Pinot Days: Eat, Drink and Blog Merry

A couple years ago as I was starting my own small lot winery in the neighborhood, I heard excited rumblings about a new San Francisco based festival called Pinot Days. It sounded like one of the many small quaint shows typical of Northern California, featuring some local wines, a little food, and attended by casual wine fans; the type of show I might attend if I happened to find myself in the area.

I was, as my wife often proves, conceptually misguided. In fact, Pinot Days is such a prominent fixture now in the national wine scene that preparing for the show this year is the most pressing issue on my mind.

Call it a “Perfect Storm” of fortuitous planning, but the first two annual Pinot Days in 2005 and 2006 dovetailed with a powerful, exciting new guard in the Pinot world – Kosta Browne, Loring, Dain, Papapietro Perry, Woodenhead, and others who have helped to make the show a great success. Add to that the location of the event, which falls close to a number of great producers and serves as ground zero for a fanatical, intelligent fan-base for the varietal. Finally, there is the soaring popularity of wine blogs, where attendees eagerly post and read the reviews of the best new wines tasted at the show.