Joe Sterne's Blog

I have to admit, I’m really enjoying learning more about/being part of wine country.

So, right before I headed home from the east coast this past week, I got pinged on
Twitter by Eventbrite‘s San Francisco handle. I had entered a twitter contest a couple of
weeks back to attend the Sunday part of the 2013 San Francisco Vintners’ Market on
Eventbrite’s dime. Well, I ended up winning a set of tickets! After convincing* Jules to
go with me, we packed our camera bags.

We headed up to San Francisco mid morning on Caltrain. We took a leisurely stroll
from the Caltrain station all the way to Fort Mason(it’s quite a hike). The weather on
Sunday was absolutely wonderful, which made our walk that more pleasant. After a little
bit, we arrived at the event.

The massive show floor (I guess I can call it that) was divided into three sections. The
front main area everyone can access and two smaller areas that were gated off (nicer
wines/spirits with a different ticket price). Our tickets only got us into the main area, but
that still left us with plenty of wines to try. So many brands were there, we couldn’t
sample all of them. After getting our take home tasting glasses (which is basically a requirement
out here), we set off to discover some new brands.

And discover we did. We found a brand that had bagged wine…served out of a custom
Army ammo crate**. Another brand had kegs (no joke) of wines that you could order. A
brand that made olive oil/ balsamic vinegar were handing out delicious samples. One of
my favorite brands of ginger ale/beer was on site as well. Another brand (which makes
spiced wine) was using their pomegranate flavor as a spritzer mixer! Surprisingly, we
even found Pilsner Urquell there, handing out full glasses of beer (I guess you need a
full glass to really get a taste?)

We found out (by one rep at a table) that Saturday was even more packed than
Sunday- we thought it was pretty packed. However, we were able to sample some
despite the crowds. Some wines we enjoyed so much that we ended up picking up a bottle!
Afterwards, we headed back home and ended meeting up with Traci and Corrie from
Google Local for a (very light) snack.

It was a very fun event- it’s on our ‘remember to sign up for 2014’ list. Thanks again to
Eventbrite for the tickets. Want to see more shots? Mosey over to my Flickr page.

*Obviously this was sarcasm – it wasn’t that difficult.
**If I gave out a packaging award of the year, this would have won it.