I had a rocking pairing the other night. In anticipation of the season finale of “Mad Men,” my boyfriend Joel and I made a Spicy Chicken Soup from a fabulous French-Cambodian restaurant cookbook we picked up at the Elephant Walk in Boston.

We cracked open a bottle of 2006 Anderson Valley Dry Gewurztraminer from Castello di Amorosa, and together with a side of corn doused in sweet and spicy sauce, it was heaven. The lime and basil and bird’s eye chilies in the soup matched similar exotic flavors in the Gewurztraminer, and the wine’s hypnotic floral aromas took us much farther away than 1950’s Manhattan.

Bill Daley of the Chicago Tribune must have snapped this photo of me right before the semi-finals of a blind tasting at the Wine Bloggers Conference last weekend. Bummer my quotes didn’t get in, but still cool. I enjoyed meeting Bill - super nice guy - and have always devoured his food writing.

I’ve been given to musing lately on the differences between wine bloggers and wine writers. I’ve got one foot in the print world and the other in the blogosphere, after all, so I feel like I’m straddling two cultures. Guess it’s not unlike my childhood growing up as an Iranian-American.

Many wine writers write about the lifestyle of wine. They tend to assign numerical values to wines and more often than not gear their content to a holiday, season or PR push. Wine bloggers - the ones who take the time to do their research, anyway - are independent, go against the grain, and shake things up. They write about the way wine makes them feel because they have the luxury of throwing life into their writing. A blog post can include the presidential election, choosing the right preschool or why making wine is like a first date.

Wine bloggers fuel - or launch, really - wine movements. Despite the technological advances that fuel their media, they function in a pre-press-release world. Perhaps the great equalizers will be the big issues - climate change, global palatization, sustainability. Those need all of our attention and help.

I have great respect for wine writers like Jancis Robinson, Natalie Maclean and Jay Mcinerney. I think Maclean and Alice Feiring do a particularly good job of straddling writing and blogging . And I’d give one of my kidneys for any of their jobs. Still, I aspire to engage in the ways that Alder Yarrow, Tom Wark and Gary Vaynerchuk do. They don’t make a fuss. It is what it is in the glass. Oh, Gary and Alder also have insanely sweet consulting gigs, but anyway, I digress.

I struggle because I like the credibility that comes with a wine writer business card. I get paid an annual salary to do this. But I love the potential and infinite possibilities of introducing myself as a wine blogger. Sometimes, I wish my print colleagues understood my job better. When they see me lugging cases of unsolicited wine samples, they crack jokes instead of lending a hand.

I am very much a wine blogger in the sense that I pay out of pocket to properly store the wines sent to me for review. But I am a wine writer in the sense that I complain about it. Either way, I figure if this double wine life goes anything like my childhood and cross-cultural upbringing, I should turn out just fine.

1. Able Grape. This is a search engine for wine information with some 38,000 sites and 15 million pages. Call it the Google for Grapes. I was a semifinalist in a blind tasting competition along with the founder, Doug Cook. Great guy.

2. Vino Chapeau. Searching for the honey in a Muscat, I plunked this round, plastic disk on my glass and swirled. When I removed it and sniffed my wine again, it was honey to the third power. Really does what it says: help enhance a wine’s aromas.

3. Alice Fiering, the author of “The Battle for Wine and Love: How I Saved the World from Parkerization,” not only penned a fierce book on palate globalization, but fell into wine blogging at In Vino Veritas by accident, because she was sick of writing “wine entertaining” stories for newspapers that underpaid her. She taught us all to keep stirring the pot. She is also shorter and tinier than me!

4. Cruvee. This social information site allows you to personalize the wine 411 you want to receive. Need recommendations? Want to invite your friends? Want to know who’s making the best wine-related podcasts? This site does it all.

5. Keynote speaker Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV may have had a family business to get him started, but the Vaynerchuk clan had humble beginnings. They immigrated from Russia and lived in a one-room studio. Eight of them. Gary’s father stopped his son’s lucrative baseball card trading business when the kid was 13 and made him work the cash register of the liquor store. During down time, he read the Wine Spectator.

Up next: James David 2007 Muscat is dry, barrel-fermented and has a nose of pure honey and apricots. What a beautiful wine! It’s also got .17% residual sugar, so naturally it’s not sweet. What a beaut! I would love to have some halibut right now with this wine. It’s like Viognier, but with more acidity. David Cole, the owner and assistant winemaker, makes 105 cases of this and it’s going to come out next month and cost $18. The fruit is from Paso Robles and he’s buds with Bennett at Wine Thieves in Lafayette so you’ll be able to find it there. 

Here comes El Jefe from Twisted Oak Winery. The 2006 Twisted Oak Spaniard is 2/3 Tempranillo and the rest is Graciano and Grenache and hails from Calaveras County. What a wine! Just enough oak to give this blend a kiss of vanilla. Look out for more Spanish varietals from California. They’re gonna make a splash.

Next up: Sonoma Coast’s Small Vines located in Grayton. A husband and wife team, they produce 150 cases of this wine. It will be released in November to mailing list-only customers at $65. I don’t quite understand it, but they farm a high density vineyard, which means that they have 3,000 vines per acre. The average is 1,000 in California, but in Burgundy it’s common to be much higher. All I know is that Pinot is the most yield-sensitive varietal in the world. More on that later.

Last up!!! 2007 Cupcake Vineyards Chardonnay. Makes you feel like a kid again. Not too astute that it intimidates, but complex enough, like a precocious 8-year-old. It’s aged for six to eight months in New American Oak. I  like it, especially for $11.99. Megan, my friend who blogs as Wine Clubbie, says she wants popcorn with this wine. I agree!

The live blogging session is over!!! Phew.

Okay folks, trying something totally knew here. I’m at the first ever North American Wine Bloggers Conference in Santa Rosa, CA and we’re tasting wines and blogging about them for one minute each - live. There are 16 tables and 10 bloggers at each table but there are only 14 pourers, so I think we’re going to get neglected. As we all know,

First up. A 2004 Bonterra McNab - an organic and biodynamic blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 26% Merlot and 14% Petit Sirah. It’s dark as a pistol with firm tannins and a lot of meaty fruits. YUM. Bonterra made 500 cases of this beauty and they sell it for $45 retail. Here’s the kicker: the Petit Sirah vines are old (45 years) and we’re talking original root stock. I’s not grafted so it’s got phylloxera in there, but they resist ripping it because the fruit it produces is so stellar and biodynamic farming allows the vines to resist disease. Pretty fascinating, eh?

Phew, ok, I only had a minute to type all that. Next up: Clos LaChance 2005 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, It retails for $30 and they produced 1220 cases of it. The family started the winery in 1992 out of their backyard in Saratoga with 100 cases. The winery is now in San Martin, about an hour south of San Jose. Thirty seconds, ahhhh! The first thing that hit me about this wine: The entry is soft and so is the mid palate, but the finish is spicy and astringent. I like it. The property is filled with hummingbirds that are good to have around because they are very territorial and kill the naughty birds. LaChance is the matriarch’s maiden name.

Ok, I have a few seconds to think so I’m starting to get the point of this thing. It’s an exercise to help you not overthink the wine. Just taste it and jot down the first few things that hit you about it, and get out. Very cool.

Next up: Boho Vineyards. 2006 Central Chardonnay. I wrote about the 2005 in a column I wrote  about boxed wines a few months ago. Boho rocks because it’s high quality, has a toasty nose and all the pineapple and other tropical fruits you expect from a Chardonnay but without the butter and oak.

If you’re dying to get your hands on some magnums of Marin County Pinot Noir while doing a good deed, check out the fall fundraiser at Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Nicasio on Nov. 8. It’s their first, and all proceeds benefit the educational programs offered by Mark Pasternak and others who run the camp and operate the ranch. It’s a full day and there’s something for everyone, so check out your options:

Ranch tour (2 to 4 p.m.): Experience the excitement of a working ranch - vineyards, pigs, sheep, horses and rabbits - and stroll through the gardens and areas where campers spend time learning and connecting with nature.

Kid’s day ( 4 to 10 p.m.; $75/child): Children enjoy camp craft activities while the parents enjoy wine tasting, dinner, and dancing in town. At the ranch the kids can make their own pizza using local ingredients, and enjoy a movie and popcorn. Transportation provided back to Nicasio Square.

Just wine tasting at Druid’s Hall (4 to 6 p.m.): Open to the public and free admission. Devil’s Gulch Ranch sausages available and tasting prices vary. Wineries/Winemakers participating: Brookside Cellars; Dutton-Goldfield Winery; Kendric Vineyards; Moonhill Vineyards; Orogeny Wines; Pacheco Ranch Winery; Pey-Marin Vineyards; Point Reyes Vineyards; Ross Valley Winery; Schramsgerg; Sean Thackrey; Starry Night Winery; Stubbs Vineyard; Thomas Fogarty Winery; Vergari Wines; Vision Cellars; Willowbrook Cellars.

Just dinner and dancing ($75/person not including wine): Enjoy a gourmet dinner with Devil’s Gulch Ranch meats and local produce. Various renowned chefs will participate. Dancing will follow with live music. If you have kids it’s the same price to bring them for the kid’s day listed above. For more information or to RSVP, visit the link above.

I experienced a unique four-course food and wine pairing last night at Jack Falstaff in San Francisco. It was a growers’ dinner, so the intention was to showcase the greens from two local - Marin’s Star Route and Manteca’s Long and Bailey - with wines from the Sonoma’s Iron Horse Vineyards, located in the cool-climate Green Valley.

The stand-out pairing was a Braised & Roasted Pork Trotter with Iron Horse’s 2005 Estate Chardonnay. When you consider evolution of palate, I’ve gone from hating Chardonnays with oak and drinking only naked Chardonnays to understanding and appreciating the subtle nuances, depth and beauty of balanced Chardonnays with a kiss of the right oak. This is such a wine.

Joy Sterling and her fellow vintners at Iron Horse understand that malolactic fermentation is a winemaking tool to balance acid, not a Band-Aid for poor, lackluster fruit. The apple and tropical fruits shine in the nose and on the palate of this sophisticated Chardonnay that only gets better with each bite of fatty pork. Worth every penny of the $27.

I got to savor two of my favorite wines at the Wine & Spirits Top 100 party at San Francisco’s Old Mint Building on Oct. 14. Truth be told I almost felt guilty sucking down all those oysters and Taittinger.

But the party, a benefit for San Francisco Baykeeper, kicks off the magazine’s annual buying guide. And I’m just lucky some of my favorites were in the mix.

For starters, the Flowers 2005 Sonoma Coast Frances Thompson Vineyard Pinot Noir. The grapes come from a terrace vineyard one mile from the ocean, and that schist and shale soil is evident in all the elements of this wine: on the nose, it reminds me of a smoky beach bonfire. On the palate, this is a minerally Pinot Noir with enough dark fruit and acidity to lull you to sleep on that beach, dreaming of Burgundy. The wine retails for $60 and with only 260 cases produced, save yourself the trouble and get it at the winery the next time you head north.

One of my favorite Rhone reds was also honored. The Philippe Faury 2006 St-Joseph is not only a bargain at $28 and available at Kermit Lynch in Berkeley, but it’s a seductive wine in every sense of the word. The nose pulls you in with lilacs and leather and the palate is all plum with bright acidity. This is young Syrah at its finest.

The Oct. 31 Wine Spectator had a thorough piece by Daniel Sogg on the demise of Australia’s wine industry. After talking to John Rittmaster of Walnut Creek’s Prima - who carries one of the largest selections of wine from Australia and was among the first in the Bay Area to do so - it seems that Oz’s issues are much like killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Ten or even 15 years ago, it was easy to sell Australian wines. People were taking Bordeaux way too seriously. And these wines were obvious, effusive and fun to drink. The names were great. Heck, it was a new concept to be snoggered by the last drop of your second glass. Then, Parker baptized them, and they became hot overnight. And, in my opinion, it was too much too fast. The names became too silly. The wines were too big. Too loose. There were too many critters and the high prices for the good stuff weren’t merited.

Rittmaster started noticing some “cracks in the armor” a few years ago, when he couldn’t sell 8 cases of D’Arenburg’s flagship Dead Arm, let alone the 40 cases he used to sell. So he scaled back his inventory of Aussie wines by 30 percent. And as more and more importers started making deals with Costco and other big box stores, the value of the wine dropped, and with it, the public’s interest. Exports of bottled wine to the US has decreased by 9 percent by volume this year and 23 percent in value. What’s more, the good stuff - top bottlings of Penfolds and other premium producers are going to Asian markets instead of the States.

But it’s not just the homogenosity of the wines. As Sogg states, there were other factors that led to Australia’s situation: The U.S. economy’s been steadily tanking for the past year and a half, which means terrible exchange rates for the Australians. Add to that severe droughts and ample competition from other New World markets, like Argentina, and you’ve got an equation for major down times. I for one am still jazzed about my Mollydooker.

What are your thoughts on Australia? And why isn’t this happening in parts of California? Could Australia have marketed themselves differently, perhaps more by region (there are vines outside South Australia, after all) or exclusivity?