Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Virtual Wine Circle and Competition: How did it begin?

Collapse
This is a sticky topic.
X
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Virtual Wine Circle and Competition: How did it begin?

    Our names are Martina Paetzel and Bob Morton, and we are home winemakers, home beermakers, wine enthusiasts and founders of Virtual Wine Circle , something new in the homebrew world. We would like to introduce you to a new concept for the world of hobby wine- and beermaking.

    As you know, the old-fashioned wine circles unfortunately are slowly dying. As you also know, however, homebrew is alive and well in the UK ! As impending taxation on wines loom overhead, many people are turning to this hobby again.

    But why are they not turning to wine circles for more information? Most find their information on the internet, stricter driving enforcements which hinder attendance at wine circles, the thought of stuffy old men and women in ties and frocks poo-pooing someone’s wines (i.e.intimidation), and oftentimes the lack of knowledge that a wine circle in their area even exists may be some reasons why wine circles in the traditional sense seem to be deteriorating in the UK.

    We (Bob Morton, a National Wine Judge, & Martina Paetzel, an “unusual” winemaker) were talking about the dwindling attendance of Wine Competitions and Wine Circles in general. Even after only a few minutes, we came to the realization that the above-mentioned (and other) reasons could be playing a crucial role in the ever-sinking numbers of the social events surrounding home-winemaking. Of course, our love of the hobby encouraged us to come up with something that may be more mainstream in today’s culture.

    So, we diligently went to work with creating what is known as “ Virtual Wine Circle ”. We wanted to create an atmosphere as close as we could to a “real” wine circle. As Bob already had a homebrew/home winemaking forum on the internet (www.winesathome.co.uk) which has 1,375 members, we decided to test the waters there.

    We decided to create an online-wine circle which meets one a month using a chatroom available through the forum. In summary, we provide the Virtual Wine Circle members with exactly what one finds at a “real” Wine Circle: Talks on different aspects of winemaking (with the use of our own youtube videos), wine tasting (a low-cost wine which is available at any grocery store in the UK), questions and answer sessions about difficult ferments, wine swaps and even some organization of grape pressings (once a year with imported grapes, otherwise known as GrapeFest).

    In short, the response was tremendous! We have over 20 members of Virtual Wine Circle and new members are arriving every month.

    “But what is a wine circle without a competition?” we thought.

    So yet again, we tested the waters: in August of 2009 we organised our premier “Virtual Wine Circle Competition.” This was an open show, no one had to be a member of the circle, no one had to worry about wine snobs looking down on their wines, no sending of heavy, 750 ml glass bottles that may break in the post and no personal drop-off was required.

    What we did was the following: We went straight back to the basics, keeping only a few aspects of current UK wine-show rules in ours. Our motto was “Anything Goes!” Since our wine circle is a virtual one, we did not expect our members to come to the competition. We offered 250 ml PET bottles with purple, plastic tops for 30p (plus postage – this at cost, no entry fee), the entrant could enter in as many bottles as he/she liked. No costly shipping or fuel charges (I believe it was roughly £3.00 for 2 bottles), and smaller, newer homebrewers had the chance to enter small amounts of their wines, without making a huge dent in their cellars. Labels were provided free of charge.

    Furthermore, we decided to employ the UCDavis System to our judging, i.e. judging the wine against itself – a radical difference to conventional standards in the British home winemaking competition world. We used UK National Judges who were trained to use the UCDavis System. Each entrant received comments free of charge posted back by mail, but the wines were not returned. We informed homebrew shops in Yorkshire (as this was new), and posted on some of the larger UK homebrew forums about our competition standards and rules.

    Here too, the response was amazing. Our first competition took place in conjunction with a “real” wine circle’s show, Pontefract Open Show (http://www.lockwoodrecording.net/YFA...ontefract.html) and had over 70 250-ml bottles of wine – anything from Ginger Wine to Juniper Wine to Kit Wines.

    We felt this was a huge success, as did the Yorkshire Federation of Amateur Wine and Beermakers (www.yfawb.co.uk). We have now our own Section at their annual meeting and competition held at the Spa Complex in Scarborough . We have some new and exciting things planned for this year (for example, Twitter updates of Wine Results, live webcamming of the judging), so that the Virtual Wine Circle competitors can squirm in their seats “live!”

    And this is where we would like to ask you for your help. As the competition is on June 11-13th, there is just over a month’s time to receive our entries. We have attached our virtual wine circle flyer to this email (with more details: located here: http://www.winesathome.co.uk/forum/a...7&d=1272630515), and we would appreciate if you could make this flyer visible or available to your customers. It is a big ask, but it would ensure that something so wonderful as wine circle will indeed be in the UK for years to come, although in a different direction.

    Since this is relatively short notice, we will also be accepting wine bottled in any 250-ml PET bottle, and will refill them for the entrant. However, we would like to encourage the PET bottles we provide.

    We also offer for you to take a look at our Virtual Wine Circle . If you would like to be informed about when the next circle meeting will be, about the competition, or about our future plans with the Virtual Wine Circle , please follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com) – VirtualWineO – or visit us on the forum: (www.winesathome.co.uk) – you must register with the forum to participate. Alternatively, we are also on Facebook (Search for: Virtual Wine Circle ).

    Thank you very much for your time in reading this, and we hope that, with your help, this year’s competition will be better than the last year’s! Why not enter in some of your own homebrew at the competition?!? We’d love to award some more “Golds” this year!!!

    Cheers,

    Martina Paetzel & Bob Morton
    Virtual Wine Circle

    www.twitter.com – VirtualWineO
    Facebook: Virtual Wine Circle

    2nd Virtual Wine Competition
    June 11-13th, Scarborough

    medpretzel@yahoo.com
    bob@winesathome.co.uk
    Virtual Wine Circle & Competition Co-Founder
    Twitter: VirtualWineO
    Facebook: Virtual Wine Circle
Working...
X