Pisco surfing the web

There’s no doubt about it, it is not easy to find someone today who doesn’t have an email account. And as time goes by, it will be even more difficult to find someone that doesn’t participate in the social networks that the 2.0 web offers. The amount of information we have is infinite, and it is because of this that whoever looks for information, no matter how insignificant it is, will find it using the search engines that the internet offers. Now it is not information that is valued, but rather it is the audience that this information captures that is important. The more audience, the better; which implicates that each day our borders are disappearing. Today there are more and more people communicating and receiving information according to their preferences, needs and interests. As Alvin Toffler states in his book The Third Wave, the media has transformed into mass media. Now, one can interact with many people from many countries with different customs, languages, races, education, social class, age, etc. This is also noted in the Blog “Nights of Pisco Tasting,” an initiative created by the Association of Independent Pisco Tasters (ACIP as abbreviated in Spanish), whose members are a group of alumni graduated from the Specialist and Pisco Taster degree program at the Institution of Wine and Pisco (IDVIP as abbreviated in Spanish), within the University of San Martin de Porres. In the blog “Nights of Pisco Tasting” we use the internet to spread the results of the specialists’ tasting sessions, where different piscos available in the market are evaluated. The purpose of the blog is to spread information for both the consumer and the producer. The blog guides consumers and helps them make a good choice when purchasing Pisco. And with the producers of Pisco, the blog serves to show them how their Pisco is evaluated, which, if necessary, will help them identify how to improve their product. Thus, we apply various tools that the internet offers: the “flag counter,” which tells us how many visits we have and from which countries, the “fine tunes,” which offers us music to enjoy while reading, and the “feed burner,” which allows many that subscribe receive the tasting results directly in their inbox, and Google Translator translates the articles to the readers’ native language. And the most important is that all of these interactive applications are free.

Livio Pastorino Wagner 

Blogger, Specialist and Pisco 

President in Peruvian Taster Association (ASPERCAT as abbreviated in Spanish) www.nochesdecata.blogspot.com 

 nochesdecata@gmail.com 

 Translation Katrina Heimark