It isn’t often that you get to participate in a unique event that combines on- and off-line interests. When I got the chance to participate in the Twitter Taste Live Online – Only Charity Wine Tasting with Bin Ends Wines in Massachusetts and Humanitas Winery, I jumped at it. Humanitas is a unique winery that focuses on helping local charities through wine – a cause I can fully support.

The charity that benefited from this event was the Fallen Soldiers Fund. The interesting thing about Humanitas Wines is how every sale benefits various local charities. This one happened to benefit a local charity on a larger sale (the owner of Bin Ends wine also added an online auction element of some of his favorite wines from his personal cellar). You don’t have to wait for a Humanitas tasting near you to make a difference, though. If you can receive or gift wine in your state, you can benefit a charity just by purchasing wine online.

How does an online-only tasting work? This was a first, so the next one will be a bit different, but this one combined Twitter and Ustream with the Twitter Taste Live and Humanitas web sites. One lucky blogger (in this case Matt, better known as wine blogger mmWine) tasted the wines one at a time on camera via Ustream. The rest of us who had the wines (some were sent the wines gratis before hand, some purchased a three pack from Bin Ends a week in advance for the tasting) then chimed in via Twitter with out own impressions of the wine, using hashtag #ttl.

The purpose of the hashtags in Twitter are to make things easier to find in Twitter search (formerly known as Summize before Twitter bought the application). In this case, you could search #ttl at any point during the tasting and see every wine note, blog post, audio post, photo, and video related to the tasting in real time. Several times during the event we became the number one trending topic on Twitter search. It was interesting to see everyone participating live from different time zones, states and countries, read what they were tasting the wine with (food) and their real time impressions.

The Twitter Taste Live series is a recurring event, though this is the first one to incorporate the charitable element. Notes I have for next time a combination Web site, Twitter, live video feed event is planned is to use a different video application, like Stickam, that allows for more people to be on camera. Ustream has notoriously faulty feed stability when overloaded, and Twitter Taste Live events are only growing in popularity. Stickam and other multi-input sites also allow for a more dynamic tasting with more than one blogger viewpoint.

All bandwidth issues and glitches for a first time online event spanning countries and services aside, this was a fun and interesting way to spend an evening. I was not holding out high hopes for the wines because of the charity element, and was pleasantly surprised to see Humanitas delivered some above average quality with it’s Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. In fact, I’d o as far as to call their Sauvignon Blanc my third favorite white ever (Casa De Las Vides white desert blend is number one so far, and a stunning voigner is second).

I highly recommend joining the social network attached to Bin Ends Wines and Twitter Taste Live so that you can participate in the next tasting. If you don’t already have a Twitter account, get one of those also so you can chime in on the wines you taste. It may not be video blogged, and it may not benefit a charity, but it is still a fun way to pass time and meet new winos, er, ‘friends who share your interests’.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 3:48 am under Blogosphere, Opinion, Social Media.

Read more entries by Leslie Poston.
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