Wine is a social experience

While I don't mean to be negative to wine-centric social networks, one thing that I keep coming back to personally is that wine IS a social experience.

I can definitely say that I have never, ever lined up 3 or 4 vintages on my desk, next to my computer, to do a wine tasting. The only one time where I was drinking by myself and making notes about it on a wine social network (Corkd, for the record), it was awfully hard to shake the guilty feeling of "drinking alone."

Wine is a social experience. It's not something that is simply consumed (for the most part) it is a drink that's experienced - especially the further up the wine knowledge ladder you get.

The more you get into wines, the more you want to learn about them. The more you learn about them, the soil and climate conditions of a region, the vinting techniques and people involved, the label design and texture all come together to create an experience that is less of an experience if it's not shared with someone in that time, and place.

I think that's the point where a lot of the current wine 2.0 buzz kind of misses out. The technology are being developed to enable and share wine knowledge, but they're largely missing on the experience. Meetup.com has done very well creating local niche experiences, and maybe that's the missing ingredient in wine social networks today (that I've seen thus far) is how to make that global knowledge and enthusiasm of wine reviewing and turn into hyper-local gatherings where people can enjoy, learn and experience wines in a social context.