Special for WBW #38: integrating community into our store…introducing “Wine Blogger Sampler-Packs”. First up? Portuguese table wines selected by Catavino!

Becoming a part of the wine blogging community has been one of the best parts about domaine547. We didn’t realize what a welcoming group wine bloggers would be, and we hadn’t even been that involved with wine blogs before we started writing ourselves in early spring of this year.

The origins of our blog involve an idea for a wine club with an educational focus — it was initially meant as a place for our club members to come and learn about wine, a place where they could have a dialogue. Quickly, however, the wine club became a small component of a more standard retail operation, and the blog was re-envisioned as a portal to our store.

Now, the blog really has taken on a life of its own, and the store has remained separate, by and large. The blog is chock full of community, with people posting really fantastic comments, with other bloggers contributing guest pieces and interviews, and with user-contributed video tasting notes, of which we hope to post more soon. The store? Ummmmm, not so much!

Plainly, bringing community into our store is is something we’ve struggled with. We want so much for the store to be more than just another place to buy wine, or wine related gadgets. We do think we’re doing a pretty good job at these basic retail functions, considering it’s our first year in business; but if we just wanted to be a plain old retail store then, well, we’d probably have gone the click and mortar route, since there are disadvantages to being purely web-based. Sure, we have less overhead being online only, but we also go through less volume of product than if people were able to come in our space, see product, and walk out the door carrying home goodies.

And while we want the domaine547 store to be an extension of our blog and involve community, we want that “community” aspect to be different than what others are already providing. There are already many places to go post tasting notes, reviews, and rate wines — places like CellarTracker or Cork’d that are doing this in ways more technologically advanced than we can — and we don’t really want to reinvent the wheel. So, we thought and thought and thought and thought, and remained stumped as to how to integrate community into the retail portion of our endeavor.

Until one day, not so long ago, it hit us. This was after many months of talking more and more to other bloggers, and reading, on a daily basis, regionally-specific and subject-specific blogs: blogs like Good Wine Under $20 for value wines, Brooklynguy Loves Wine for French wines (we were hooked on the Beaujolais challenge), LENNDEVOURS for New York wines, Catie for the wines of Walla Walla, and Catavino for Iberian wines. Finally, after several months of integrating these folks into our daily routine, it occurred to us, why should we limit our interactions to email, comments, Facebook and Twittering? If we’re learning so much from these other folks, why not provide a way in our store to showcase the expertise afforded to us by these bloggers?

When we started domaine547, it was to further our own wine education. While we trust our palates, we also value the fact that there are people out there who know more than we do about any number of subjects. In these cases, why not invite wine bloggers with specific areas of focus and expertise to curate selections of wines in our store, for sale to their readers and ours, so we can all broaden our knowledge? And there you have it — a long-winded pre-amble to our new “Wine Blogger Sampler-Pack” Program, which we’re launching to coincide with Wine Blogging Wednesday #38.

The first pack will feature three wines selected by Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino, and will hopefully represent the first of many “Catavino-Packs” to come. In the future, we’ll also be featuring other blogger-packs, including a Brooklynguy-Pack, a GWU$20-Pack, a Good Grape-Pack, and a Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman-pack. We see this as just the beginning (we do admit, though, that we’re having a horrible time finding Long Island and New York wines available through our LA distributors, so the LENNDEVOURS-pack is sadly up in the air).

We’d like to give big props to Ryan and Gabriella who are helping us launch this program with a selection of three tremendous wines. They are providing extensive notes to go along with the Vinho Verde, Trincadera and Touriga Nacional wines in their pack, along with an authentic Portuguese Pork recipe that will pair especially well with the two red wines.

Who knows, maybe some of these wines will even be written about by other bloggers for WBW #38; and seeing as Portuguese outside of Douro reds have been hard for some to track down, maybe you’ll want to branch out and try a few hand-picked selections straight from Iberian wine experts themselves. So, it’s not exactly a revolutionary, revelatory Web 2.0 solution. But maybe that’s the thing. Community isn’t all clicks and YouTubes and technology. Sometimes its just about sharing ideas.

Check out the “Catavino-Pack” at our store, where we’re starting the process of integrating community. It’s valued at $55, but to honor WBW #38, we’re offering it for $50. Also, any wine bloggers who use the code “blogger” during check-out will also receive a nifty WMF wine accessory. Why? Just ’cause we think you deserve it.

You’ve heard Gary V. say it, and finally we think it’s finally beginning to apply to the store portion of domaine547, so we think we’ll take the liberty of quoting him: “You, with a little bit of [us], we’re changing the wine world”. Yeah baby!

what's all this, then?

Domaine 547 is a community meant for people who want to come along with us on our journey, as we learn about the world of wine.

It’s a point of view, that says wine need not be put on a pedestal or saved for special occasions, but should instead be a part of everyday life—because life is just that much better with a glass of wine in your hand (unless, of course, you are an alcoholic or under the age of 21).

Domaine 547 is a virtual tour guide, a way for all of us to travel the globe, even when our wallets and schedules might not permit physically doing so.

Mostly, it’s a place without pretensions, where we can drink, learn, communicate, and probably drink some more. And of course, there is no snobbery or attitude allowed.

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