Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Wine Blog Tag -- I'm it!

Russ at Winehiker started a game of wine blog-tag. Dr. Debs at Good Wine Under $20 was tagged and she tagged me - - I’m it! I won’t let them down and will answer the burning blog-tag question, " Why do we blog?" Using a similar format as Dr. Debs to answer the question:

1. Why did I start blogging?
Since I was a kid I loved writing stories and letters to my pen-pals. In grade school I won spelling bees. (Alas, things change and bless spell check. My grammar has slipped, but I never claimed to have a PhD in English.) In my youth, I kept a diary and wrote screen dialogues for Annette Funicello, hoping that Disney would want to buy my adolescent scribbles. My crowning moment was when the junior high English teacher asked us to write a saga about the traveling pop bottle - something I could sink my teeth into, including a classroom audience. Yes boys and girls, that was back in the "old" days when pop came in glass bottles and often found on the side of the road -- all with their own stories of how they got there. As a young adult I continued to write - usually family memories. I was trying to be the next Laura Ingalls Wilder - "Little Red House..."

About 10 years ago I joined an eclectic group of journalists, authors, and activists based out of San Francisco and became fascinated with their blogging group. With a little encouragement – here I am.

2. Why do I blog about wine and Walla Walla?
Before I started the blog I knew I did not want to blabber about anything. I wanted it to be interesting - a subject that others would enjoy. I wanted readers. Would I find readers that would be interested in my daily routine of feeding the cats, Crosby and Nash? Would anybody care to hear my repretoir of songs I sing to the kitty-boyz ("Teach Your Kitties Well" to the ever popular "Our house, is a very, very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard...?" Who wants to read about my needlework crafting? Would you want to read about my love of planting flowers and motorized garden tools? What reader would really care about my collection of Theodore Roosevelt biographies (you read one bio of TR and you read them all)? Who would really care about my odd and eclectic tastes in music from country crooner Alan Jackson to bat-head-biting Ozzie Osbourne with a dash of Josh Groban and Shikira tossed in to round things out? Or how I cannot listen to a Beatles or John Lennon song without sobbing now days?

One day I was working in the wine tasting room listening to tourists talk about how they love Walla Walla and her wines. And then it came to me --I knew what I had to blog...

3. Why keep blogging about wine?
Because I am hooked. Because I am having a lot of fun. I am meeting new people and having opportunities to taste wonderful wines that I might not otherwise get to taste. Because I have found myself having new experiences that I normally would not have if I had not started "Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine." (Example: next week I will be interviewed by a wine group from Los Angeles for a radio podcast. More on that later.) Because I think I have something to say and most of all, I will keep blogging for my readers.

4. Why do I think blogging about wine matters?
The old image that wine is reserved for men of status and wealth has disappeared. Wine is happening all over. It’s on the internet (over a hundred wine bloggers, several wine magazine sites and wine-dot-coms), wine education is everywhere from college classrooms to online programs, wine stores are popping up all over and grocery stores have fighting varietal shelves with eye popping labels seeking attention from housewives.

It’s not what I think. It’s about what is happening in Walla Walla, the State of Washington, the United States and all over the world! To quote Ernest Hemmingway, "Wine is the most civilized thing in the world."

I will now continue the chain that Dr. Debs started - I will tag two other wine blogging women. One as far away in Tokyo with Melinda from Tokyo Through the Drinking Glass and local winery blogger, Denise from Wine Matters in Walla Walla - Trio Vintners. You-are-it!!!

2 comments:

Melinda said...

Well, that is a good question! I'm game, just wondering who I'm gonna tag.

Keep up the good wine blogging!

Dr. Debs said...

Great post, Catie. Wonderful picture, too. I love what you say about wine no longer being for rich men, but for everyone. So true, and I think the blogosphere is helping to dispel any lingering sense that this is for the few. Wine is for the many, as your blog shows. Cheers!

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