Introducing The Facebook Wine Cave Page

siegelwinecave1Read to the bottom of or go to the bottom of this post. I have a plan!

Yes. Social media has and continues to change the way wine lovers share their passion. I think we communicate more about wine with other geeks due to social media. We more easily discover fellow geeks. And the ways by which we discover new wines has expanded with social media.

But I recently introduced to one of the ultimate examples of the way Social Media allows us to express our Wine Dorkhood: The New Siegel Wine Cave” Facebook Page.

The “Siegel” in question is Matt Siegel, a wine lover from New York. The New Wine Cave is his new cellar built in his home. Let me be clear about what’s happening here. Matt Siegel has built a Facebook page devoted not to Matt Siegel, but to Matt Siegel’s Wine Cave.

If you don’t think this is brilliant, I do!

Many winemakers and winery owners in Napa Valley know Matt Siegel. He is a frequent visitor to the Valley, a frequent purchaser of wine from their wineries and he and his wife Nancy have become friends with many of them. They travel to Napa a good at least 4 times per year. I too count them as very good and loyal friends.

Matt clearly has a passion. He likes to share that passion as do so many others who have found solace, joy and intellectual satisfaction in wine. But it’s this idea of a Facebook page devoted to his new cellar that is ripe for consideration?

I’m finding I want to know more about this Wine Cave. Does it have a personality? Will we see The Cave begin posting pictures of its travels, or perhaps of cute kittenssiegelwinecave2 that wander into it? Will The Cave throw parties that Matt finds out about only by visiting The Cave’s page? Will The Cave posts occasional missives about the undesirable characters and the poor manners of the inhabitants of The Cave. Will The Cave begin complaining about Matt and Nancy? It begs the question, can a wine collection have a personality and can we interact with The Cave via social media? It seems we can.

For background, The Cave itself occupies roughly 200 square feet and 1600 cubic feet of space in the Siegel’s upstate New York home. Turns out the intent to have an in-house wine storage room has long been in the Siegels’ minds, but not until they moved from Houston to New York did the Nancy actually design the space and the couple hire a local contractor, United Industries, to execute her plan.

What’s in the cave? According to Matt 850 bottles of wine currently occupy The Cave, which when full will have 1,200 bottles. Eighty percent of his collection is California, primarily from Napa, Sonoma and the Central Coast. About 10% is French (mostly Rhone), 5% is New York (“Gotta support the locals,” explains Matt) and a little bit of Spanish, German and Chilean bottlings fill in the collection.

Matt’s wine epiphany came about 10 years ago. Until then wine was a casual pursuit for him. Then he drank a bottle of the 1997 Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, a wine that opened his eyes to just how  complex a wine could be. As so many of us did after tasting our epiphany wine, Matt jumped in with both feet.

Matt clearly has big feet. For nearly a decade now he and Nancy have been Traveling four times a year to California, mainly Napa Valley and the Central Coast.  I asked Matt how Napa Valley has changed since he started traveling to the Valley:

“We just returned from a 6 day trip to Napa where we visited 21 wineries. Nancy and I were commenting on how certain things have changed in the last few years since we started visiting Napa. We realize at times we are caught in the same conundrum that you locals are…Our private getaway place (or home as we like to call it) should stay frozen in time, with wonderful small family wineries intermixed with a few big ones, great restaurants that remain un-crowded, Silverado Trail should be empty while 29 stays busy, and the line at Gott’s should be just big enough that it scares off the unknowing.. However, we realize it cannot be like that forever and we relish our past visits and work hard to plan our upcoming ones to seek out the new gems. And of course spend time with our friends there!”

Wine cellars in our homes are more than just storage facilities. They are a primary way to bring the wine country back home with us and keep it there as a friend; a reminder; and as a constant siren call. Some cellars are clearly more elaborate than others, but the muffled call of the siren echoing out of one’s closet works just fine too.

But back to this New Siegel Wine Cave. Instead of simply having a town named on Facebook identifying where a photo of wine was taken when Matt uploaded it to personal page, he decided to go a little further. Why not just create a page for his new baby? That’s how it has started and that’s how The New Siegel Wine Cave got it’s own Facebook page.

Facebook-Like-ButtonSo here’s my thought. Let’s everyone with a Facebook account inundate The New Siegel Wine Cave with LIKES and force it to upload more pictures and more photos. Let’s see how social media does motivate an inanimate object to communicate with us. Leave a post for The Cave. Say “Hello” to The Cave. Let’s have fun with The Cave. After all, it was built in reality and on Facebook for the social connections it represents.

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3 Responses

  1. Spencer - November 1, 2013

    Love the Facebook page creator’s creativity. “Liked” and left a post.
    Thanks.

  2. doug wilder - November 1, 2013

    Jumping the shark…

  3. Tom Wark - November 1, 2013

    Yeah, it is, Doug. But still…..you gotta love the commitment and humor Matt has.


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