The 32nd Annual 2010 Tri-Cities Wine Festival is Washington’s longest-running judged wine festival, and includes a wine dinner and seminars, a gala wine tasting, food exhibitors, vendors, music and a silent auction.

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Over 100 wineries in attendance sharing over 400 Northwest wines!

Advance tickets to those who are 21 and older are available for presale at The Toyota Center (to save a few bucks) or online by clicking here to visit ticketmaster.com for each of the individually priced events! The dinners and seminars must be purchased in advance, however the Saturday tasting can be purchased at the door for $65. For more details, including the schedule of events, please visit http://www.tricitieswinefestival.com/

Get your tickets for this truly terrific event now while tickets are still available! And I will see you there!

There are several ways to follow a Twitter chat, here are a couple great ones!

Tweetchat: We use http://tweetchat.com Just login using your Twitter username and password, then enter the room “#socialwine” .  Tweetchat will automatically display all Twitter messages that folks tag with the #sbbuzz tag, so you will only see that conversation.  Tweetchat also automatically tags any message that you post with the #sbbuzz tag, so anyone following this conversation will see your message (without you having to tag it yourself).

Twitter Search: Alternatively you can use the search feature within Twitter itself.  Just go to http://search.twitter.com and search on the term “#socialwine” or you can use the direct link to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23socialwine Twitter search will alert you as new messages are being posted to the chat – you can refresh your page as you see the “3 new messages” link at the top.  To post messages to the chat you must go to your normal Twitter page (http://twitter.com) and submit you message being sure to include the tag “#socialwine” somewhere in your message.  Otherwise it will not show up in the chat for others monitoring the conversations.

To participate, you only need to log into your favorite twitter client and search for #socialwine. Not quite sure how to accomplish this? Let our friends at Mashable help you get the most out of twitter hashtags!

Host Craig Sutton will ask the first question or two, we invite your comments and questions, for the chef then as well. Lets have fun and make this a successful event for all!

This seemed the right time to me to assemble a new chat hashtag (#) called #socialwine.

Ok, so what is the deal?

I have followed many twitter chats, you can in fact search and follow threads like #blogchat , managed by my good friend Mack Collier on a regular weekly basis. They talk about blogging and how it is used in various manners and the discussions include styles, etiquette, etc.

I thought, “Why not wine?” Found this open hashtag, and here we are.

At 4pm Wednesday, known as #winewednesday or #ww in Twitterville, those interested in Social Media and Wine can get together and I will host with a chosen co-host each week. My co-host and I will choose a topic for discussion and anyone who wants to be involved only need to follow #socialwine to be involved.

Let the games begin!