Braintree wine merchants Craig Drollett and John Hafferty are helping to bring wine tasting, and all the swishing, sniffing and swirling that goes with it, online.
The pair opened a wine shop called Bin Ends on Wood Road in Braintree in May. They recently hosted their first online wine-tasting with the help of wine aficionado Eric Solomon. Solomon led the discussion on the social networking site Twitter.com, from his home in Charlotte, N.C.
As wine lovers across the world logged on to the site, Solomon blogged about the noses, legs and bouquets of the six Spanish wines chosen for sampling. More than 200 oenophiles sipped and blogged along with him as they sampled the wines during an hourlong session.
“Everybody’s tasting and no one’s being shy,” Drollett said as he watched the discussion unfold on his computer screen.
Although tasting wine in front of a computer screen doesn’t sound very social, Drollett speculated that most participants were not alone, making a party out of it by inviting friends and family to share in the online discussion. Then again, he said, some people just might prefer indulging in the intricacies of wine in the company of an online community rather than an actual crowd.
“You can be at home in your pajamas asking a guy like Eric Solomon questions, and no one would know,” Drollett said. “How often does that happen?”
Comments posted on Twitter ranged from the serious – “notes of straw, white peach, juicy and a hint of banana” – to light-hearted – “this wine is funky like Parliament” wrote a participant who gave his name as “1 Wine Dude.”
“I’m craving this wine with a pile of fresh shrimp showered with fresh lemon. Anyone got some to share?” posted Gabriella Opaz, who writes for Catavino, a Barcelona-based blog on Spanish and Portuguese wines.
As they moved into the red wines, “Richard” wrote, “I generally like Mexican wines, but this one did not do it for me. Almost too tannic; not enough fruit.”
With the online wine community growing, the owners of Bin Ends said synching up with wine bloggers is a good business move for them.
People between the ages of 21 and 34 are more likely to be online, Drollett said. And, according to Scarborough Research, people in that age group buy about 25 percent of the wine sold in the United States.
“Who’s up on Twitter? It’s not senior citizens, I can tell you that,” Drollett said.
Abbie Swanson may be reached at aswanson@ledger.com.
WINE ONLINE
Bin Ends is sponsoring another online wine tasting beginning at 7 p.m. on Aug. 21. It will be led by Alsatian winemaker Etienne Hugel and Tim Elliot of http://www.winecast.net. Follow the tasting discussion online at http://twitter.com/binendswine. A list of the wines to be sampled on Aug. 21 is at http://www.binendswine.com/tastings.
