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February 25 2008
On the cusp of the 2nd Annual American Wine Blog Awards, one of the interesting things happening is the fact that, in my humble opinion, online wine content has reached a critical tipping point.
It feels like a saturation point, but I think that is underestimating the movement because the cup will continue to overflow for the foreseeable future.
Simply, there are A LOT of wine blogs, many of whom are providing excellent content, and in fact, there are almost too many for a reader pool to keep up with on a sane level. There has been an explosion and this looks to continue unabated for some time to come.
The only alternative is for all of this content to niche itself out to a stratified consumer base.
I think in the short-term, what this means is that wine blogs will have to focus, focus, focus on what their niche is, sometimes a daunting task for me, and a lot of other people that like to blog around what takes their whim.
With that in mind, I like to stop occasionally and do a digest post, or a couple of digest posts, to comment, provide a pointer and generally look at things happening in this little pocket of the wine universe.
Social Network for Wine Industry and Wine-Technology Affinity Group
A couple of months back there was a palpable migration of wine bloggers and wine aficionados to Facebook.com. Many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people that are in and around the wine industry and wine blogging and wine blog reading made their way to Facebook.com, yours truly included.
Facebook is a fun tool and I made some new connections, but there is a missing ingredient with the site. It is great to have 100 friends, but it seemed more social than business oriented. Scrabulous and movie quizzes are fun, but as a tableau for making connections that can pay off as a benefit to your wine blogging site or your wine business it just seems a little too fun-oriented. If Myspace.com is like a keg party, Facebook.com is a young twenty-something micro-brew and cheese party. That is not bad by any means; it is what it is, despite the open technology hooks that allow developers to create programs that add value.
So, it was with interest that I saw and joined a social network that just started called, the OpenWine Consortium. Found here.
The OWC is positioned very inclusively for everybody, but with a focus around the new guard in the wine industry and those that appreciate wine:
OpenWine Consortium is a global, non-profit wine industry association featuring the newest generation of emerging companies, wineries, publishers, services and a motivated community dedicated to changing the world of wine.
Joel Vincent from winelifetoday.com has taken the lead on organization and I encourage anybody with a passing interest in wine blogging, online wine commerce or just general wine enthusiasm to sign-up and engage today.
With Superpokes out of the way (inside joke for Facebook users), this could be a powerful tool in taking wine and technology to the next level.
Online Wine Video Continues to Explode
The online wine technology niche has seen several entrants over the course of the last couple of years—folks like Wine Spies, Radcru.com, Americanwinery.com and Appellationamerica.com come to mind. Leveraging a mail list or general consumer visits, these companies present wines for sale. There are some tweaks to the business model on how they are executed, some do it on a commission basis, and others take in inventory. It is a variation on the wine.com’s of the world and a little bit closer to the high-end enthusiast.
If you couple this with the explosion of video blogging and podcasting, what has not emerged is an entrant that provides video-based contextual information on the winery itself, from the winery participants.
That is, until now. Jon G. from the very popular wine review site Quaffability has launched a new site called, Web Tasting Room.
It’s an interesting concept and still early in the process, but the business model for engaging consumers with an inside out view of the winery, via video blogging, from the winery itself is new, fresh and seemingly the right thing at the right time.
Elsewhere, tackling video from a retail perspective, joining WineLibrary TV as the gold standard, is Just Grapes (found here), a Chicago retailer. It looks as if they are re-purposing their existing retail activities by videotaping and putting it online. In this case, currency will be integral as it looks like their last video update is from the holidays, but keep an eye on them as an example of retail adopting new marketing techniques in engaging us, consumers.
My sense tells me that the wine blogosphere –writing and video—is pre-disposed to a very organic path to providing information. The Just Grapes of the world are swimming upstream against a perception that their video/web marketing efforts are too slick. One of the things that make Wine Library TV a winner is its vitality and authenticity. Does Gary sell wine based on his video blogging? Absolutely, but he is smart about not mixing art and commerce in a heavy-handed way.
That notion of keeping art and commerce separate makes the Fleming’s Steakhouse wine site, VineVoyages, a very interesting proposition. Like the Web Tasting Room, the Fleming’s site focuses on the producers in a very polished way with the intent to create mindshare for the steak house, as opposed to direct sales. Keep an eye on this site.
Separate from these relatively new entrants, an ongoing thread of conversation in the online wine world has been a level of anticipation for The Winemakers, a PBS reality show that is one part Survivor, one part Top Chef and two heaping portions of The Apprentice.
While the show has not premiered, you can go to YouTube and get a preview dose of the participants and the show scheduled to air in the late spring and Early Summer of this year. Check it out here and here.
Finally, if you noted that Al Gore recently lauded the wine industry for its green ways, then you may want to check out another Al Gore project—Current TV – a sort of millennial generation public access network where all of the content is user generated. Current TV is on many cable networks, but you can check out the web site and search for “wine” to get a bunch of content of varying degrees of professionalism.
One of my favorite videos on the Current site is this guy that plays sweet music using water filled wine glasses. Long a staple of the late night television, I find this completely fascinating. In terms of party tricks, forget slinging an acoustic guitar or sidling up to the piano. I would love to learn how to do this.
One thing is certain for the rest of 2008 and the coming years for the wine industry and wine consumers, while industry vets are focusing on price pressures, imports, and wine industry mechanics, the marketing game is completely changing. I hope the existing industry is paying close enough attention, because many new entrants certainly are.
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (2) | Print |
February 20 2008
Tom from Fermentation has announced the 2nd annual American Wine Blog Awards.
Celebrating excellence in 2007, the American Wine Blog Awards are accepting nominations in the following categories:
Best Wine Business Blog
Best Wine Blog Writing
Best Winery Blog
Best Single-Subject Wine Blog
Best Wine Review Blog
Best Wine Podcast of Video Blog
Best Wine Blog
Best Wine Blog Graphics
It is a yeoman’s effort to coordinate and organize this, so regardless of whether your site is nominated or wins, we should all thank Tom for being the driving force behind pulling this together.
These awards bring a whiff of legitimacy to wine blogging, a medium that has increased its exposure level and its influence immeasurably in the last two years. The profile of wine blogging has increased so much so that I now believe that some of our premiere wine bloggers like Vinography.com, Drvino.com and Good Wine Under $20 have an influence commensurate or exceeding those of many newspaper wine columnists.
I don’t mean this to be a polarizing statement, and it’s not scientific fact, just my hunch that a Tom Wark, Alder Yarrow, Tyler Colman or Dr. Debs (her blog nom de plume) have an engaged and passionate audience that is equal to or greater than that of a wine columnist from any mid-major daily newspaper.
Consider that, as a baseline, if a major daily newspaper has a circulation of 400,000 and 5% of the audience read the wine column, than you have reached about 20,000 people. Do we think that Vinography.com gets 20,000 visitors to his site? Undoubtedly. Does Tom’s opinion act as an influencing agent equal to that of a newspaper columnist? Arguably so.
The smart newspapers like The New York Times and the Dayton Daily News incorporate columnist blogging, yet many others are still very afraid to engage online.
Now, this argument on reach and influence is apples and oranges to a large degree, but it is what my instinct tells me. If my hunch is correct, this is a major re-setting of the dynamic in wine media and even more reason to nominate your favorite blog and vote at Fermentation. Help act as a change agent in the evolution of wine media!
Every group of friends has that person that is the “straw that stirs the drink” (I know Tom will appreciate the somewhat obscure reference to baseball with that). Tom is the wine bloggers straw. In “Tipping Point” terms, Tom is a “connector” and a “maven.”
Wine blogging is at its “tipping point,” lets get the nominations out there and then vote for our favorites.
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (3) | Print |
January 29 2008
There are no new ideas. This was re-affirmed for me last week with Jim Gordon’s Unreserved wine blog—and that’s no slight to Jim. If anything, it is a personal backhanded pimp slap to my own depth of knowledge regarding contemporary wine history, or lack thereof, I should say.
Does subscribing to Wine Business Monthly since 2001 count for some sort of carbon, er, credibility offset?
Last Tuesday, while walking my dog, Coco, the cutest pug/beagle mix in the world, bundled against the Indiana mid-winter chill, iPod earphones in place, listening to Brett Dennen because I roll more on the singer-songwriter side of things, I was thinking about Sacre Bleu wine and Chateau Petrogasm. Sacre Bleu has as the centerpiece of their market engagement a lot of collaboration with bands and promotional events with music. In addition, while I think Chateau Petrogasm is pretty cool and their visual associations to encapsulate the taste or experience of a wine is novel, frequently I have a hard time translating the images to any sort of understanding of what the wine would be like. Call me dense, but it is true. A picture may say a 1000 words, but not all of them make sense together. However, wine and music … hmm … who doesn’t understand a muscular, sharp, angular, tight red wine, all dissonant, sharp, and angular like Metallica, for example.
So, I got to thinking about a different translation … Sacre Bleu, wine, and music. Ding, ding. Man, “that’s what I should do,” I thought. Wouldn’t it be fun to do a weekly wine review and analogize it to music? Nowadays, with music streaming technology, you can even link to a song so people can “get’ what you’re saying.
Well, this is all well and good, right? Last Tuesday this was a good idea. Then on Thursday, Jim writes the following:
Some years ago, Kermit Lynch, the Berkeley wine merchant and importer, who was definitely not a fan of the points system, suggested in a seminar that people get creative with how they convey the style and quality of wine. He recommended that people compare wines to art, to architecture and other forms of creativity instead of reducing them to digits.
Jim continues …
But, lately I have tried comparing wines to classic rock sounds. I have two teenage sons, they both play guitars in garage bands, and they love Led Zeppelin (above, Robert Plant, left, and Jimmy Page), Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Who and Metallica (classic to them).
So instead of rating them on the 100-point scale, here are some wines I’ve tried recently, and how I’d rate them on the pop-rock scale.
Ahem, within the span of 48 hours I went from being a little onanistic to wishing I had a little more history to draw from in and around wine and the wine industry.
Of course, somebody has hit on this before … of course it would be an industry vet channeling another wine industry vet like Kermit Lynch.
Silly me.
By the way, Jim, it is a good idea! Wine … music … who wouldn’t get it? I might steal it. And for Brett Dennen, I would analogize the 2006 Orin Swift Cellars “The Prisoner” Napa Red Blend.
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (1) | Print |
January 27 2008
Readers of this site will know that I am a book guy. I like books. My wife likes books. Our bookcases runneth over and, between the two of us, I think we single handedly pull up the mean that says the average American reads four books a year.
Given my book fandom, I think 2008 is going to be a good year. I say that because the majority of the books that I read are wine or non-fiction business books and it looks like ’08, in terms of wine books – published and in progress- might be a banner year.
And, as a brief aside, really, what could be a more fitting way to kick off ’08 than with a little schmaltz? Chicken Soup for the Wine Lovers Soul was published in November and who can’t use a dose of feel-good dripping sentimentality every now and again?
Seriously, though, some folks near and dear to wine bloggers hearts are planning on writing a book, or publishing a book. And, this is after we all convene for the wine klatch and Dr. Debs Wine Book Club.
Consider:
Tyler Colman from Dr. Vino is releasing not one, but two books this year. His first is intriguingly called, “Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink.”
Alice Feiring, known by many from her long career in journalism and to others based on her blog In Vino Veritas, is publishing the provocatively named “The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization.”
Lenn from Lenndevours is going to pen the perfect book on Long Island wine ...
Tim Elliott from Winecast is going to write and self-publish a book for wine beginners to expand beyond the basics—a field guide to explore the 2nd level of wine enthusiasm.
And, finally, Ryan and Gabrielle from Catavino are kicking around the idea of doing a wine blogging magazine/book project with contributions from around the wine blogosphere.
Undoubtedly, there are also several other blogging derived book projects going on that are not mentioned here. I recall from last year that Josh from Pinotblogger.com was approached about potentially writing a book, as well.
All of this publishing talk is a great thing in my mind! Around wine bloggers there is always a subtle undercurrent of desirability for additional respect amongst wine consumers, established media and the industry. I think all of us keep waiting for that turning point, the epochal period, where the wine blogosphere gets hot, red hot, and goes upstream towards mainstream with more vigor in people reading like other niches have seen—food, politics, gossip, etc. One thing is certain however, regardless of whether the wine blogosphere heats up this year or ‘09, or never—publishing books and having books published after using wine blogging as a platform is an incredible way to increase legitimacy for everybody. So, these hardy, intrepid souls deserve our attention and support—a rising tide raises all ships.
Good luck to all who are publishing this year and assuredly I will be reading your books—though, your books will be AFTER I get my schmaltzy fix from the Chicken Soup series.
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (4) | Print |
January 25 2008
Some quick hitting random thoughts on a few wine related news items from the last two weeks before they turn into dust at the news and wine blog idea graveyard … and a reminder, as well.
First, the Reminder …
There is a small quantity left of the Good Grape Wine Blogger Pack at Domaine547.com. The jist is, I made wine recommendations, wrote up a newsletter and Jill from Domaine 547 sells the vino. The theme that I chose to select wines from is, “Alsace by way of Willamette”—Alsatian varieties from Oregon. With the wines that I chose, you get three delicious wines from two boutique producers. Amity Vineyards offers up a Riesling and Brooks Wines has two wines with a white blend and a Riesling. The wines are tasty and affordable and I have no skin in the game, no dog in the fight. I just get the thrill of playing wine club Sommelier. You can buy the three pack for an easy $52 at this link.
Consumer Wine Shipments Gain a Temperature Assist from New Packaging Technology
Gaining exactly zero mindshare in the wine blogosphere, a wine logistics and consumer shipping company, New Vine Logistics, announced last week that they partnered with a packaging company to create a line of packaging, called WineAssure, that ensures that consumer wine shipments do not exceed 70 degrees on the high side, nor refrigerator temperatures on the low side.
Frankly, this is very welcome news and the packaging should help alleviate the threat of wine shipments receiving heat damage in the warm summer months.
The rubber meets the road, however, with adoption, and I will be curious to see how quickly wineries adopt the packaging. Many wineries shut off shipping in the summer months and I am guessing the wineries desire to turn shipping on in the summer will be based on pure economics. Assuredly, the design and exclusive packaging development was not cheap, and I hope that New Vine is not expecting the wineries to bear the brunt of that design cost in a pass-along situation, therefore reducing the ability for consumers to win. Time will tell, but don’t think for a second that the wine industry still doesn’t get in its own way on the path to trying to be successful.
Sacre Bleu Available at Target
One of my favorite wine brands, Sacre Bleu, is now available at Target stores in Florida. Usually, when you are dropped into a top wine market, it is a temporary way station to a larger rollout. Let us hope that happens for an underdog wine brand from Minneapolis, MN. A nicer guy you will never meet, Galen Struwe deserves success with his fledgingly brand. First, Galen comes from outside the wine industry and it is a long, uphill battle to figure out the Byzantine wine industry without the benefit of experience and, while people are genuinely helpful, there is sometimes a sense of a weary resignation amongst wine folks along the lines, “Yeah, let me know how that goes for you.” The wine, kind of a negociant/import model from France, is good and third, the way that Sacre Bleu is marrying music with wine and the Millenials is something of a case study in successful marketing. Think of Sacre Bleu as a Stormhoek for young music lovers instead of semi-young card-carrying wine blogger geeks (yes, I carry the card, too). When the wine is available in a store near you be sure to confound your friends by saying in your best French accent, “I’m picking up some Sacre Bleu from Target Boutique.” Congrats to Sacre Bleu and keep an eye on them as a rising story with loads of opportunity for wide success.
Transparency alert: Sacre Bleu has an ad on my site. I have received no compensation from them though I am, occasionally, a sucker for a winery or objet d’art (see also Crushpad Wines) that I take a personal liking to.
Michael Chiarello Sticks his Hand in the Celebrity Chef Till
Anybody besides me read the press release or see the mention on Napa Valley wine blog The Cork Board and scratch their head and say, “What took so long?”
Michael Chiarello, the celebrity chef with the show “Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello” on the Food Network, a cooking show where, despite the name, he never seems to entertain anybody he knows, has announced plans to open a new restaurant in Yountville at the in-progress development called V Marketplace.
The founding Chef of Tra Vigne, Chiarello is going to go back into the kitchen with his new restaurant.
The thing that I could never figure out with Chiarello is that, despite his mail order lifestyle company Napa Style, why didn’t the guy have restaurants going already?
If you look at the Food Network and see Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, Morimoto and even Rachael Ray and Tyler Florence cashing in with restaurants and endorsements all over the place, why was Chiarello slow on the draw?
Sheesh, Emeril, Flay and Batali are printing money. I don’t care how many re-used wine barrel end tables Chiarello sells, there’s got to be more margin turning three tables a night selling $42 steaks ala carte in Vegas.
I’m guessing Chiarello is going to be transplanting, as he says, “my personal blend of Napa Valley’s famous hospitality” to a Vegas hotel pretty darn soon. Why else would you put the chef toque back on?
Good luck to him, his show always has him turning out some nice looking food, and, perhaps, he knows, smarter than I do, that timing is right to take a swing at the plate to hit a major food and wine concept with “Napa style.”
Posted in, Around the Wine Blogosphere. Permalink | Comments (3) | Print |
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