February 10 2007
The first annual American Wine Blog Awards is still accepting votes for the nominees in seven categories.
Good Grape is nominated in two categories—Best Wine Blog Graphics and Best Overall Blog. I also write for my employer, Inertia Beverage Group, who is nominated in the best single subject blog. The nominations are very flattering; if you are so inclined to vote for this site, Inertia or any of the extremely worthy competitors please do so here.
Of the seven categories, the one I’m most interested in seeing the results for, my equivalent of the Best Movie award, is the Best Winery Blog category. This is a murderer’s row of good winery blogs … a veritable battle royale of winery blogs doing battle for ultimate supremacy: Stormhoek, Cima Collina, Dover Canyon and Pinot Blogger.
All of the candidates are extremely worthy, and there a couple of others that I can think of (Paging: El Bloggo Torcido, the Twisted Oak Winery blog) who could also very easily be on the dais as a nominee.
The winery blogging category, to me, represents the most hotly contested category because each of them bring something completely different to the table and are very personal, engaging and well done.
Because the finals are based on popular vote, something akin to calling in for your favorite singer on American Idol, there is a strong predisposition to consider candidates as favorites based on their reach. In the online wine space two things are predominate—high-end computer savvy folks and high-end wine lovers—educated people across the board.
If Vegas were establishing a betting line I’d put my money on Stormhoek as 2-1 favorites based on their melding of appeal to the computer-savvy folks along with their good, value priced wines. They also offer sheer reach of audience from across the pond and the collateral pick-up based on having Hugh from Gapingvoid.com as their marketing guru. But, there is the not so subtle fact that they are something of a global brand (albeit small with a can-do attitude) coming from South Africa and a primary commerce beachhead in the UK, with a smattering of placements in the US. I like to think of them as the Ben & Jerry’s of the wine world—individual and interesting, but are their fans paying attention to vote?
In contrast to the quirky, underdog appeal of Stormhoek, what Pinot Blogger, Dover Canyon and Cima Collina offer is a personal relationship with the winery.
Josh at Pinot Blogger is starting a winery, Capozzi, and acting as a trailblazer in leveraging the internet to cultivate an audience for his nascent high-end pinot. He writes a smart, technologically savvy and insightful blog about the issues, personalities and decisions that he makes along the way. It’s not hard to admire the very obvious good business acumen he has when making decisions for his winery, his baby. But, he doesn’t let those decisions cloud the bigger picture—to create an enduring successful winery creating world-class pinot noir. This and more is all evident through his blog.
Cima Collina and Dover Canyon, both established wineries, write from different approach, both led by female writers of established wineries, they wrap you up in a warmth and memoir-ish dialogue that engages you in the personality and back story of their ventures, creating a connection along the way.
Go vote for your favorite out of this stellar lineup. All bets are off for the winner, but I have a hunch it may be a dark horse from the three domestic wineries and not the one with the most perceived scale.
For a good batch of posts from Josh at Pinot Blogger check out their Capozzi Winery category found here
For a good batch of posts from Cima Collina check out their archive from October found here.
For a good batch of posts from Dover Canyon check out their main page found here.
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February 7 2007
Welcome to new visitors to Good Grape--my little slice of the wine blogosphere! Please add me to your Favorites list, add me to your reader of choice using the chiclets on the bottom right hand navigation or use this as the master RSS feed in your blog reader of choice:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/GoodGrapeAWineManifesto
At Good Grape I take a literate social reporting approach to wine and the wine industry with an emphasis on ideas—that means content that should be of interest to wine enthusiasts of all stripes and hopefully occasionally thought-provoking, as well.
Through this approach to writing, which tends to skew more towards People magazine (if People magazine wrote at an 11th grade level and not a fourth grade level) as opposed to Wine Spectator in analogy, I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that Good Grape was a finalist in two categories of the American Wine Blog Awards—Best Wine Blog Graphics and Best Overall Wine Blog.
This is something of a shock; particularly the nomination for Best Overall Wine Blog. Credit Tom Wark from Fermentation for conducting and managing the awards. I’m really holding down his spot--his own excellent blog was eliminated by virtue his award oversight.
It feels like Oscar nomination day and I’m the small budget art house flick going into the best picture category against a couple of decades worth of awesome blockbusters like Star Wars, Titantic and The Godfather.
In the Best Overall Wine Blog category, nominated by the people, selected by a panel of professional jurors and then voted on by the people, I am in some pretty esteemed company.
Vinography.com? Alder Yarrow is the granddaddy of wine blogs, our most esteemed colleague and the most popular wine blogger by any count—traffic, influence, awards, prestige; review virtually all measurables for this blogging thing and Vinography is the lead dog. And, he’s a nice guy, too. Send him an email and chances are you’ll get a response inside of four hours. He’s accessible to all of his readers.
Drvino.com? Dr. Vino, the pen name for Tyler Colman, joins Vinography in having one of the most respected palates in the wine blogosphere. Very well traveled and an educator by profession (he is really a Dr., too), Tyler has been blogging since January of ’05 and has received mentions from Food & Wine magazine and Fast Company for being one of the best wine blogs available. Dr. Vino, I suspect, would outpace me in a wine conversation inside of 90 seconds, but the really cool thing about him is his knowledge never manifests itself with any ego and his writing is lucid and clear, for any reader.
Eric Asimov from the New York Times? Not much to say here. “Professional wine writer for the New York Times” does a pretty good job for me. Perhaps the best compliment I can give to his work is the fact that I serendipitously stroked him in a post last night before receiving the wine blog award announcement. Asimov takes a pragmatic and egalitarian approach to wine writing that I greatly admire.
So, there you have it—two high-level pro-am guys, a pro guy and then little old me.
Check out all the finalists and vote for your choice for the winner(s) at Fermentation (link to site here).
Thanks and “Celebrate the Good Grape.”
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February 6 2007
Ran across a triple-threat of interesting articles from last week, all found online, covering a wide spectrum of items in the wine industry and all having something of an element of equalization.
Over at The Pour by Eric Asimov, the New York Times writer comments on some regional wines as an entrée into AppellationAmerica.com (AA), a web site dedicated to, as they say, the “appellation-ization of North American wine culture.”
You have to give credit to Asimov. In addition to wading through spin about the “appellation-ization” of anything, he’s acting as something of a wine equalizer. Many in his position would use the bully pulpit to espouse the wines of California, or France or something more mainstream; wine that resonates with a literate, well-heeled reader. But, he frequently goes off the beaten path to discuss wines from less-known regions far a field from Napa or the rolling hills of Burgundy.
Asimov is slowly but surely building a body of work that celebrates non-California wines and wine regions, and he does so with evenhandedness that might be wrought maudlin by other less gifted writers.
In the article, found here, he also quotes Alan Goldfarb and Roger Dial from Appellationamerica.com. Goldfarb had this tidbit on AA:
“documenting terroir from the ground up and doing radical surgery on appellations to give them ecological authenticity.”
Or, this gem from Roger Dial:
“We’re here to establish an alternative place-force, an alternative understanding of producing wine.”
Did I say that Asimov comments with an evenhandedness that might be wrought maudlin by others? Ahem. I meant to say “hyperbolic.”
Good stuff, though, from the NYTimes and Asimov for allowing this sort of thing to be “All the news that’s fit to print.” Appellation America is doing good work and many newspapers would eschew their business and position to market in favor of something more mainstream.
On the other side of the island that is Manhattan, the New York Sun has a really terrific feel-good write-up (found here) on a guy named Jonathan Grossweiler, D.W.S. Grossweiler, one of only 98 Americans to hold the D.W.S designation, received his “Diploma in Wine & Spirits” from the British-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust.
The fact that Grossweiler is a Marine and a prison guard somewhere in New Jersey is the human interest angle to the story. The writer refers to Grossweiler as an ex-Marine, but really, once a Marine, always a Marine, I think. The fact that he is a prison guard at prison that houses sex offenders is unique enough to warrant a story.
Grossweiler started out in 1993 with a bottle of Carlo Rossi accompanied with Macaroni and cheese before moving to Chateau St. Jean chardonnay at Thanksgiving a couple of years later and finally moving to Kevin Zraly’s Windows on the World Wine School in ’02.
He has a really simple, but brilliant quote in the article as well. While he admits in the article that wine was once intimidating, he notes now:
“I think that wine is one of the great equalizers of the world. Everyone has a nose, a palate, and so you meet all kinds of people and you drink wine together and talk about what you’re tasting.”
Grossweiler continues when asked a lame ass question about giving wine advice to the inmates,
“Not the inmates. But, I’m the resident wine geek for the other corrections officers. They’ll be lots of questions now that Valentine’s Day is coming and I’m glad to answer them. Why would you get knowledge and not help people out?”
Welcome to the wine world, Jonathan. We can use a few more good men like you.
Over at Wines & Vines they have an interesting business-oriented article on consumer direct wine sales—the great sales equalizer for many small wineries.
With recent statistics suggesting that the number of wineries in the country has doubled since 2000 to over 5,000 US wineries you would think that smaller winery owners would heed the call of consumer direct sales. Most small business people would LOVE to manage and interact with all of their customers, as ecommerce or consumer direct sales online allows you to do.
But, interestingly, surprisingly and shockingly this poll indicated that fully 34% of respondents agreed with the following statement:
“I should improve my company’s direct sales, but don’t know what changes to make.”
I think I know a couple of people in the business of wine technology that can help out here.
It takes a load of money to start a winery—winery owners are getting this dough from someplace. Here’s my question, for this great equalizing opportunity for small wineries: Why is marketing and technology in the wine space such a difficult concept to grasp? Why are the winery owners that have made money, obviously, in other industries so completely aloof in the ways and means of actually selling their juice to an actual customer, in a DIRECT way via ecommerce, for example?
Joe Consumer i.e. ME wants to buy the stuff. I think the answer may have to do with Amazon.com starting in 1996 and the Internet mania really occurring during the latter half of ’98 to about March of ’01.
Ahead of the curve …
But, please comment if you have other ideas or comments about the lag time between wine industry economic indicators and execution.
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January 22 2007
I guess I’m not too different from any number of millions of people that set New Year’s resolutions for themselves and then proceed to not heed the call of the gym, forsake dessert, and let lapse the desire to reconnect with the friend from high school that you haven’t talked to in 20 years.
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be a part of Wine Blogging Wednesday every month this year. #1, I think it’s a great learning opportunity to share with your blogging peers, #2 It drives you into wine drinking areas that you may not have previously considered and #3 It’s fun
Alas, I missed my first Wine Blogging Wednesday (WBW) this month, Wednesday, January 17th, and I’m a little bummed because it was related to Biodynamic wines—an area that I also set a resolution to learn more about in the coming year.
One of the significant challenges I had with the BioD selection is pure availability of wine—there are not too many producers doing the clearly disciplined BioD farming, a subset of those that farm organically, which is already a small selection out of the total amount of available wine and producers.
Earlier this month, at a Sunflower Market, which is something like a Wild Oats, or a Whole Foods Market, I picked up the Bonterra Syrah—not BioD, but certified organic. I figured Bonterra would be an interesting juxtaposition to BioD given Bonterra’s leadership role in organic and sustainable farming. In fact, I think they are converting some vineyards to BioD, as well, though the Syrah I selected was regulated under the certified organic foods act in California, 1990 and not approved by the Demeter Association, the BioD approving body. My post would then, therefore, be about the difficulty in locating BioD wines and an interesting tasting about wineries that operate in the organic domain--a net that is cast a bit wider than the quirky BioD.
Then, I was talking with a fellow wine blogger and mentioned the certified organic and he said, “Dude, it’s Biodynamics this month for WBW, not Organic.” Ah, details, details … Well, yeah, but maybe I can cheat a little bit …
Therefore swayed and not happy then with my initial wine choice, I went to one of the best wine shops in the city and they had one Biodynamic wine—a Sineann Pinot Noir that was $40 + a bottle and to boot, I had already tasted it at a tasting and found it interesting (lively even), but I was hoping to branch out in a different direction instead of plowing the same earth, so to speak. Plus, I really have to pick and choose my spots regarding impulse buying of $40 wines given that Mrs. Good Grape keeps an eye on the cellar and the checkbook.
Two trips searching for a BioD, I decided to scrap it--I could, ahem, always write an ipso facto post … related to BioD.
So, I guess this is something of a problem with the BioD wines—you really have to search them out. A quick scan of the wine posts at Fork & Bottle, the hosts for this months edition, and I think scarcity is proven as it’s a diverse lineup of wines, many of them foreign producers. Dr. Vino, though, did, in fact, taste and write about the Sineann Pinot from Resonance Vineyards that I had tasted at a separate function in November.
My overall take on BioD, given my limited tasting, is that there is something lively and refreshing about it—it’s the difference between drinking water and Gatorade to me. If I’m thirty, I really like both, but water is fresh, lively and invigorating while Gatorade is the same, but it’s more viscous, more overt, touched by the hand of man, perhaps.
I’ll continue the learning curve on BioD, for sure. In the meantime, I urge you to check out the posting reviews for this months WBW at Fork & Bottle—I think many people had some interesting discoveries around the freshness of these wines.
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January 9 2007
Somewhere in my wine blogging notebook, the one stuffed full of clippings, scrawlings and half-baked ideas that I use when I need inspiration for a blog post (which usually creates three ideas that I try to jam into one post that then becomes an unwieldy 1000 word essay, but enough about my pathos), I have the notion to create an all-star sitcom episode with the denizens of the wine blogosphere.
For example, Beau at Basic Juice would be Chuck from Happy Days—he is Richie’s wise older brother who appears on the scene occasionally to drop some pearls of wisdom and steal a home cooked meal before heading off into the night for some adventure.
Alder from Vinography might be Judge Harry Stone from Night Court—young, friendly and popular.
And, Tom from Fermentation might be Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP in Cincinnati—the veteran, unaffected, cool, and laid back disc jockey at the station.
These are, of course, based on perceptions because I’ve never met Beau, and have only had fleeting digital contact with Alder. Tom and I have exchanged professional pleasantries, but we haven’t had the opportunity to break bread.
It might be a lot of fun to put people in categorical buckets based on perception, and have a little fun along the way, all in the spirit of fun and cooperation for a loosely organized, frenetic, all-over-the-map band of people doing something in the name of passion.
And, I guess that’s the intention of most awards, as well—create some order out of what can be quite chaotic—and to recognize those that are doing a good job.
So, many kudos have to go to Tom Wark at Fermentation for his development and launch of the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards.
The press release hit the wire and is getting a lot of traction as he points out here. There are six categories: Best Winery Blog, Best Wine Podcast or Video Blog, Best Graphics on a Wine Blog, Best Review Wine Blog, Best Single Subject Wine Blog and Best Wine Blog Writing.
It’s a shame that Tom cannot win, because pound for pound, with consistency and thoughtfulness, Tom’s blog wins hands down. It was Fermentation, in fact, that was a shining beacon of inspiration for this site in terms of being able to do a high-cut, general interest wine site without delving too much into reviews.
If Alder is the elder statesman of wine blogging, Tom is certainly your favorite uncle.
Nominate your favorite blog or blogs on the left hand navigation at Fermentation: http://fermentation.typepad.com
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