Wine Riot

This was a great event for sampling different wines and finding new favorites to add to my collection. The event wasn’t crowded, which made it easy to move from one station to another and sample the wines without having to wait on a long line. I tasted an array of wines and cocktails and kept track of the ones I loved with the Second Glass app.
With all the wine tasting going on, I was pleased that there was food available for purchase to soak up some of the alcohol. Pizza and spinach squares from the Upper Crust Pizzeria were yummy, but I was disappointed that there were no samples or food available for purchase at the Luke’s Lobster station.
Twenty minute wine crash courses, swag, and a stop at the Unilocal table to chat with other Unilocalers all combined to round out this event and make it a fun day!

Amateur hour. That best summarizes this event. The organizers are amateurs, looking to make money from young folks who don’t know any better. I happen to know better, having tasted at many wineries and attended numerous food and wine tasting events from SF to DC. Those events featured many more vendors (typically hundreds of vendors offering thousands of products) and cost less than Wine Riot’s $ 50 admission price that gave me access to approx. 20 booths pouring the worst wine I’ve ever tasted in my life.
As you can see from a fellow Unilocaler’s photos, Rodney Strong was one of the most prominent wineries featured (most of the other vendors were distributors rather than wineries). Rodney Strong. Yikes. Need I say more about the quality of the wine? The organizers failed to provide any palate cleansers to aid the tastings (no coffee beans to smell, no crackers, etc), although I soon realized this was a ploy to overwhelm everyone’s palates so that no one would recognize how truly awful the wine was. Very little food was available (none of it free)– a lobster roll vendor and pizza. At numerous booths I saw pourers texting while pouring, obviously wishing they were somewhere else. I understood that sentiment, although I found it unprofessional and unacceptable.
When I voiced my complaints to the organizers, all I got in return was attitude. Tyler didn’t want to hear my critique, repeatedly cut me off and offered no redress. All I got was a smarmy «Good luck finding some wine you like.» Well, I like lots of wine, though none of it was at Wine Riot, where I wouldn’t pay a cent for any bottle they had. I lived in the bay area for many years, which is where I fell in love with wine, and have visited most of the wineries from Napa to Mendocino and beyond. I’ve had my share of great wines, and I know what a tasting is supposed to be like. In fact, I’m sure Tyler himself has had great wine, but sadly he could not provide any at Wine Riot. Maybe one day he’ll come to understand the value of customer service.
Wine Riot is a great event if you don’t mind forking over $ 50 to get drunk off of small pours of terrible wine. Personally, I’d rather pay $ 50 for a great bottle of wine and save myself the trouble of experiencing Tyler’s attitude. I’m still wondering what my $ 50 paid for.

I stalked Second Glass on Facebook and Twitter all week long in hopes of winning tickets to this event, just so I could work my magic at the photo booth.
My friend: «Did we come here to drink wine or take photos?!»
Me: «Does it really matter? It’s not like we paid for the tickets. Yeah, but I really did come here just for the photo booth…»
The photo booth gets 1 bagazillion stars, and the rest of the event gets 3 stars, so that averages out to 4…
I primarily wish the event was a bit longer, as I don’t understand the concept of sipping wine at a 4 hour tasting event. There’s no time to sip wine! Lines weren’t a problem, there was just so much wine. I’m gulping that wine down buddy. I may have considered sipping the wine if I had more time… I also don’t understand the concept of tossing wine you don’t want in a bucket. Uhhhh, that’s a waste kids. I gulp wine I like and gulp wine I don’t like, so I can get it out of my face as quickly as possible. Yeah, I’m the queen of logic.
With the amount of wine I saw people throwing out, they might as well have served us wine out of a petri dish.
I’m not a huge wino, and probably enjoyed looking at all the wineries marketing more than the actual wine, and I think I was more excited about an orange slice in my wine than the actual wine, but I will still try to come back next year, because I love photo booths and temporary tattoos that much.
Even though I won tickets, I think this event would have been worth the $ 50 tickets. Three cheers for photo booths, temporary tattoos, cheese, chocolate, orange slices, and… wine?

Review 800! Excellent event! No stuffy wine snobs here. Everything is all high tech and modern. There is PLENTY of wine, food, and music. Fun times can spring up anywhere! So can ‘learning’ with multiple educational seminars! And there is even a photobooth where you can preserve your drunken antics for life via internet photos! I enjoyed my second DC wine riot & look forward to the next!

I had a really great time at Wine Riot. Unfortunately, I did not love any of the wines, but there were a few that I liked — the handy mobile app helped me to remember. However, I still had fun getting drunk and tasting everything. And it was not super crowded, so that was awesome.
I appreciated that there were food vendors (some with samples — shout out to Cabot and Taza Chocolate). Taza Chocolate is my favorite chocolate ever, so I was super excited to see them there (you can buy it at both Peregrine locations). It was definitely handy having Upper Crust (the DC location is better than some of the Boston ones) there and $ 2 per slice is super reasonable. And of course, it was great to see Kristin and the Unilocal booth.
Wine. How classy people get drunk.