Also make sure to check out the discussion forum there. If your a wine maker, please leave a comment about what your harvest is shaping up to!

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, Rob Bralow of the “Wine Post”  published a piece that was both compelling and thoughtful, discussing the merits of having a little tete-a-tete between both old and new media. As a result, we asked Rob if we could re-post his piece here, allowing wine bloggers  far and wide to contribute to the conversation. Please chime in with your perspective in comments!

After the 2009 Wine Bloggers’ Conference, there were many bloggers who felt that too many public relations and marketing representatives were there. Not only were they there, but they were there to watch.

Megan (Wannabe Wino) wrote in her post “In the Fishbowl“:

“Have you ever felt like a goldfish? It’s quite interesting really. I think the focus of the conference this year seemed to skew more towards wineries, PR folks, and other industry types. And I felt like people were there to figure out what wine bloggers are, what their motivations might be, and how best to market (I think that’s what I want to call it…) to them.”

Russ (Winehiker Witiculture) wrote in his post “The 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference: a foundation for raising the collective spirit“:

“In the hotel’s meeting halls and hallways as well as in some Napa Valley venues, bridges were not particularly being built between bloggers, PR/marketing types, and winery reps. Perhaps those that were not regularly engaged in blogging or other social media avenues were on-hand merely to witness what all the fuss was about.”

These comments inspired me to dig a little deeper into the relationship between bloggers and public relations.

Media professionals and public relations professionals strike a careful balance in the wine industry. Writers jealously guard the access to their audience while starving for information that will continue to entice readers. Public relations agencies that represent wineries have an over abundance of information that they have been charged to communicate to writers, with the intent that these editors will express such information to their audiences. With the rise of the blogosphere, many more writers have entered the arena, creating an ever increasing pool of outlets for information.

Wine bloggers themselves tend to have very little training in terms of writing for an audience craving entertainment and information. The majority of bloggers are website designers, information technology professionals, lawyers and doctors; occupations that have either given them the necessary skills to run a blog or the resources to experience the world of wine, which can be an expensive venture. Their unifying characteristic is an overwhelming passion for an alcoholic beverage created from fermented grape juice.

There is a prevalent desire among wineries and wine producing regions to be on the cutting edge of technology and media. However, the reality is that the majority of wine producers do not have the resources to follow the ever-changing technological landscape of communication. To meet this need, digital technology firms, advertising firms, and public relations agencies are now in a competition to show that each has the best understanding of the new media outlets. The drive to generate results propels winery representatives to target a wider variety of outlets and any result becomes twice as promoted, both to the nebulous consumer as well as to the client, looking for their hired representative to produce. While sometimes misunderstood, a hired agency’s primary objective is to promote their client, with a strong secondary objective to promote themselves back to their client or other potential clients. This makes bloggers a very attractive focus for these agencies.

Bloggers are currently in search of credibility and recognition. Without certifications from wine education channels, such as the Wine & Spirits Education Trust or the Society of Wine Educators, most bloggers have nothing but their word and their writing to give them defined credibility.

Steve Heimoff, blogger and West Coast Editor for Wine Enthusiast responded to a blog post by Shana (ShanaRay.com), founder of Breath(e) Media and used an example of a wine blogger being invited on a trip to show that wine bloggers can fall into numerous traps that will in the long run hurt their credibility. He wrote in “When blogs go bad“:

“The worst thing a wine blog can do is to shill, however inadvertently, for a winery or region. The minute I read about someone’s “delightful” visit to so-and-so, they’ve lost me. Visits may indeed be delightful, but the writer shouldn’t say so, because it just sounds - I don’t know - smarmy and credulous. If the blogger describes the visit as “delightful” then her credibility suffers, in my mind. What if the wines suck? Would the blogger say so? Or is the blogger so delighted with the visit - with the hospitality of the owners, the personally guided tour of the winery and caves, the lovely luncheon by the pool, catered by the winery chef, and with the gorgeous tranquility of wine country - that he’s unable even to know that the wine is mediocre?”

Shana replied:

“The news (speaking generally) has always had a bias and used scare tactics or fluff stories for the sake of entertainment. I learned at a young age to take the news with a grain of salt… Same goes with anything I read online through a blog, a tweet, a review on Yelp, or even an article in a magazine.

…You stated that you were going to explain the difference of good and bad blogs “for some of us.” My case was that for the rest of us, we read what we like…”

In the end, the only measure of credibility that really matters is the size of a publication’s audience and their influence on the buying habits of other consumers.

Earlier this year Robert Parker was challenged as to the credibility of his contracted reviewers, a charge that Robert Parker has fielded in the past and will likely come across again in the future when he is forced to relinquish his publication to the next generation. However, no matter how many confrontations his publication encounters, the name of Robert Parker is perceived by the wine industry as one of the most influential in the business today because of the influence over consumer purchasing that the Wine Advocate’s ratings embody.

Once a wine writer begins to establish credibility, the agency world begins to take notice, giving a writer more access to different aspects of the industry. The more access a writer has to their subject, the better they become at communicating the nuances and differences, which then in turn leads to better writing and the potential for larger audiences. Then credibility is considered established and the flood of information from the agency world truly begins.

A Survey of Bloggers

In July, I surveyed 100 wine bloggers on their interactions with public relations professionals and wineries. Fifty-one bloggers responded and described an interesting story about how they find their information and how they interact with the public relations world.

Wine bloggers are being reached in a similar manner to how a traditional news reporter is targeted: press releases, focused pitches, invitations to events, etc. The tactics that result in the best response from both types of media are much the same. Mass distributed press releases and story ideas with vague introductions of “Dear Esteemed Blogger” are nearly instantly deleted, while personal correspondence and interaction are rewarded with attention.

And bloggers are definitely being reached. The survey revealed that 60 percent of the bloggers that responded are contacted at least once a week by public relations professionals, with half of those being contacted at least once a day if not more. From anecdotal reports, there are a select group of public relations agencies who are reaching out to bloggers and getting fantastic returns on their outreach. Combined with the fact that wine bloggers read each others’ blogs, the reach of a single blog post can influence another blogger to purchase a wine to review, which then increases the potential audience.

However, just because a public relations agency is reaching out to bloggers does not result in an instant review. The quality of the outreach is extremely important. Only 40 percent of the bloggers surveyed found that public relations assistance was consistently helpful. In fact, 21 percent found that PR people were rarely or never helpful, which highlights the issues of inconsistent quality among the public relations world.

The main complaints that these bloggers had were that they were not being engaged by agencies looking to promote their clients and just being sent mass communications in hopes that they will write about them. What most bloggers do not understand is that this is a common occurrence among traditional journalists and has been a long-time complaint for them as well. This problem is so well documented, that there is a blog set up specifically to expose poorly conceived or written pitches that are sent en-mass to journalists nationally. I leave it to bloggers that are also journalists to tell this story better than I ever could.

The problem stems from lazy public relations practices and just as lazy editorial practices. While it seems impossible for such tactics to yield results, I submit that they must. In the same way that the majority of people would never click on a link in an obviously SPAM e-mail, such e-mails continue because they find people naïve enough to pursue the 2,800,000 Euro prize they won from some far away country, otherwise they would have long ago been abandoned. There are publications and web portals that will publish whatever is sent to them.

Wine bloggers, like the rest of the technologically advanced society, find most of their information on the internet. The survey showed that of the 51 responses, 47 went to the website of the winery to find more information about the wine they taste. The next most common way that most bloggers learn about a winery is by physically visiting the winery. I will accept that this is perhaps biased based on the fact that many wine bloggers live in wine country, however this is a good indicator to show that all aspects of a winery’s image are important, from the wine in the bottle to the people at the tasting room and through to the messaging a winery puts on their website.

It is intriguing how contacting the public relations representative for the winery and reading other bloggers’ reports on the winery were at the same level for the wine bloggers that were interviewed. Almost every wine blogger has a good sense of the other bloggers in the wine category, and especially the top bloggers. The fact that most bloggers do not reach out to PR people as a first course show a possible reluctance on bloggers to trust these contacts for accurate information. It could also be that the public relations contact for a winery is simply not visible enough for a blogger researching a wine to find their information.

Among established wine journalists there has been a prevailing feeling that wine bloggers are only interested in receiving free wine samples, which is what drives a person to blog about wine. There is at least one blogger who promotes themselves as willing to review any wine that is sent to them. There are also plenty of other bloggers, such as Katie (Gonzo Gastronomy) who find this practice distasteful. As for the rest of the wine blogging world, the survey showed the majority of wine bloggers use samples less than 25% of the time to review on their blog. With the current increase in wineries with available samples looking for positive reviews, it is interesting that wine bloggers continue to purchase wines from wineries or trusted retailers in order to find content for their blogs.

Wine bloggers are an ever increasing force in the wine world, and the industry is paying attention. A well written, well researched blog post can become top news in the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, and has in the past. An event targeting bloggers can spread over dozens of websites. The next step in wine blogger evolution is discovering how the public relations community can work with these writers to not only elevate the wineries and wine regions that they work for, but to also highlight the select bloggers that have influence over consumer audiences.

Note: Rob Bralow has been writing the blog “Wine Post” for almost one year and currently works for Gregory White PR, an agency that represents high profile wine and spirits companies and regions. Any and all ideas and opinions expressed in the above article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Gregory White PR.

The AWBC has teamed with the Wine Future Conference (http://www.winefuture.es/) and with “The Golden Mile Wineries” of Ribera del Duero in Spain to give away a FREE all-expenses-paid trip to Spain to attend WineFuture Conference for one person who is registered for the Spring conference in Walla Walla by August 31. Register for it here. Included are 2 nights in Ribera Del Duero visiting wineries, and two nights in Logroño, La Rioja attending the conference. All flights are also included and you are guaranteed to have a good time!

So you have 4 more days to make sure your entered in the contest! Sign up now!

Cheers!

PALATE PRESS: The online wine magazine, launches this September. PALATE PRESS is an experiment in the next generation of wine blogging.  The hypothesis is simple- collecting the very best of the wine blogosphere and carefully editing and publishing it will create a top quality and commercially viable online wine magazine.  The experiment is well under way, preparing to launch with some of the most talented and best-known wine writers on the internet, including Deb “Dr. Debs” Harkness, of Good Wine Under $20, Lenn Thompson (LENNDEVOURS), Jeff Lefevere (GOOD GRAPE: A Wine Blog Manifesto), and Hardy Wallace (Dirty South Wine). Other Editors and Contributors from the world’s top 100 wine blogs include Gabriella Opaz (Catavino), Richard Auffrey (Passionate Foodie), Michelle Lentz (My Wine Education), Russ Beebe (Winehiker Witiculture), Joe Roberts (1 Wine Dude), Craig Camp (Wine Camp), Kori Voorhees (Wine Peeps), Andrew Barrow (Spittoon), Remy Charest (The Wine Case), “Sonadora” (Wannabe Wino), Ken Payton (Reign of Terroir), and Tim Elliot (Wine Cast).

PALATE PRESS: The online wine magazine will launch with a solid core of writers, but that is only the beginning. If wine bloggers are willing to participate, PALATE PRESS can have a staff larger than every wine magazine in the world put together. Wine bloggers are everywhere. Where there is a wine story, there is a wine blogger to write about it. Did drought and wildfire effect wines in Australia? There are wine bloggers there to write about it. Is there controversy about St. Emilion classifications?  There are wine bloggers following the story. PALATE PRESS accepts, indeed it quite actively desires, submissions from wine bloggers around the world. Wine bloggers interested in considering assignments for specific stories, or who have story ideas they want to submit, should send them to submissions@palatepress.com.

You sign up for the list, and soon after you’ll start to receive emails with offers of wine samples from various wineries. The offers will be based on the types of wines you prefer to review, or the geographical area you specialize in.

I had a chance to talk to Josh a bit about it when I was at the WBC last month, and I have to say, it’s a great idea. I also talked to him about how it could be more international in scope. I hope he listens, because I know that this model would run well on a broader scale.

If you’re a wine blogger in the USA, please go to www.helpawinery.com and sign up!

Cheers,

Ryan

First, we need your help! There is zero money coming into this project, and we need all the extra support we can get! If you are fluent in a language listed on this site, become a Wineblogger Editor!! Job description: ensure that all blogs listed in that given language are active and relevant. Per month, this would take you less time than shampooing your dog or mowing the lawn. And in return, we’ll put your name on the front page with a link to your site. How can you say no to that?!

Where else can we use your helping hand? (Flickr photo by nicdalic)

Submitting Your Wine Blog

We would like to thank everyone for their interest in the site and their submissions, without you, we wouldn’t have made it to almost 1,000 blogs in so little time! But, in order for us to correctly categorize and place your submissions on the site in a timely fashion, there are a few things I would truly appreciate if everyone would do, both for people with wine blogs already listed on the site and future submissions.

1. Ensure that the link to your blog’s homepage is working properly
2. Ensure that you have a WORKING RSS feed. This doesn’t mean a “feedburner” link, but preferably, a RSS 2.0. Also make sure that you have a link to the RSS feed on the top, right hand corner of the page, not halfway down the blog, or at the bottom!
3. Please include the language of the blog in your submission!
4. Most importantly, if your blog is written in English, please include a BRIEF description of what you blog about on a consistent basis. Matching it to one of the sub-categories we already have would be even better!

Sponsoring

We want to make Wineblogger more robust, offer more features, and overall, make it more relevant to you. And a small investment can make it happen. You can invest in this ever growing site in either money or through an in-kind sponsorship, which could include programming, administration, design or whatever your imagination can conjure up. Make us an offer we can’t refuse!

Questions for You

1. If you look at the English language category, there are several sub-categories listed. Many of these have been created on the fly, but we know there are other we’re still lacking. More specifically, if you look at the “general” blog category, it appears much like your junk drawer in your kitchen - filled with sites that don’t have an overarching theme as of yet. What sub-categories would you like us to add?
2. How can we better organize the blogs in general? Currently, those listed at the top of the page are the ones most recently submitted, but this isn’t very useful. Our goal is to make the organization relevant to you, without offending anyone who is listed anywhere other than the top. Hence, what is the best way to list each wine blog on a page?
3. What are we lacking in the site in general? What can we do to make this site more useful for you?

As mentioned, we need your help if we intend to make this site run smoothly and effectively. So please contact us if you want to lend a helping hand! Finally, never hesitate to share your suggestions and thoughts! We appreciate all the feedback we can get!

Cheers,

The Wineblogger Team

As you will readily see, almost half of all blogs registered on Wineblogger.info are written in English. And of those, Regional and General Wine blogs take center stage with approximately 200 sites registered.

Interestingly, blogs written in French are the second most registered wine blogs, yet seem to be the least represented in major wine networks like the European Wine Bloggers Conference and the Open Wine Consortium.

What is also fascinating about this statistic is that although Spanish takes a close second, the majority of the Spanish written blogs are located within Spain, rather than South America; which means, that either word hasn’t spread about wineblogger.info directory or South America hasn’t caught the wine blogging bug as of yet.

There is still a lot more work we need to do with Wineblogger.info as a community, but we need your help. If you want to submit a post about the wine blogging world, know a wine blog that has not been registered or are interested in sponsoring this site, please contact us! This site was build for the community, and it is our sincere goal to have it managed and run by the community. Please lend a helping hand if you have either the inclination or time!

Total: 952
Catalan:  6
Chinese: 3
Czech: 6
Dutch: 13
English (All Categories): 452
French: 68
German: 50
Italian: 37
Japanese: 10
Norwegian: 3
Polish: 7
Portuguese: 41
Spanish: 54
Swedish: 39

Please leave examples in the comments, but better yet explain why those examples are important. Alternately please tell us what has yet to change.

The Web Should be Something Different

“The web should be something different”. This is a quote that I heard last week while listening to one of my favorite tech podcasts. The panel was talking about the Ze Frank phenomenon and how he was successful by being different. He knew that traditional media and traditional forms of communication need to be reinvented and redefined as we move towards the future. Web 2.0 is about giving people the power to express themselves in ways that have never been seen before. With this surge of power and technology, we’ve seen an avalanche of citizen journalists taking to the blog-o-sphere to report sometimes with good results and sometimes bad. In my opinion, the majority of these “journalists” are still mimicking the old print media that they at the same time shun as outdated and old. They mock the old guard, while at the same time, running columns that hearken to the editorial pages of newspapers and magazines - a supposedly dying breed.

This is what I see in the wine blog-o-sphere, and while the exceptions are growing, there are still too many websites and blogs that have more in common with wine industry rags than with the new world of which they published in. The web is moving past the old idea of one page - one person, a place for each individual to erect their own personal billboard. Today, the web is interactive and powerful, helping to create a new pop culture phenomenon, while helping to destroy others. This is the new web, and the new web no longer needs to turn to print media for inspiration.

Thus, I turn back to wine and the idea of Wine 2.0. Is the wine industry moving to the future or are we trying to continually live in our old comfortable world of wine critic vs. winery - a struggle for the almighty “score”? What Robert Parker did back when he issued the first scores in his magazine, the Wine Advocate, changed the way we look at wine today. For this, I am very grateful to him. He is someone I respect highly and continue to be inspired by, but it seems that his idea of scoring wines is something we’re afraid to give up. I understand this, but I don’t agree with it. The web is supposed to be something different, so why does the online world of wine seem to be so much of the same? Wine reviews with various types of points awarded ““ up to 5 stars, 20 points, 100pts, etc. - what we’re doing is miming the print media that we want to leave behind. Our bodega profiles and regional reviews have so much in common with the traditional stories that it appears that we’re kowtowing to the “rags” like Wine Spectator for which we shun; while at the same time, we are trying our best to be objective and separate from the influence of advertising and free wine samples.

The recent Wine Blog Awards hosted over at Fermentation felt to me more like an award for the blog most like the traditional wine rags than one rewarding new ways of communicating. While I do respect and actually read many of the winners and nominees, I do so in trade for the magazines I once bought. The only difference is that now the dust settles upon my laptop screen and not the piles of mags on my bottom shelf.

I sit here today trying to figure out what I want to see, what this new world should be, but I know we’re not there yet. I personally still practice much of what annoys me. Looking at other niches found on the web I wonder when will there be a DIGG for wines, or a Myspace for wine lovers? When will the winery have to enter the web, as opposed to just playing in it to see what happens? When will the wineries stop sending wines to Parker and Spectator to rate, and instead, start sending them, for instance, out to a group of bloggers who could do live online virtual tastings with other people. People who can join in a dialogue with both the winemaker and like minds about the merits of the wine and the stories that revolve around it rather than discussing only the mythical point value we feel we must place. Conversations are occurring online in groups that are larger than the entire online community of wine geeks, yet we are still talking about wine as though you need an education to enjoy it.

For me, wine is more than a beverage, and I know I’m not the average consumer, but I do know this. I used to sell wine for a living. In my store, the people that made me money were the not the uber-geeks, but rather the everyday wine drinker - the ones who made wine part of the meal, as fundamental as the salt and pepper sitting in the middle of the table. These are the people that we need to find a way to communicate with. Scores scare people and tasting notes terrify them, but conversation is what they embrace. They are afraid that they won’t find the same flavors you do when tasting a wine, but when you talk to them outside of scores and jargon, they open up and share ideas you’ve never thought about. Elitism is what is causing our youth not to turn to wine as they come of age, elitism bred by the wine rags over the past decades.

Results may very, but I think if we can engage the individual who is not part of the wine “cult”, we might see a new renaissance in the relation of Web 2.0 and of Wine 2.0. Wine standards have become stagnant and solidified and it’s time that we create a new renaissance of perception and communication, so that future can once again be redefined.

I don’t know what this new world is going to look like, maybe nothing will change at all. Who really knows? All I do know is that we need to change the way we approach the web when it comes to wine. We need to make wine something for everyone, and we need to make it a part of the web in a way that anyone can approach. Whether we redefine the tasting note, or we change the way we write about it, I know that the conversation can only lead to new ideas and new ideas are what move us ahead.

I don’t really know what the answers are yet, but I’ll continue to ask the questions. I would ask all of you to respond with your ideas and thoughts too. I welcome the feedback.

Cheers,

Ryan Opaz

Addendum - I do realize that there are plenty of services out there trying to do something different. The main problem I have is that they attract wine geeks like flies, rather than the wine drinking public. Wine Life Today has a few active members, which I’ll continue to contribute to, but I really don’t know if it will take off in any meaningful way. Winelog, Cork’d and Bottlelog all seem well and good, though I really don’t see anything happening. Finally Bulletin Boards (BB). We started one, and maybe one day someone will use it. If not, it will remain in the vast world of unvisited wine BB’s. eRobertparker is the biggest BB, but with the level of discourse going on in there, you must be a recent trust fund recipient in order to begin tasting at that level. Parker wanted to follow in Ralph Nader’s shoes, and what we have on his board is an elite group of people, who while knowledgeable, are also not the reality.

Please prove me wrong. Send me examples of how we are changing the discourse. Podcasting? Video casting? Are they different or just vocal versions of the same old things? Believe me, I know that I am as guilty as anyone when it comes to miming the rags, but I think we need to stop asking if “this new rating scheme I came up with” is really something different or just another incarnation of the same old ideas.

What initiated the creation of Backtype?

Initially, we wanted to create BackType so we could see what blogs people were reading and commenting on. Now we have much greater ambition for BackType, and we’re working on many new products and services.

How can a wine blogger effectively use Backtype?

We offer a collection of widgets and plugins related to comments that bloggers may be interested in. The most popular is the BackType Connect Wordpress plugin, which finds and displays comments related to your content from blogs, Twitter, Digg, and much more. Alternatively, you can use BackType Connect on our website to see where people are discussing your content. Soon we’ll be offering the same functionality for publishing platforms other than Wordpress.

What are the most common misconceptions of the search engine?

There are two common ones: 1) that we are or compete with third party comment systems, and 2) that we only track comments on blogs. Our Wordpress plugin runs on top of the native Wordpress comment system, so we don’t compete with popular third party comment systems like IntenseDebate or Disqus. Also, we track conversations from blogs, social networks, social news sites, and more.

For a budding new wine blogger, how would you suggest getting their feet wet?

If you’re just getting started, you probably don’t have many people commenting on your blog. A great way to promote more conversation is to use our Wordpress plugin. Also, I recommend signing up for BackType Alerts, which e-mails you whenever a search term you’re interested in is mentioned in a comment. I use it to follow comments made about “Krug Champagne.” It’s a great way to find conversations to participate in; if you write good comments, people will visit the URL you publish with your comment and you can start building you own readership.