The Wench is Moving XC to NorCal

You must forgive me, for I have been terribly rude.

You see, for two weeks now I have been planning an intense 11 day road trip across the southern most states of the United States. And I have not even made one mention of it on my blog — for which I apologize.

The original purpose of the road trip was merely to move to a TBD location in Northern California.

Now, the trip has become so much more.

A good friend of mine, Shana Ray, developed a rather intruging idea for a market research project for the wine industry consisting of traveling across the country interviewing members of Generation Y about their wine consumption. The project was still in development phase when I ran into her at the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference in Napa & Sonoma.

Attending the Wine Bloggers Conference was the final push I needed to move to California. It was the 4th time, in the course of 11 months, that I had visited the “Bay Area”. Each and every time I visited, I swore to myself (and many of my friends) that I would move there. And now I am finally holding true to my word.

This Monday, August 17th, I disembarked on a cross country voyage that will take me through the cities of Tampa, New Orleans, Houston, Austin, TBD New Mexico, Phoenix, Los Angeles and TBD NorCal.

After a bit of persuasion and a few glasses of wine, Shana Ray made the commitment to join me on the adventure. We decided that there is no time like the present to launch the preliminary phase of her market research project on the drinking habits of Generation Y.

ANNOUNCING PROJECT Y-INE — the first social media exposé on Generation Y and their drinking habits from the minds of Shana Ray and Ashley V Routson.

Project Y-ine will go past the generic survey questions and talk to people in their own backyards, bars or wherever else they hang out and drink with friends. The research and findings will be documented in an interactive, social media based journal of the experience, utilizing several social media platforms to capture their experience –including blogging, video-blogging, tweeting, facebooking, twitpic’ing, etc.

The move could not have come at a more opportune moment in my life as The Beer Wench. I’m about to launch my blog into the next phase. The talented people from Venataur Web Design recently developed a new interface for my blog. In addition to a new “look and feel,” I am in the process of reorganizing the content of my blog.

BUT. La creme de la creme of the entire “makeover” will be the addition of video blogs. The use of video on my blog will begin with my cross country trip. I have beer events set up in 3 of the cities along the trip:

1. New Orleans with Jeremy Labadie of “The Beer Buddha”

2. Austin with Chris Troutman of “Beer Town Austin”

3. Los Angeles with Chris Spradley of “Brewerires Bars and Beer Food”

I will do my best to announce the dates, times and places we will be meeting for each of the events. If you are in the area, you are more than welcome to join us and I am open to additional collaborations along the way (email me at drinkwiththewench@gmail.com)

Last but not least, I am also excited to announce that I will be attending both the Great Lakes Brew Fest as well as the Great American Beer Festival in September. Details of both of those trips are to come.

Keep your eyes peeled in the very near future for a new Drink With The Wench interface as well as the addition of video to the blog!

Cheers!