In April 2010 I started a twitter account and fell in love with the immediacy of it and the way it engages people.  I wanted to show people what I see every day living on our estate vineyard property, perhaps a glimpse into what I think about during the growing season, and I wanted it to be educational. (Ay! Not educational on twitter!)  I came up with the idea of sending out a picture once every Tuesday of one vine…

One vine to show what vintage means.

The vine-turned-star was Chardonnay Row 1, Vine 3 (renamed #ChardyTuesday) of our Tinhorn Creek Vineyard.  Sitting right in front of my home, it was ideal for those gotta-get-the-five-year-old-on-the-bus-and-tweet-a-vine-in-only-ten-minutes kind of mornings.

I started sending out a weekly look at the VINE and one of its CLUSTERS. I wrote short explanations of what had happened during the week with respect to operations or weather events and sometimes a bit of an insight into my thoughts on how the vintage was shaping up.  Note: just click on an individual picture in the links above and my comments will appear.

I never missed a week of posting in five months–from bud burst in early May to harvest day on October 7.  (Ahem, there was one day where I got home to find a host of followers asking “What happened to the #ChardyTuesday update yesterday?”… D’oh!).

It became a chronicle of the 2010 season, and I find myself referring back to it even now, months after it has ended.  I think it connected people to what we do on this land in a very personal way.   Hopefully it also gave the people following the hash tag a sense of that illusive thing called “vintage”.  It allowed me to explore a new way of interacting with our customers–which always excites me.  Lastly,  it gave me a zillion ideas for how to bring people closer to the place that, 16 years ago, lured me up from California.

…look for #SyrahTuesday in 2011, with a twist…or three.  I can’t do anything the same way twice.