VineyardTrips Blog

You might notice I've added a new feature on the home page and the individual entry pages:  the Facebook Like button.  I'm hoping this will help spread the word about VineyardTrips.com because frankly it's been a little lonely around here the first week after launch!  (very gratified to have Charlie Adler from Idrinkonthejob as a new member though!) Although I'd love to have every visitor actually join this site and participate, many people are too busy to join another fledgling social site, even if it is about wine ;-)  Now you have an easy way to acknowledge you like something you see here without having to join on the spot, but of course I hope you'll come back and join us later.

I'll have an update sometime this weekend about Wine in the Woods.  It was great fun and I got to meet some great people there, including Matthew from the Free State Wine Project. If you keep up with Maryland wine blogs, you should definitely add Matthew's blog to your list.

Well here it is, ready or not...Wine in the Woods is one of the premier wine events in Maryland, a great opportunity for area Wineries to promote their wines, and a great opportunity for me to get the word out about VineyardTrips.com!  I wish things were further along in the development of this site before beginning to promote it to a wider audience, but since my day job takes priority, I'm limited to weekend web development only.  All for the best though; this site will always be a work in progress, so I'm happy to get people involved now and allow VineyardTrips members to steer the course for new features and enhancements.

If you'd like to meet up at Wine in the Woods, I'll be "tweeting" throughout the day.  Be sure to follow us @VineyardTrips on Twitter.com and we'll be sure to connect. And by all means, if you're visiting this site and haven't joined and rated some of your favorite local vineyards, join now!  If you're one of the Maryland vineyards or wineries listed here or you want to be listed here, please contact me or submit your listing and we'll get you squared away.

See you tomorrow!

With the majority of the pre-launch development work completed, I'm ready to start adding vineyards & wineries to the site. It's a pretty daunting task considering how many are out there, but I'm very enthusiastic and who knows, I might even find a little help along the way from vineyard owners and the visitors of this site. I will probably find a data source to initially fill out the site and make it useful, which will give me a good start, but I'm more excited about meeting wine lovers and wine entrepreneurs across the country and seeing each new vineyard entry come alive with comments and ratings.

Since I live in Maryland and Maryland vineyards like Black Ankle, Elk Run, an Sugarloaf Mountain are among the first to cause me to catch the wine bug, I'll start by entering those into the site. If you're the owner of one of the vineyards listed (or if you don't see yours listed here) and want to ensure your page here is accurate and the best possible representation of your company, please claim your vineyard or feel free to contact me any time.

I've been spending some long nights hacking this website together, and I'm getting very close to launching.  This post serves as an initial test post and a heartfelt welcome to everyone who joins the site to share their experiences with not only enjoying great local wines, but visiting the vineyards and wineries where they come from. 

My experiences in visiting local wineries have always left me with a great energy as most owners are very accessible and filled with the kind of enthusiam and passion found in people who are in the middle of fulfilling a dream.  I hope to get to know many more people like that, and I hope VineyardTrips.com will enable you to do the same.