It is European Wine Blogging Conference time once again; off to Vienna to join a motly collection of the great and the good from the wine blogging world.
Last year the journey was made entirely by train; London to Lisbon via the Channel Tunnel and Paris and an overnighter, the SudExpress, through Spain to Lisbon. An exciting little adventure pre-Wine Blogging conference, complete with copious amounts of Champagne to lubricate the passage.

For 2010 the third European Wine Bloggers Conference is taking place in Vienna (at the Schönbrunn Palace no less). A weekend of packed full of seminars, wine tastings and vineyard visits awaits. Vienna is another new city for me so I hope, unlike Lisbon, to take some time out to explore it. While time constraints mean I wont be training it all the way from London, myself and ol’ Sleuthy fly to Munich early Thursday, spend the day there and then catch a train for a four hour journey to Austrias capital. Hopefully the Taittinger will stay cool until we hit the tracks…

I’ve used Haidu, that new multi-faceted concept, as a pre-conference research tool – two wine bars are listed that seem ‘must visits’, while the Haidu magazine section hosts a series of articles by Julia Sevenich entitled an Austrian Wine Adventure tour; sounds like they had a blast (an idea I am bloody keen to replicate once I get there!)

Haidu is still a site in development; ‘social features’ are still to be added and I still have a concern that user generated content is either going to be sparsely provided or duplicated from individual blogs or winery websites but I do like the idea. It would be nice if they were at the EWBC to talk through the options/concept. Mind you if the number of wines listed on Adegga’s conference page are anything to go by, there won’t be time for much talking!

So off to Vienna, via Munich… twittering as we go… and as long as the camera holds out (I’m getting intermittent error problems), taking photos…