Open that Bottle Night: The perfect excuse to raid the cellar…

It’s been a rough start to 2012. On 5 January, my beloved dad passed away. He’d fought various cancers over the past few years, but sadly, the day after he’d been released from hospital he had a tragic accident at home as he pushed all boundaries trying to explore his newfound freedom.

The loss has really rattled me, and made me reassess what’s important in life. Dad was a passionate man, humble, rather shy (yes I did not get that quality from him) but always up for a good time with his friends. So with a new perspective on mortality, and a philosophy to live every day as if it’s your last, it’s appropriate timing to get behind Open That Bottle Night on 25 February, to raid the cellar and share wines that have sentimental meaning (not necessarily the most expensive, but ones I’ve been wanting to try).

What’s Open that Bottle Night all about?

The concept is not a new one. In fact it was invented over 10 years ago by former Wall Street Journal columnists, John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter as a way to share the many great wine anecdotes they heard from their wine loving readers. The first OTBN stories were printed in their wine column and proved to be hugely popular with their readers. Every year, the event grew and soon OTBN parties were being held all over the world. More info on background

Dorothy and John

Since John and Dottie left the newspaper in 2009, OTBN has lost some momentum so a good friend Liz O’Connell and I (with blessing from the founders John & Dottie), got behind it again last year and were thrilled to see such momentum. The USA is already organizing parties and madly tweeting using #OTBN, let’s hope the momentum can grow even more this year using social media to spread the word.

The wine could be a special vintage from the cellar, your dad’s favourite wine, the wine you enjoyed on your first date or one you bought on a memorable visit to a winery. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just a bottle that means something to you. Or if you aren’t saving a wine (wine is meant to be drunk after all!) OTBN is a good excuse to go out and buy a bottle and treat yourself!

Personally, we tried some interesting and surprising examples at our dinner party last year – some old Rosemount wines that we’d bought on our first trip to the Hunter when learning about wine (all under $10 priced) and then a Mountain Blue Shiraz 1996, A Mt. Panorama Winery Chardonnay that a friend had bought on a trip to Bathurst, d’Arenberg Lucky Lizard 2006, Tyrrell’s HVD Semillon 2005, Carlei Cabernets (last bottle from our wedding),  1995 Plantagenet Mount Barker Cabernet and 2000 Seppelt Drumborg Riesling (the first Brand I’d managed when working in wine) just to name a few. There were plenty of stories and great discussions and it was the perfect reminder why wine can be such a great part of a social setting.

Looking forward to hearing your stories about the wines that will be opened.

Some tips on how to get involved:

• Join the OTBN Facebook page and share your favourite wine stories, photos or videos

• Follow OTBN on twitter  and use #OTBN in your tweets about wine that you could potentially open

• Organise a dinner or OTBN party with wine loving friends or family and ask people to bring along something special for dinner

• Wineries – this is also a great opportunity to open up conversations with your wine club/ mailing lists and encourage them to open some old your wine that they may have stored.

• Retailers/ Restaurants – a good promotion for some of your older vintage wines to be on promotion for the night – share your stories on why people should open those bottles.

• Wine Writers/ Bloggers – help us spread the word Down Under and advise your readers – this is something everyone can get involved in regardless of their understanding of wine.

And the #pinotsmackdown title goes to… New Zealand!

Pinot Noir lovers all over the world united last Thursday 18^th August for the second annual #pinotsmackdown. It was country vs country in a flurry of tweets that sought to identify the best Pinot Noir producing region or nation. Pinot Noir lovers used twitter as a medium to taste and tweet about a range of Pinot Noir, many at specific events being hosted to allow consumers and the trade to sample different wines and then used a regional hashtag to vote.

Whilst there’s always a competitive rivalry between Australia and New Zealand, and a win for Australia would have been nice (especially given the recent Rugby Union results), it was exciting to see the New Zealand wine industry, spurred on by @Jayson_Bryant  and @nzwine, get behind a social media event and collaboratively come together to talk about the great Pinot Noir wines being produced from numerous New Zealand wine regions. According to organizer Ed Thralls, the votes were super close with only 23 votes separating New Zealand from Oregon who came in at a close second followed by California and then Australia in fourth place. Full results posted here . Well done to New Zealand wineries!

I discovered and subsequently have sought out and purchased a number of different Pinot Noir wines that I tried on the day with the notable Australian stand outs from my perspective being the Hoddles Creek Pinot Noir 2010  (exceptional value), Heemskerk Tamar Valley Pinot Noir 2010, Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir 2009 and the Dalrymple Pinot Noir 2010  from Tasmania. Whilst direct sales may not always correlate immediately from these varietals days, it certainly raised awareness of some of the brands and regions producing great Pinot Noir globally.

From the Tweetreach tracker that I set up two days prior to the event, the final numbers taken on 20^th were as follows:

• Reach – 451,404
• Exposure – 9,051,004 impressions
• 5,237 tweets from
• 1,092 different contributors

There’s always debate about what these numbers mean and different reporting systems will show various results. What is important to note is that when a global community comes together, brands who leverage can help to raise awareness and trial of their product.

What you can take out of this – Learnings for future events:

Unlike days like #chardonnay day and #cabernetday – we always expected #pinotsmackdown to have a more specialized audience, but that does not mean it wasn’t worthwhile to get involved. Some learnings for wineries new to these sorts of tweets ups to consider:

• There’s value in participating – Even submitting a sample, it can help to facilitate trial and future purchase of your wine. You never know who will turn up at a tasting to try your product and comment and there’s often cases of new distributions being gained after positive feedback from varietal days like #pinotsmackdown. It’s also a good way to build a two way dialogue to get some feedback on what people think.

• Spread the word to your own followers and get them involved - Don’t just leave it up to the venue to promote different tastings being held, help to build an audience and promote to your audience (or twitter followers) where people can go to get involved. These days are not about a specific brand, but an opportunity to tell a varietal or category story and the success depends on how the wine community comes together.

• Host a Tweet Up at your venue – those venues who got behind the initiative and organized a function, promoting to their own audience well in advance found benefits. If you’re a retailer, bar or winery, why not consider hosting one of these events and getting people along to try a range of different wines.

• Use the opportunity to build a community – following the twitter stream of tweets using the relevant hashtag highlights wineries, influencers and consumers who are highly involved in the topic. It’s an opportunity to find new people to follow and interact with. Start to engage in a dialogue with them and get to know new people

• Prepare in advance – those brands and venues who thought about how they would leverage the opportunity were the ones that got the best results. With so many upcoming events, think about which ones are relevant to participate in and start to think about how you can engage your sales team, distributors, and consumers. This may mean including in your next eNewsletter, organizing special packs to sell to consumers or talking to some of your customers and helping them get involved.

Get ready for the next events:

If you enjoyed the fun of the #pinotsmackdown, there’s more in store over the next few months – get involved in:

• Cabernet Day – 1 September – http://cabernet.eventbrite.com/
• Grenache Day  – 24 September – http://www.grenachesymposium.com/GrenacheNews/
• Rose Revolution Kick Off: 10 November - http://rosewinerevolution.com/

Related Articles

• All the run down from the host Ed Thralls of WineTonite

• Pinot Unearthed Wrap up of what tasted

« Previous Entries