September 14 2010
With the launch of the Connoisseurs’ Guide to California Wine (CGCW) online (well covered here, here and here), save for Ronn Weigand and his Restaurant Wine newsletter, every notable professional wine personality, writer, pundit and critic is now online in a meaningful way, alongside thousands of bloggers. This, of course, begs the question: Now What?
And, no, I’m not waxing hyperbolic, either. Literally, by far, the vast majority of wine luminaries—both bright and flickering—are practicing their craft online with some significance.
To wit, in addition to the launch of CGCW a week or so ago, I also just received notice that the finest global wine periodical on the planet – The World of Fine Wine – has launched a blog of sorts, as well – published once weekly on Friday’s. The TWoFW site will have contributions from several bright wine writers including Peter Liem and Bruce Schoenfeld.
Meanwhile, dozens of wine blogs are pushing the envelope of quality and blurring the lines of understanding about where exactly high quality wine writing can come from.
When Tom Wark from Fermentation says, “Wine lovers find themselves living and drinking in a ‘Golden Age’ of wine writing” he’s not kidding.
However, this “everybody’s in the pool” reality has given me pause to consider not the considerable depth of online wine writing, but, rather, the sheer breadth of commentary on wine and the fundamental question, “Who is reading all of this stuff?”
I cannot help but feel that wine writing, and by extension online wine writing, is entering into a phase of (pardon the hackneyed idiom), “Too many chiefs and not enough Indians.”
Online wine writing lives in the equivalent of a small town that has 19 four-star restaurants. Good food, not enough customers.
Quite simply, this might be a “Golden Age” like bebop jazz in the 40s, Beat literature in the 50s, or Laurel Canyon folk rock in the 70s, but online wine writing, unless I have a blind spot where I normally have 20/20 acuity, isn’t a movement and there won’t be a historical legacy that will be written, instead it will be a footnote denoting evolution.
What this means, unfortunately, is there is no glory to be found in hindsight infamy. And, therefore, the focus, everybody’s focus, in the here and now, should be on spreading the word about all of the fabulous wine writing online lest all of the toil live in ignominy.
Put another way, a who’s who of wine writer’s writing online is great, and it’s even better that its complemented by some truly talented pro-amateurs, but it sure feels like there aren’t enough wine enthusiasts who care, or read it – and, it’s everybody’s responsibility to help change that.
Now, I do need to be clear, this isn’t a rant about making wine more accessible, or less intimidating. It’s not a bromide against mainstream glossy wine magazines, either. Nor is this a straw man argument about mainstream media and online wine media and who “gets” what. This is more of a statement about the way we go about our information consuming lives and how we share that for the betterment of everybody.
Of all the wine blogs, wine web sites, and –essentially—the entire sum of my online web habits are sequestered in isolation between me and my browser. I don’t talk about it much—not with my Miller Light swilling buddy, my wife, or my wine tasting group.
I’m guessing you’re the same.
HuffPo, the contents of my RSS feedreader, the wine sites I am a visitor to, my pay subscriptions to Notre Dame football web sites, the digital marketing newsletters I read, all of my fairly routine information consumption habits happen in isolation. And, I’ve never had a conversation with anybody that comes close to approximating, “Hey, where do you get your wine information.”
No, I think each of us that live our wine enthusiasm online, either by writing or reading, do so without much sharing offline to our fellow wine enthusiastic friends and family.
This has to change.
It has to change because we are living in a “Golden Age” of wine writing, but only a very small percentage of people who are wine-interested pursue their interest online. And, lest the online wine scene, again, where every notable wine luminary is now present, wants to operate in the din of a small room instead of an amphitheater, the audience for all of this fabulous writing has to become larger.
So, here’s my challenge to every reader of this site: every garden starts with a seedling. We all know at least six people in our friends and family circle who are self-identified wine enthusiasts who read nary a word about wine online (or offline, for that matter). Do me a favor, and send them an email and say, “Bob, I know you like reds, you should really start checking out this site to keep current on the wine scene.”
Then, include the links for the wine section of Alltop and a link to John Gillespie’s weekly email newsletter highlighting wine columns.
Both of these services act as a fine gateway for deeper knowledge, an adjunct to Spectator and the Wine Advocate for which most are familiar. Of course, there will be plenty of opportunity to work on diving into the nuances of the online wine scene, RSS feeds, feed readers and assorted minutia, but for now, the focus has to be on casting a wider net to get the wine-interested into the online wine scene so all of this writing has a worthy audience.
So, please, I beg of thee, act now, send that email and the net result can be a wine information society that is healthy and growing instead of a niche, running parallel with the growth of wine consumption in America while democratizing wine in the process.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (14) |
Hi Steve,
Thanks for commenting. I didn’t realize that. Surely an oversight!
I know you may find it unbecoming, about as unbecoming as I find being the 124th wine blog on PostRank, but I would send a direct message to the Alltop Wine Twitter person and see if they can grasp some sanity.
Somebody should do some solid reporting on how these various ranking services are so far apart.
Folks, the vast majority of wine blogs out there aren’t serious, they are the public logs of passionate consumers who want to journal and detail their personal wine journeys. So I’d argue that the pool is really an ocean, and the “pool” is really much smaller if you’re talking about more serious wine writing. And there’s nothing wrong with either.
Interesting stuff Jeff. I’ve been thinking about this since reading it this morning.
My takeaway is there’s a huge opportunity for wine writers of all kinds to connect with content consumers. The most successful will be the ones who provide must see content delivered in ways consumers want to receive it.
In terms of best-of lists, Alltop doesn’t seem to put a lot of thought into keeping their list updated. I think they just started out with a short list of wine blogs and then sequentially added each wine blogger who requested to be added. PostRank is a bit more interesting because they dynamically determine the list and keep it updated based on number of posts, comments, links, and mentions.
Of course, nothing beats a short list of recommended reading along with some commentary as to why each is recommended.
Cheers!
Swim, Baby, swim…
I agree with all that has so far been shared. And I expect that increased focus and targeting will help sort things out. Once a communication medium has become accessible to nearly all, differentiation (in regionality and topicality, for wine, in particular) becomes essential, if any publisher is to reach and maintain any consistent, substantive audience. Clearer specialization will help establish relevance, and targetable audiences.
This is a very interesting observation. Charlie’s venture on-line certainly says a lot about the future of wine writing. There is a tremendous amount of good work out there, and much of it is missed. Jeff, I include yours in that, too.
I would not, though, recommend Alltop or any other aggregator. Instead, I would tell people the sites I like best, or tell them about particularly good stories. That is personal, it comes from a friend, and it is more likely to be followed.
David,
If you’re saying that there is a lot of good wine writing that is missed, this site included, I agree with you.
Much of my good writing is missed. 
Jeff
Boy, do I agree with David. I wouldn’t recommend aggregator sites to anyone. They don’t offer anything new and they certainly have some sort of way to keep track that isn’t actually keeping track.
I can help chewing over what the Dude commented about all those “public logs of passionate consumers.” Where are those passionate consumers when it comes to reading (and commenting on) blogs?
Without exception, every blog that I look in on seems overwhelmingly commented on by other wine bloggers/writers/industry people.
I still can’t figure out why there are about 1,000 wine blogs. Just counting days in a year and then multiplying by a 1,000 makes me wonder how soon we will run out of things to say.
PS: isn’t a Golden Age determined as such after it has passed???
It is easy for anyone to get online and write about something. It is much more difficult for most people to actually target an audience that might be interested in what they are writing, AND alert that audience to the fact that something that might be of interest to them is available. We’re putting lots of energy into product (content) development, and almost no energy into customer (reader) development. Having a lot of contacts or links is not the same as having a lot of customers.
I definitely understand what you’re saying in this post, but I sort of have an opposite feeling. I’m really shocked at how many people DO read what we’re writing. I know it’s only a fraction of the wine lovers. But isn’t it still sort of astounding that anybody at all is paying attention?
I’m in a region that’s got a lot of people in the trade so my experience may be a bit different. Also it might be that France or Europe are smaller communities.
Wow, I am certainly not comfortable finding such a great article that clearly shows how we can take action to support the claims of it’s writer. At least not online. This is good stuff and I am going to take up your challenge, if only to send it to 2 people (I think 6 is tough) but I will send it to two people and carry the torch.
Honestly, this has been a fantastically well written article with great references and clear concepts and to top it off - at the end you actually give a course of ACTION to take. Something I always find writers stopping short of when blogging.
Thanks for the heads up, and I do think the online writing world will only get bigger, so the golden age will continue for quite some time.
The $20 is in the mail, Ian. Thank you for the nice comment.
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Jeff, I largely agree with what you say. However, I would not recommend Alltop. I can’t believe they are an accurate representation of who’s out there, because they don’t include a number of top wine blogs, including mine.