Post-WBC NA 2008: The Wine Spies Party

After finishing up at the last WBC lunch and tasting, the Luxe Sonoma lunch, I headed out with the Brix Chicks, Liza (Twitter) and Xandria to another party, this time hosted by Agent Red and Agent Green (Twitter) of The Wine Spies.

The Wine SpiesThe Wine Spies is a interesting and effective wine sales site that specializes in 1 great wine a day.  It helps both the winery to connect directly with its clientele, and allows consumers to discover a new wine each day and at significant, one-time savings.  It is extremely effective at getting the word out about small boutique wineries and their choice of wines is top-notch, The Wine Spiesincluding some of my own favorites such as Galante (WineSpies) and Parsonage Village Vineyard (WineSpies). Their style of James Bond-ish secrecy and elite info dissemination keeps the wine very accesible and fun, while refusing to compromise on great background and techinical information.

CruveeCruvee (pronounced CREW-vee), is a powerful new addition to the wine social network universe and takes the direct to consumer approach for wineries even further than ever has been attempted before. They look to actively recruit both consumers and wineries to their free social realm and directly link them with a dynamic and real-time social media web. They also have more powerful social media consulting options for wineries.

Levendi WineryCompleting the day’s trifecta, Levendi Winery was pouring three of their wines in accompaniment to the tasty hors d’oeuvres provided by Cruvee. Levendi is a family owned boutique Napa winery that has a long history of wine within their Greek ancestory.  The name “Levendi” is actually a Grecian toast that is meant to celebrate hard work and the personal achievement that results from those efforts.  They had their ’06 Red Hen Chard and two ’05 Cabs, the Symphonia and the Sweetwater Ranch.  All three were outstanding examples of fine Napa wine and I was very pleased to end the weekend with such great wine and nibbles.

The event was actually a much larger production than I imagined.  Hosted at Agent Green’s home, the weather was still just wonderful.  A fair amount of bloggers made it over to the event, but I don’t think that any of us were prepared for the thought and care that went into the planning.  We were provided with a raffle cork, press kits on all three participants and a glass to begin our tasting of the Levendi lineup. The Wine SpiesUnfortunately, I did not have a lot of time to spend before I had to head out to meet the Lady at another event in the East Bay, so I missed the various games and activities (and raffle!!) that started after I was leaving, about an hour into the afternoon. A very nice surprise was discovered when we were leaving, however.  We were each handed a half-bottle of the ’05 Sweetwater Ranch Cab, with the request that we review the wine, good or bad, in the coming weeks.  I was later to find out the following weekend that after some decanting, the wine was even tastier than I first thought when I tried the dark fruited, balanced effort by the pool that sunny day.

The Wine SpiesWhile rather disappointed that I had to leave the event too early, I was very impressed with Agent Red’s event and it struck me that the event itself was an immediate example of the direct impact that the WBC has had on the wine industry.  Here was an event that was planned specifically to take advantage of the co-locality of much of the nation’s most active wine bloggers.  It was well-planned and a very interesting take on the usually more staid style of wine tasting events. While I understand how Agent Red would want to keep the theme of secrecy when planning any events, I did find the lack of any proior notification of the event’s agenda to be a problem.  I could have planned the rest of my day around a longer stay at the party if I had known ahead of time that I needed to reserve a certain block of my time.  Regardless, I thought that this was a very innovative sort of wine and wine site debutante party and I felt very fortunate to have been a part of it.  I look forward to many more events by The Wine Spies, Levendi, Cruvee and anyone else with enough daring and social media sophistication to plan such a gala.

Please see my wine reviews from this Post-WBC event below.  They are tagged with “Ws2008levendicruvee” if you would like to list them in your own WineLog.  Please drop me a comment if you attended this party, as well!

Levendi Napa Valley Red Hen Chardonnay 2006

Levendi Napa Valley Symphonia Cabernet Sauvignon 2005


Levendi Napa Valley Sweetwater Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo

View posts by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo
Ward Kadel - @drXeNo is the founder of Vinopanion wine blog, former West Coast Ambassador & Staff Blogger for WineLog.net and former Le Wine Buff for Bordeaux.com (CIVB). He will try any and all wines and tends to write about the parts of his life that include wine...like virtually all of it! He and his wife grew up in Napa and Sonoma and they still live in the Napa Valley. Check out the wines he's recommended with his WKBadges. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Like #Vinopanion on Facebook. Contact him: "Ward at WineLog.net". Ward happily accepts samples but does not guarantee a review, positive or negative.

5 Comments

  1. Agent Red
    November 3, 2008

    Greetings Ward,

    It was a pleasure to meet you in person, and I enjoyed our too-short conversation. Thanks so much for attending our party – and for your comments.

    This Thursday on thewinespies.com, we’ll be featuring wine reviews of Levendi’s delicious 2005 Sweetwater Cabernet Sauvignon. Since you sent in a review, yours will be posted there as well. Welcome to the agency, Agent Xeno!

  2. Heather
    November 3, 2008

    Hi Ward,
    Thank you for taking the time to post your reviews of our wine! Much appreciated.
    Cheers,
    Heather Taber
    Levendi Winery

  3. David Zeitman
    November 3, 2008

    Thanks for the very detailed update on the event, Ward. Glad you could make it over to my place for the fun. I look forward to reading your review of the 2005 Levendi Cab.

    DZ (aka Agent Green)

  4. Ward
    November 4, 2008

    Hello Red, Heather and Green! Thank you for checking out the writeup and for hosting such an invigorating event! I hope to see you all again at other events.

  5. mydailywine
    November 6, 2008

    Ward, Love your work and writing style! Keeping it real.
    Lets stay in touch Enjoyed hanging with you at Quivira.

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