Spit N Twit: A Post-Mortem

Yesterday I wrote about the “Spit N Twit” event that City Winery, Bottle Rocket, Wine Twits and Wired Magazine were hosting. I held up the event as a progressive experiment marrying traditional and social media marketing. For some great photos of the event, check out MetroMix’s gallery.

The event was undoubtedly a success. I have some criticisms and observations about the limitations of an event such as this, but first first the good news.

The Excitement Index

• When I arrived, shortly after 2pm, the excitement level in the room was palpable. From the City Winery and Bottle Rocket employees to the guests eager to begin tasting, there was an unmistakable buzz in the room. Part of that had to do with the fact that it was one of those bright sunny weekend days in New York, warm as early spring. The light poured into City Winery’s vast industrial, yet warm space through their enormous street-fronted windows.

The Wines

• I am no oenophile and there definitely were some young and skunky wines on offer, but that only served to underscore how many good wines were out there. I have to admit, I didn’t keep up with as much spitting as I would have liked. From the Cult Vines big, jammy Cab Sav with a little pepper and leather aromas to the wonderfully fruity blend of Bear Flag’s Red Blend #1, the wines all offered plenty of opportunity for vocabularies to be stretched and prodded. An Austrian Blaufrankisch might have been the most interesting wine I tasted, a perfect winter wine with all the subtlety and surprise one expects from an Old World wine.

The Technology

• Of course the reason we were all gathering was to taste wines, but beyond that the point of the afternoon was to share our data with the wider world. That was achieved using the Twitter hashtag #sptw and through Wine Twit’s impressive technology.
• Here is how it worked: Each wine was given a unique hashtag, such as “#USSRHBRW08 – Brewer Clifton , 2008 Chardonnay, SANTA RITA HILLS’, USA” which was displayed in front of each wine. That way, people on twitter could follow along with what wines were being tasted without the taster having to input all the relevant information, saving little room for actual tasting notes.
• A novel idea, and successful to a certain extent, the  hashtag system was ultimately limiting, both for the tasters, who had to spend a lot of time inputting long chains of text, and for people following along on twitter, who had to go to a separate page to decipher it.
• Wine Twits’ technology is amazing and solves the above problem. Instead of sending people to a separate page, by logging into Wine Twit’s website, and inputting the hashtag, the technology auto-translated into the wine’s name and other information for twitter audience.
• Except for the fact that there was no WiFi to speak of in City Winery which meant that accessing the internet, while trying to drink wines and avoid being jostled by the crowd, well, it was just a little too much. The fix for that is ensuring there is adequate and perhaps beefed-up WiFi access for future events, making it public and then publicizing it to people coming in so they can access the internet during the tasting. An easy enough fix, and definitely a good lesson learned for the event.

The Wrap-Up

As I stated earlier, the event was definitely a success and among the 30 or so people I spoke with they all enjoyed the idea of sharing their tasting notes publicly in a group effort. A lot of people were intrigued by the data-related implications of crowdsourcing tasting notes. If I were an wine retailer or distributor, I would be plunging into that data. More on that later…

One other thing I did notice is that as the event wore on, and perhaps people got a little tipsy and more jovial, there was less twittering going on. Natural enough right? A suggestion I have for future tastings of this sort, and there will undoubtedly be more, is to have an hour long tasting, followed by a brief ten or fifteen minute window where the tasting pauses and people can relax and spend a few minutes uploading their tasting notes. Having people taste, socialize, negotiate a crowded space and hold their smartphones in their hand is asking just a bit too much.

If there were ten minute breaks every hour to let the winery reps catch their breath and the tasters to upload their data would enable a lot more people to share their information.

And that information, as I stated earlier, is the point! Think of the implications of having crowdsourced data from across a city, region, or even the whole country. A distributor or retailer could sort through that data, and see, what people in Cleveland like to drink in the Fall, or what people in Nashville enjoy drinking in the Spring. Using that data, one could anticipate, a bit more smartly, what to stock and what not to.

The opportunity to wine retailers, distributors and wineries, to access vast amounts of feedback is one that should not be overlooked. On this last front, contact me if you have any questions on what to do with this data.