Tasting Notes
Wine Blog
womenofthevine.net Goes Live
I know this is supposed to be related to wine, but for two days I’ve been struggling to think of a topic to kick off the blog. Actually, I’ve been thinking about this for some time now, but I’ve been too busy working on developing the rest of the site to get to wrapped up in what I might write about in this one section. The result is that it’s 2:00 a.m. on the night before the site is to launch and I’m stuck. My mind has literally gone blank. For those of you who know me, you know that I’m almost never without something to say. This sudden inability to conjure a single thought about which I can write a couple of paragraphs is not just out of character for me, it’s virtually inconceivable. Nevertheless, here I am, 2:03 a.m., still staring in frustration at my screen.
So, rather than bore you with trifle details about the current time, allow me to simply welcome you to the site and give you a quick tour of the features you’ll find here. To provide a little background, this site was conceived somewhat on a whim (it’s amazing what you’ll think of with a little wine in you), and over the last few weeks of development has taken on a life of its own. Its original purpose was simply to provide a means for our members to more easily get information about upcoming events. From there, things just seemed to develop and the site is launching with a lot of, what we hope you’ll find, useful information and features.
To that end, we’ve developed a WineWiki, which to be more accurate is currently little more than a glossary of wine related terminology. In a future iteration of the site, this will be completely editable by our members and other registered users of the site in true Wiki fashion. In addition, we’ve included an Articles section with short, but informative, pieces that correlate to the theme for each month’s meeting of the Women of the Vine.
We’ve also incorporated some web community type features. This blog and the Rants and Raves are designed to encourage free discourse among the club members and site visitors. The Rants and Raves is a catalog of wine reviews, which we will use to include ratings and tasting notes from the different wines we share at our monthly get-togethers. It seems there’s a bit of friendly competition among the members about who has brought the best wine to each meeting, and this feature should help us to catalog our likes and dislikes, and put a little more scientific measure around which wine was best.
Finally, in the spirit of promoting the club and growing our membership, we’ve added some members-only features. What’s that old American Express ad campaign—Membership has its Privileges, or something? Well, it’s not an original thought, but members can login and view profiles for other members, send messages to one another or collectively to the group through the message center, and easily register for upcoming events.
So, now that you know what this site is about, please have a look around for yourself, and come back and visit us regularly. Before signing off though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t make a point to thank Janelle Marté, one of the club’s co-founders, for her encouragement and guidance in developing this site, and a special thanks to all of the members whose enthusiasm for this site provided the inspiration to bring it to fruition.
Hmmm... 2:46 a.m., now that wasn’t so hard after all...
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Comments:
Jennifer Meade posted on: 05/06/2006
Okay, so the comments feature was late in coming...
Elissa Berenson posted on: 05/08/2006
Ladies - We had lots of good champagne the other night - many under $25. Please list the champagne you brought in the rants and raves if you liked it!
