The Wine Show

It is very last minute I know, but if you are keen to explore more wines from around the world you might want to check out the show going on RIGHT NOW at the Business Design Centre in London.

The Wine Show is a consumer event that I believe is in its third year already and attracts over 10,000 people to try all sorts of wines.

Last year it was quite exciting (some interesting Greek wines stand out in my memory) and I must admit I think this year's show is a little dull in comparison, but for consumers who want to learn about wines, it is always worth seeking out opportunities to try wines like this.

I did see a number of smaller producers and specialist importers had small stands that I'm sure would be worth exploring, but unfortunately I did not get a chance to linger.

I believe today (Saturday) is sold out, but there may be tickets for tomorrow.

If you do go, let me know what you think of the show.

Vintage time

Vintage is a great time, ... for spectators.

I am not exactly getting my hands dirty (although I can claim to have picked 'some' grapes this year at least), but my day job has certainly kept me busy recently.

The great news is that it has taken me to the vineyards regularly throughout the last few weeks as this is when the 'real' business happens - grapes are picked, wine is fermented, winemakers are sweating and shouting, and the vineyards themselves look fabulous.

It has made me realise quite how fraught a business it is, with the stress of the entire year's work, and the next year's revenue, resting on the result of these few weeks. However, I wouldn't have missed it.

It has meant that more philosophical meditations on wine & the culture of wine, beyond "which of those bottles I drank last night was responsible for the way I feel this morning?" (probably the last one), have been beyond me. However, things will start to settle down in a week or two when I plan on re-attacking my preferred subjects with renewed gusto having made some interesting discoveries, and new friends, over these weeks.

A presto!

A hole lot of wine - for fun

I was playing with the Google Maps tool the other day and noticed a cool little widget.

Dig a hole through the Earth. Point your icon at anywhere on the globe and it will burrow straight through the Earth and tell you where it came out.

I thought I'd try it for a few wine regions, finding out how close the Northern/Old World hemisphere regions were to their Southern/New World counterparts.

Surprisingly, there were almost NO matches where a region somewhere in the world was precisely "the other side of the world". I did get a couple of close matches. Any guesses what they might be?


...


just giving you a chance to think about it


...


Well, the closest was an area between Galicia and the Rias Baixas region of North West Spain, and the Douro in Portugal which is almost exactly opposite the Nelson & Marlborough regions in New Zealand (well, close)

Drilling through from the main wine producing regions of Chile and Argentina you'd land in China. Unfortunately I have no idea where wine is made in China and it is a BIG place, so chances are it is way off.

Just a bit of fun.

Delicious Irony

I just can't help seeing the ironic side of this.

Here I was, quietly blogging away in relative obscurity about bits and pieces that came to mind about wine and slowly realising that this blogging lark is just as intense and time-consuming as people had warned me it would be. So, I gamely wrote about how tough it is to keep it all going.

Then what happens? One of the top wine blogs in the US, and therefore the world, gives me a very encouraging write-up. Tom Wark, over at Fermentation in California knows a thing or two about blogging. Not only does he have one of the most widely read wine blogs and probably consults for wineries about Wine2.0, but he also hosts the American Wine Blog Awards (more on this name in a future post - yes, you knew I wouldn't let it lie, didn't you Tom!?) and regularly interviews some of the top names in this field

[I would like to stress I am not in that category, my mention was much more charitable].

The result, as you would expect, is that I had as much traffic on the blog in the last three days as I had seen for the last 3 months. Not bad, but of course, ooooh little irony, is that I now feel even more pressure to say something interesting and spend time making sure it is well written.

As you can tell, I failed!

Actually, I have a few thoughts already in my drafts folder, but getting them finished and sending them on their way into the world to fend for themselves is still just as difficult.

In order to give you an idea of what I am working on so that you might give me the benefit of the doubt and keep on checking out this site in anticipation, here are some of those topics:

- Buying better wine, and the "Cost per Pop" calculation
- Appellations as Brands
- Is wine simply a commodity?
- "Glass of sherry? No? Thought not!" (but you should)
- Wine & Photography
- The Growth Imperative
- "Why are you in the wine trade, Daddy?" (This was my first topic and I still have not got around to publishing it)

If any of these tickle your fancy, then keep scratching for a little bit longer and I'll get them posted soon.

If there are any wine bloggers out there looking for ideas for their own blogs, please feel free to steal any of the above topics so we might start the discussion (remember this is about the Wine Conversation and building the culture of wine), but please do link back to this blog. If anyone at all wants to post any thoughts on these topics, or anything else, in my comments box below, I would be most indecorously grateful.

p.s. Tom, despite this I don't seem to appear in your blog roll :)

Am I qualified to give advice?

Yesterday I was asked THE inevitable wine blogger question.

Wulf (real name), is a friend of mine who happens to have an eclectic mix of subjects on his blog Down in the Den (!), from his jazz band & compositions, to gardening, programming, photography and religion. His latest theme is wine, so I thought I'd chip in, and quite naturally he responded by asking:

"...any advice about developing my palate for tasting and evaluating wine?"

Thoroughly reasonable question, but it fills me with dread. Whilst I like wine and know what interests me, I have no idea where to recommend others should start. I feel like I ought to ask hundreds of questions about his tastes in food & travel, his mood, his knowledge of history, what he had for lunch, ... all those things that in one way or another influence my own choices.

Of course, I did what any sensible blogger would do, and sent him to read someone else's blog (in this case a relatively new blog to me, called Wine Ministry where Rev. Jeff writes about wine with "a theological slant". Perfect!)

Why do I feel unable to respond to perfectly valid requests for advice like this? I guess it is that as you get realy deep into a subject, you become immersed in the nuances, things that for most people don't matter but make you "the expert". They don't care whether the white wine was barrel fermented. They just want to know if it will it taste nice. Will they like it?

But this is precisely the issue. I know that it makes a difference to the taste, but feel supremely unqualified to tell them whether they will like it or not. I know that I like it.

Do any other wine bloggers out there feel this?

The best wine bloggers, or wine educators for that matter, are not necessarily those who know the most, but are those who know how to communicate with those wanting to learn, without putting them off. Maybe this is why I prefer not to post tasting notes - I can't make myself believe it matters what I think about the wine. I'd rather tell you about the winery, the region or the country and if it appeals to you, let you choose to try it.

The great thing about blogging, in any subject but wine in this case, is that there are a vast range of blogs, and one or more are certain to have the sort of information that a reader, whether novice or expert, is looking for.

Now the only problem is finding them.

Of course, the simple answer, as I believe Alder Yarrow over at Vinography points out, is "Try lots of them".

Blog fatigue and thoughts on wine online

I am sure there are many out there that will recognise this feeling:

When you start your blog you think you might, just, find the time to keep it going. Then you start to get into your topic, especially after a few encouraging comments and your first few subscribers. The excitement starts to build when you make new contacts, new friends, new connections. All of a sudden the blog has created a new network to interact with. You read your comments and reply, read others' blogs, comment on them, discuss ways of working together on facebook, join other forums, ...

Finally you get to a point where that interaction, that new network based on having started a blog, is taking up the time you have available to write it and in fact you no longer blog at all. I am beginning to wonder whether I should be entitled to comment on wine blogging and the future of wine on the web (as I am doing on facebook and elsewhere) when my own blog has been given so little attention?

So what might this imply for online wine culture?

This is an important lesson for those contemplating the future of wine on the internet. Where will consumers find the time to interact on the web as much as these business models demand? There is only so much time one can spend in front of the computer - checking email, reading, posting and commenting on blogs, facebook, mySpace, twitter, etc.

Somehow, the wine 'communities' need to get their members to buy, drink, rate and write about their wines as well as all this. I love wine and I even earn my money from it, but even I cannot be bothered to write tasting notes on these sites and spend too long discussing it in forums. I know these are just my own preferences, but surely this applies to the vast majority of wine drinkers? The Wine Conversation is not just about online forums, it is about making part of everyday life.

I wonder whether the future for wine is not more individualistic. Rather than creating online social interaction around wine, maybe the most important job is to deliver information to buyers at the point of purchase. After all, this is where the money is anyway, and it is also where the average consumer is looking for advice.

The solution is not obvious, but time really is the rare commodity around here, and the job of wine sites should be to give us back time to enjoy better wines, not to use it up in endless data entry.

One to think about in more detail.

Bloggers in competition

Over on facebook, Richard Auffrey asks a pertinent question:

Are wine bloggers in competition with each other? If so, how does that affect our interaction?

As it happens, this links in to things I was considering myself. As I posted a few days ago, Wine 2.0 is about interaction, and this interaction creates (in my mind) ... The Wine Conversation (see how I managed to link it back to my own subject?).

"The Wine Conversation" is about the many discussions that happen about wine because enjoying it is a common, shared experience. As the experience of wine increases in our country, hopefully so does the Conversation.

In this view of the world, bloggers are very much collaborators rather than competitors, involved in sharing information about wine and getting others involved. You can see this quite clearly in the facebook universe. Although very few, if any, of the wine bloggers have met, there is a very strong bond between them. Many have linked to each other, becoming "friends" in facebook terminology simply because of the shared interest in wine and blogging.

Before blogs, the only way to discuss wine was face-to-face, or by reading others' words in magazines and books. The former is limited and quite daunting for some people, particularly those just learning to enjoy wine, while the latter is potentially very dry (excuse the pun), so generally reserved for the real enthusiast. How were everyday drinkers supposed to get involved with the Wine Conversation?

Blogging allows individuals to put forward their thoughts not as pronouncements (as per the magazines), but as points for discussion. Everyone can get involved as much or as little as they wish by reading, commenting, or even starting their own blog. This is the interaction that makes it different from what has come before, and bloggers are as much consumers of others' blogs as they are publishers, so the Conversation metaphor is particularly apt.

By their nature blogs are limited in scope so we NEED more blogs and bloggers, and we need to read, share and converse on them, otherwise we either fall back on the old publishing models, or we become an irrelevance.

So what about the alternative view, that we might be in competition? What would bloggers be competing over?

• Limited numbers of readers? I guess that the potential readership is unlimited for bloggers prepared to do something new (check out what Chateau Petrogasm are doing)
  
• Limited advertising dollars? This is possible, but the vast majority of bloggers do not try and make money from the blogs, so this is currently irrelevant
• Stories? Well, there might be some truth here, but in most cases this is not relevant to those blogging about wine as opposed to news
  
• Ratings? On the contrary, as ratings are based on the numbers of links to your blog as much as readers, networking and cooperation are more important
• Prizes? They do exist, but there aren't many of these yet, and in theory they are based on quality rather than content, so getting help is a winning strategy
  

In short, wine bloggers have a shared goal and mission, to spread the love of wine and support the Wine Conversation in their country/region/business/community, and this is done by supporting others, linking to their sites, reading their stories, sharing views and, eventually, sitting down to drink a nice bottle of wine together.