Knowing what to expect when stepping onto the hiking trail can often mean spreading the joy.

Um, excuse me, but how now, brown cow?

OK, chances are you love to hike, or you know somebody who does. There is nothing quite like getting your heart to beat a little faster while you breathe the sweet fresh air of a forested mountainside and saunter along its spectacular trails with friends new and old.

Hiking, as many of us are aware, is a healthy activity and, if the proliferation of hiking and other outdoors-inspired blogs is any indication, appears to be growing in popularity. Many residents of California engage in regular hiking activity and will boast that California has many, if not the most, varied and beautiful hiking trails in the West. That’s indeed a sentiment that is hard to deny.

I love hiking. I also love bringing people along with me to enjoy the outdoors – I’ve enjoyed doing that for years – and I often endeavor to augment peoples’ experiences beyond what they expect. By keeping my ears open for signs that learning can occur, I find that people really enjoy putting a name to a bird call, seeing a coyote for the first time, or learning the difference between a pine cone and a fir cone, or a columbine from a larkspur.

Though I don’t expect my guests to return home bragging after participating in one of my tours, I try to make each tour as special as possible. Often, being mentally prepared in advance of an outing can make the difference between a walk in the forest and a joyous, wholly memorable occasion. Therefore I always follow up to my reserved guests before their tours with helpful reading material that attempts to set a few expectations about what lies ahead for them. After all, there is much to consider when stepping outdoors.

But I don’t think that I should wait for any of my readers to reserve a winehiking tour with me before sharing these very same important tips. So, in the next days and weeks, I’ll be posting checklists and other valuable outdoors tips here on Winehiker Witiculture.

These posts will cover a number of hiking and travel essentials such as hiking gear – both basic and optional – precautions such as avoidance and treatment of poison oak, insect and snake bites, and also what to do in the presence of wildlife such as snakes and coyotes.

I’ll also talk about wilderness etiquette, which is a subject that could bear more widespread understanding. There are many fine trails in the wilderness, but it is important to know how to use our beloved trails with regard to refuse, sanitation, and the collective impact of walking upon them.

All in all, I’ve learned that the more mentally and physically prepared you are when setting foot outdoors, the more you’ll be able to relax, have fun, and enjoy your California hiking and wine-tasting experience. And I’m going to share what I know.

Stay tuned to this blog for updates. Or, if you’re ready to hit the trail with me, then c’mon along! Let’s have some fun together in 2007; I’ve got a few tours posted.*

~winehiker

*If you’re still searching for the right holiday gift, consider a gift certificate for a winehiking tour from California Wine Hikes. You can even choose your own gift level! Just click the “Buy a Gift Certificate” button in the sidebar to your right. And Happy Holidays!!

I’m going to try an experiment here - a sort of wine review digest. I can’t in good conscience call the following compendium “tasting-sized pours” in the same manner as Dr. Vino, so instead I’m going to call them “Polishing The Glasses”. For now. But please do upgrade my current mental flaccidity with a better handle if you possibly would.

Meanwhile, on with the Amalgamated Show.

From PB over at WineCask comes a review of a popular-brand table wine, a vintage 1986 from Sonoma County. PB posts a lot of wine reviews in cahoots with his blogging partner, NW. But wait, a 20-year-old table wine? PB examines the good, bad, and ugly process by which he chose the Rodney Strong, even if the main influence was its drastically marked-down price:

I asked, “What are the odds that this wine will even be drinkable?” The man took the bottle, held it up to the light, and pondered it. I was skeptical about what seemed to be a “show” more than anything. The guy said, something like, “It still has a pretty decent red and not much draw down.” I said, “You can see that through the tinted glass?”

Fortunately for him, PB bought the wine anyway, if only for education’s sake. Nevertheless, his 1986 Rodney Strong Zinfandel selection turned out to be not so ugly after all.

Apparently new to the blogging scene is JimW with his Do It Different blog, and he’s been busy. Jim has reviewed 11 wines so far this December, his first month at posting to his blog. Are you going for one wine a day, Jim? Well, it is the party season.

Jim must be fairly goggle-eyed already, especially if any of those Chards and Spanish reds that he seems to like have the kind of heat I suspect they could. Despite what must be a brand-new December delirium, I like Jim’s curious blend of history, speculation, critique, and off-dry humor:

“Ever wondered what a gaucho drinks out of their bota bag while riding their pony on the Patagonia pampas down Argentina way? It might be water, could be Gatorade, perhaps Diet Coke, possibly some kind of fu-fu latte, or, as I’m inclined to believe, a macho Malbec. And, if they’re a little short of dinero, they might be drinking this Valentin Malbec.”

For more different doin’s, see Jim’s latest post, Malbec’s - Argentina Wine to look for.

And finally, I’ve got a review from Tom Ciocco, author of Wine Library’s “in-depth, opinionated, and often irreverent” Terroir blog, who ponders whether his perception of a wine “differs” if he’s writing about it or not. Tom considers it to be similar to “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle” within wine criticism:

Both the in-the-moment perceptions as well as the memories of an “undocumented” wine’s characteristics just post-drinking seem more emotional, more “right brain” if you will. I can always “feel” how much I appreciated the wine, but am often very much at odds to “quantify” what I just experienced without pouring another glass, and shifting myself into analysis mode.

I feel for this guy, really I do. But I have to switch off my left brain first.

Does critiquing a wine differ from taking pleasure in it? Take a look at Tom’s latest post, The Inner Life of the Wine Review, and let it wash over your consciousness.

And then go polish your Spiegelaus.

~winehiker

• Get ready to nominate your favorite wine blogger at the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards
  
  The first American Wine Blog Awards are scheduled to occur sometime next year. Nominations will be start to be accepted in early January 2006.
  (tags: american wine blog awards blogs bloggers wines writers background information nomination)

Tom Wark has just laid out some background information about the first American Wine Blog Awards, which are scheduled to occur sometime next year. The date of the awards presentation is yet to be determined; meanwhile, nominations for The American Wine Blog Awards will be start to be accepted in early January 2006.

According to Tom, the purpose of the AWBA is to:

“…encourage the proliferation of high quality, thoughtful and innovative wine-related communications using the Blog format. By recognizing the best wine blogs in a number of categories, we hope to persuade all wine bloggers (and wine bloggers to-be) to produce high quality contributions to the wine writing genre.”

For more info about the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards, including a breakdown of the seven categories for nomination, check out today’s post on Tom’s Fermentation blog.

[Insert shameless self-promoting plug below.]

Thank you for reading Winehiker Witiculture! I’m glad you’re walking this wine trail with me.

~winehiker

• Legendary Football Coach Mike Ditka to Release New Wine: “Kick A$$ Red”
  From football to wine? Some say “what’s the connection?” and others say “it was only a matter of time”.
  (tags: mike ditka kick ass red parducci wine blend price 49 dollars)
• City Utilities End Coal Fired Electricity Contracts in California
  In what is hopefully the start of a new trend, several Southern California cities have decided not to renew long-term contracts for coal-fired electricity
  (tags: ALTERNATIVE ENERGY BLOG Solar Wind Power)
• Gridlock in wild areas: Time for new policies
  Up high on the Butano rim, I sailed around a corner on my mountain bike, an exhilarating downhill glide — and suddenly ran head-long 40 feet ahead into two horseback riders on the right, three hikers on the left.
  (tags: mountain biking bikers hikers trails multi use ride rider hike trail encounter policy policies single track)
• Ocean Fish, Seafood Could Collapse by 2048
  The world’s fish and seafood populations will collapse by 2048 if current trends in habitat destruction and overfishing continue, resulting in less food for humans, researchers said Thursday.
  (tags: EnviroLink Network fish seafood oceans world earth environment populations trend habitat destruction)
• Global Warming Seen Pushing up Insurance Costs
  Global warming will push up insurance premiums in high-risk areas like coastal Florida and other hurricane-prone parts of the United States, according to an insurance company official.
  (tags: envirolink network environment earth world global warming insurance cost coastal florida hurricane)
• No Child Left Inside
  A back-to-nature movement to reconnect children with the outdoors is burgeoning nationwide.
  (tags: nature children kids learning education get outdoors)

Recently I was contacted by Dawn Miller-Croft, Consulting CEO and CFO of WineCountry.com, the well-known lifestyle resource for all things “wine country”, including food, lodging, spas, events and more as they relate to the wine country experience. The website is extremely popular with online readers, serving over 3 million unique visitors annually and over 4 million page views a month.

When you couple those stats with a new site design and additional content that is designed ostensibly to have broader appeal to a younger wine consumer, it’s no small feat to imagine why Ms. Croft felt obliged to include blogs and message boards as important parts of her site’s new arsenal.

Imagine, then, how charmed I was to receive the following query from Ms. Croft via my website, californiawinehikes.com:

“We are in the process of updating our website and were interested in providing a link to your blog as part of our Connect Page. We admire your work and think our visitors would, as well! We, obviously, would like to have a link provided back to us, as part of us including your blog on our site.”

At the time Ms. Croft contacted me, there was yet no Connect page available for viewing. But who was I to kid around with Ms. Croft? Quite unmistakably, I heard rapping on the ol’ opportunity door. I instinctively understood, too, why she had contacted me: both WineCountry.com and Winehiker Witiculture, if nothing else, are about the experience of wine and of visiting and living in the wine country, not to mention the education that reading about wine can provide.

So I wasted no time adding the new community page to my blogroll. (You can see it over there in the sidebar to your right under Wine Blogs.)

Today I feel extraordinarily privileged to see Winehiker Witiculture represented as one of only four wine blogs listed on WineCountry.com’s Connect page. If you’ve been around the vinosphere for long, you may just recognize the other three blogs listed there: wine journalist Jamie Goode’s WineAnorak.com, Bon Vivant Wine Guide’s executive editor Jennifer Frank (a.k.a. Vino Girl) & managing editor Taylor Senatore’s (a.k.a. Wine Monkey’s) Drink The Good Stuff, and Alder Yarrow’s highly-acclaimed Vinography.com.

Wow. That’s great company I’m in.

You know, I think I like this blogging as a lifestyle thing. It’s the next best thing to winehiking. And winehiking is something I am staking my future on as having terrific appeal for wine lovers everywhere.

~winehiker

• Seriously cool mouseover tool
  From snap.com, a nice, free, and seriously cool javascript applet.
  (tags: cool mouseover tool snap preview javascript technical stuff winehiker pop up)
• California vintners’ pitch to Sacramento
  The state’s wine industry is clearly an asset to the economic vitality of California and the United States.
  (tags: california wine industry grapes vintners)
• Premium wine sales pour in
  From the L.A. Times: wine shoppers are plunking down more to drink up, and California is reaping the benefit.
  (tags: california wine industry shoppers consumers spending drinking drink state economy)
• Understanding Fedex/UPS routes for your wine shipments
  Shipping wine long distances by Fedex or UPS ground at certain times of the year can be a risky proposition.
  (tags: wine shipping ship shipment carriers delivery route routes FedEx UPS distance trucking transport)

I was browsing Vivi’s Wine Journal earlier and discovered a tool from snap.com that is just the bee’s knees, so I grabbed the code for free and Voila! - you can now see a “snap preview” of any external site I link out to from this blog without clicking on it. (But click anyway, ‘cuz I’m sure the publishers of those sites will consider your visit as important as your visit today is to me.)

Gosh, I’m so excited about this javascript mouseover app that I wrote that paragraph all in one breath!

Go ahead, try it out. Do a few mouseovers on my blog here*, and let me know what you think, yay or nay. If you like the new Snap Preview tool - or even if you don’t - drop me a line below (click “Join the discussion”). Your response may influence me to also drop the code into my wine and hiking tours site, California Wine Hikes, where it may prove to be extremely useful (unless y’all disagree).

Thanks in advance for checkin’ it out.

~winehiker

*Let your mouse’s arrow rest briefly over any link and see what pops up.

• Are wine blogs, and their authors, important?
  The American Wine Blog Awards are coming soon.
  (tags: wine blogs authors blogging awards winehiker)

Tom Wark over at Fermentation has crafted what I feel to be an op-ed piece that is worth reading, especially if you read wine blogs or are the author of one. 

Image courtesy of Fermentation. 

Regarding the notion of rewarding wine blogs that continually deliver top-notch wine-related material and/or wine reviews, Tom asks the questions, “What is the purpose of Awards?” and “What do they accomplish?”

According to Tom:

“In two years the number of wine blogs have increased in number nearly 10 fold. They focus on a remarkably broad array of topics, come in various languages, and present a variety of perspectives.

My view is that they are important and those writing them need to be encouraged.”

I suggest clicking on over to give Tom’s post, Thinking About Awards, for a few moments’ look-see, because the American Wine Blog Awards are coming soon.

~winehiker