of LocatlWineEvents.com) This is a two-way streetFor those who own wine businesses, hotels, or perhaps host an event, LocalWineEvents.com is an exciting way for you to advertise your event to a national audience. No longer stuck with your local newspaper, your website - that only those who know about you will use - or competing on an unfair playing field with those who can afford more advertising, LocalWineEvents.com opens the door for your business to attract a whole lot more to your door. According to Eric, the overall number of subscribers to the site is 110,893. The number of businesses reaching out to those subscribers is 14,326. And while it will vary by city, Eric provided the top cities, and the number of current (and growing) subscribers. New York City 11,577San Francisco Bay Area 5479LA 5315Chicago 5197Napa 4100 As LocalWineEvents.com continues to grow, so too do the numbers. Imagine reaching out to more than 5000 subscribers in your area.But you’re not limited by the local area. Someone traveling to your city can also use the site to find you. That increases the numbers of potential guests coming through your doors.Not just for subscribers The numbers I’ve listed above, aside from the number of businesses using the service, are subscribers. Those people, like myself, receive a weekly newsletter geared towards their chosen area, and the events being held there. This does not include the numbers of passers-by, or those who do not subscriber, but use the site to find an event. Looking for a Wine FestivalLocalWineEvents.com is a great source for information about upcoming wine festivals. Florida, for example, hosts several events throughout the year, some during the peak winter travel season.One such event is the 10th Anniversary of The Naples Winter Wine Festival. Ranked among the “top 10 arts and entertainment events for wealthy Americans”, one will find a link to this festival site on LocalWineEvents.com. Not one of “America’s wealthy”? No problem. Events are held year round, different cities, different demographics. Whatever type of event, whatever the price range, whatever the experience level, LocalWineEvents.com has opened the door to everyone seeking to learn and experience more about wine, spirits and beer. Thank you for reading. I hope you take a look at my other articles, and I invite you to join me on Twitter/RoriTravel and at RoriTravel - a blog about Traveling Florida - I am a Freelance Writer - available for hire - plus, experience the Rantings of a Social Media Marketer - as a Consultant in Florida, I will be able to help travel businesses/businesses set up and understand how to incorporate Social Media Marketing into their Marketing Plans. Please contact me for further details and service area. Be sure to check out my other column, Travel Marketing Examiner
Kansas City Wine Examiner
by Dennis Schaefer
In a report at the Wine Industry Financial Symposium in Napa last week, Wine Opinions, a research provider to the U.S. wine industry, revealed the top 7 wine bloggers, according to their trade survey. The results were ranked by wine blog and frequency of visits. Those in the trade who said they visited these blogs "frequently," as opposed to "occasionally," ranked the bloggers as follows. 1.Eric Asimov, N.Y. Times, The Pour 23% 2.Eric Orange, LocalWineEvents.com 21% 3.Steve Tanzer, International Wine Cellar 15% 4.Jancis Robinson (tie), Jancis Robinson 13% 5.Alder Yarrow (tie), Vinography 13% 6.Tyler Colman, Dr. Vino 12% 7.Gary Vaynerchuk, Wine Library TV 9% The survey list was a subset of the wine blogging community, as there are hundreds of wine bloggers, ranging from those who have been doing it for years to those who just started blogging last month. There has been considerable discussion in both the press and wine blogging community about how and if wine bloggers are changing the wine world, whether it be in the democratizing of wine criticism or the influence they have in consumer wine purchases. Interestingly enough, populist wine disciple, Gary Vaynerchuk, who has become a new media cultural icon, was rated dead last by the wine trade. This would seem to suggest that his popularity rests with regular wine consumers and those millennials and gen-xers who are looking to learn more about wine but in a non-old school, digitally direct way. Meanwhile, Eric Asimov's "The Pour" was listed as the most frequented blog, but then he does have the bully pulpit of the New York Times behind him. Later this week, Wine Opinions will release their entire "Market Track 1" report, which will detail the survey findings of the trade panel, as well as a consumer survey panel. Wine Opinions says this will be the most in depth and comprehensive study of U.S. wine consumers and the trade that has been done since the recession began.
Winelibrarytv.com
by Gary V.
