October 29 2008
I had the pleasure of attending the Wine Blogger Conference that took place October 24th – 26th in Santa Rosa, CA.
The first thing that jumps out to me about the conference is how organized of an affair it was. Frankly, my expectations were a lot lower and Allan from Zephyr Adventures and Joel from the Open Wine Consortium over-delivered, particularly on value for my measly $95 out of pocket expense.
The value started with the speed dating-like live wine blogging in which groups of vintners had five minutes to pour and give their story and it ended with the Saturday night keynote at Sebastiani with Alice Feiring.
The vineyard walk Saturday morning at Quivera, by itself, was worth $75 to me. How often do you get a 3-hour pragmatic discourse from a biodynamic practitioner along with three course wine-paired lunch? Not often enough for me.
The grand tasting of New Zealand and Sonoma wines was another very nice touch.
The whole event was a treat and I have not even begun to talk about the surreal pleasure of meeting online friends for the first time.
Net-net, if there is a second Wine Blogger Conference, I would highly encourage anybody associated with social media and wine to sign-up.
Some other thoughts that struck me over the course of three days:
• On this blog I have off-handedly questioned both Gary Vaynerchuk and Alice Feiring, the events two keynote speakers – both people proved to be genuinely warm, assured, benevolent lovers of wine and I’m somewhat regretful I have criticized both. Gary is just fine without me, but my make-good for Alice is to finish reading her book.
• I was fearful of talking to Erika Strum because I have really taken her dad, founder of Wine Enthusiast, to task before – call me a wimp, if you will …
• I wish I were friends with Josh from pinotblogger in college; we would have had a lot of fun together … and created some havoc, though he already has his jail story.
• Doug Cook from AbleGrape has a very able palate, winning the blind tasting challenge
• It’s an interesting dynamic when, unbeknownst to me, I find myself talking with a person who has disagreed with me on my site
• It dawned on me that I know more about and have more inherent trust in many wine bloggers than I do with many people I have worked with professionally for years
• For an Indiana boy where figs never make the produce aisle, eating perfectly ripe figs from the tree, in a biodynamic vineyard (Quivera) where you know no pesticides are used, is an exceptional treat.
• For an Indiana boy where we’re culturally literate, but not always progressive, eating house made salumi at Quivera was also a nice treat
• As an avowed non-participant in Twitter, I realized I am missing the boat
• What started as Blogging is fragmenting into three camps – social networks, bloggers and Twitter. Of course, you still have the old guard on the message boards, too along with the tasting note sites … those five constituencies will continue to bedevil wineries trying to harness influence
• Social networking relationships are friendly and open, but there is an undercurrent of cliquishness
• Large wine companies, who attended the conference in abundance, are still trying to figure out how to get their arms around blogging and social media
• To a large extent, blogging has a reached a saturation point regarding how much we can sniff each others exhaust. In order to grow the medium, consumers need to come to wine blogs in larger numbers. Depressing statistics about RSS usage (10-15%) means we might be at an inflection point for how to grow the influence portion of blogging
• On the heels of “RockawayGate” and my participation on a panel about wine industry and blogger interaction, I get the sense that whomever tries to monetize wine blogging around anything other than straight advertising is in for a long fight and potential pariah status
• Robert Larsen from Rodney Strong and Rockaway bought my lunch on Friday. I was not going to allow him to do so until he noted that Steve Heimoff has taken a free lunch, as well.
• On a macro-level, the whole wine blogging conference could be considered an influencing junket – I walked away with a greater appreciation for individual wineries, Sonoma wines, Zephyr Adventures, and BioD. I am okay with this.
• My favorite wines from the live blogging tasting, in no certain order are: 4 Bear Winery, Bonterra, Clos La Chance and delicious dry Muscat Blanc from James David, and Twisted Oak.
• I’m all for progressiveness, yet I’m still trying hard to find the romance and intrigue in wine packaged in tetra paks, logic tells this is better than glass, yet I’m still down for a glass bottle.
• Biodynamics is nothing more and nothing less than a religious debate; since I’m an “all God’s creatures” kind of guy, I’m totally open to hearing about BioD from a practitioner like Steven Canter at Quivera
• That said about BioD, I do have to arch an eyebrow when I am told there is a BioD consultant in Oregon who installs small dwellings in vineyards for Gnomes. It is one thing to bury a horn with dung at the equinox and another to build housing for mystical little people.
• There is a slight disconnect between Quivera’s BioD practices and the very ripe, high alcohol California-like wines they produce. I chalk this up to ownership palate preferences, but there is still something incongruent …
• If Napa Valley has the reputation then Sonoma has the mojo
*Ed Note* to view a couple of the panel discussions, including the one that I was on, go to Caveman Wines. Michael is also doing a nice job of re-capping the event, as well.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (13) |
Great post, Jeff. You are right about Sonoma. The mojo is here!!!
“n a macro-level, the whole wine blogging conference could be considered an influencing junket”
And I thought I was a lunatic thinking that very same thing….
If bloggers are looking for free lunches and dinners from winemakers, it’s as easy as falling off a log. But be forewarned: There are lots of fat people in this business. That’s one of the reasons (there are others) I don’t indulge in this perk very often. BUT there’s nothing wrong with it, except to take it to an unethical extreme. A certain wine critic for the LA Times used to tell winemakers he’d taste and review their wines ONLY if they brought him to lunch or dinner at a pricy restaurant—preferably with a great old Bordeaux or Burgundy! (He was fired when he got outed.) Anyhow I’m glad my experiences helped get you over your guilt at lunching with the delightful Rob Larsen!
Hey Jeff,
Really enjoyed talking with you at the Quivira lunch. I was also interested in the Quivira disconnect between BioD grape growing and the overblown, high alcohol wine style. At least the grapes are chemical free.
Be a pariah! Rock the boat!
You are not alone in seeking monetizing alternatives to trad advertising.
Jeff,
So glad to finally meet in person. I enjoyed talking wine and football, even if your Irish were whipping up on my Huskies as we spoke. 
You make lots of great points in this post. I, too, am still hopeful that we can figure out monetizing alternatives to straight advertising.
Jeff, do you think the conference made significant progress toward defining a wine blog? Or perhaps types of wine blogs?
So why don’t you join us on Twitter? I’m @dalecruse
Jeff, One of the highlights of the wbc for me was the announcement at the NY Tasting that you’d be joining Twitter.
The only thing I lament is the perceived undercurrent of cliquishness that you and others picked up on, and the fact that I didn’t introduce myself to you and a couple other movers & shakers.
That being said, most wine bloggers only know me from Twitter, and I have an aversion to introducing myself to people that I know, and who don’t know me.
Looking forward to the addition of your input on Twitter (I’m @smellslikegrape), and leave you with a couple of tools:
Is following that celebrity worth the pain? http://followcost.com/
Twitter power grader:
http://twitter.grader.com/
Twitter Toolbox:
http://mashable.com/2007/09/29/twitter-toolbox/
Thanks for all the comments, guys!
Tom - Having spent time in and around Napa, and visited Sonoma before, I knew where the mojo was, but there is a spirit of friendly competition on the Sonoma side that I really appreciate that I don’t sense on the Napa side. I really like how organized the vintner groups are in Sonoma!
Lenn - an equal pleasure on my side. Lenndevours is a blog I read daily without fail so getting to meet in person and talk was a lot of fun. If I lived in your neck of the woods, I have little doubt our wives wouldn’t be fast friends, too.
Steve - your comments are well-noted. I think you said elsewhere to always be cautiously optimistic and that’s my takeaway.
Amy - ah, kindred spirits we are. I’m not sure if I’ll be the pariah, but certainly there are a lot of ideas worth exploring.
Kori - my wish for you is to wash away the stench with Washington football; stench that is couched in the canard of integrity.
Tish - I don’t see any unification on wine blogging or a definition thereof. What I see is an increasing landscape of more fragmentation. If wineries want to capture the online market it’s going to take some resources and diligence. The interesting thing is that as they now start to get blogging, the landscape shifts around them. What I realized at the conference is that very meaningful relationships are forged on Twitter, which frankly scares the heck out of me because I’m a little Twitter clueless.
Dale - I’ll track you down on Twitter because I’m going to try and alleviate the above mentioned cluelessness.
Becky - I think we shared a moment at the Sonoma tasting before dinner on Saturday night. Glad to finally meet you and thank you very much for the insight on Twitter—I’ll check them out for sure!
Thanks all!
Another thing I find interesting is that the Wine Writers SYmposium, which I attended in its inaugural year, drew 50 people including a few bloggers (Tyler Colman, Derrick Schneider), and PR folks were aggressively kept away (except for the avuncular sponsorship of the Napa Valley Vintners). The idea was to focus on the particular craft of wine writing. The infusion of PR reps at this confernece, from what I have read, had a very large influence on the interactions of people there. Wonder how different it would have been if the bloggers had been left tow their own devices….
I still expect some big changes in the way wine lovers perceive, define and use blogs. But I do not expect the progress to happen linearly; rather, unexpected explosions (like, dare I say, Rockaway and the WS Restaurant Award flap) will be the catlaysts.
You’re my boy Blue!
Jeff,
I’m quite disappointed that we didn’t cross paths at the conference. I very much would have liked to meet you after all this time. I was dealing with some health issues with my wife and so didn’t get to attend all the sessions or dinners.
I hope there will be another occasion for us to meet.
Alder
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Jeff,
Great to finally meet you in person…hopefully it won’t be another 4 years before it happens again.