Apparently the world is going to end this evening so I figured I’d better get a post up before everything broke loose.  I’ve been in Atlanta, GA this week promoting Emma Pearl as well as attending the women’s blogger conference BlogHer-Food.  One of the seminars I’ve enjoyed the most was on using social media (i.e. Twitter and Facebook) to network.  I do use both however I use Twitter for more business related topics and Facebook for its original use which is keeping up with friends.  However the funniest revelation came towards the middle of the talk when everyone started talking about following metrics on their site traffic.  These included how many visitors came to their sites, where they came from etc…  I currently don’t use metrics and just as I was getting really worried that I was missing really critical data for my website all the speakers agreed that you could get too bogged down in reading the numbers and told all the people present to not look at them.  This was because they all felt they wrote better posts before they had the numbers.  Hmmm, perhaps being in the dark is good?

Anyway, I’ve been on a market blitz this week which entails going around to a ton of restaurants and small retailers to see if they’d be interested in selling my wines on their lists or in their stores.  I’ve done this before in SC last month but this was a much busier week filled with events including a winemaker dinner and hand selling the wines in Whole Foods.  I really enjoyed this part of it because I was able to connect with people who will be drinking the wines directly. 

While I’ve been gone, back in Napa we’ve gotten close to another 2 inches of precipitation this week in the form of both rain and hail.  So far this year is shaping up to be much like 2010; lots of rain and quite a bit of cool weather.  I’m interested to see if more vines are blooming when I return on Sunday. 

I’ve had some really nice wines this week including the 2009 Karl Kaspar Riesling Kabinett from Nahe Germany (Zesty and Fruity).  This was a medium sweet wine filled with white peache and apricot flavors as well as some underlying flinty notes.  I paired it with a Tuna Tartar with Asian inspired slaw which was fantastic!!  Another notable wine this week was the 2008 Sancerre from Chateau de Sancerre (Stone and Chalk) which was very dry and refreshing with really intriguing flavors of wet river rock and dried herbs.  As I look back over my notes I’ve noticed I’ve stuck with the white wines this week. 

My thanks to all in Atlanta who’ve made this week so fantastic!  This really is a great city and I’ve enjoyed every moment!