Are these my people?

Something I am struggling with a little bit and I am not sure why. There are wine bloggers from all over the place. Some are lawyers, doctors, web designers, information technology professionals, finance professionals, etc. Many are not in the wine industry, while others like me are entrenched in the world of promoting and selling wine.

I came to blogging what seems to be the back way. Many people I met this past weekend want to be known as a wine writer, or want to be able to make a living by writing about wine. I am not sure that wine writing is in my future, besides my blog of course. I started in wine first by working for a wine region, Chile. Roughly three years ago I was hired by a PR firm and I was asked to work on the Wines of Chile account. Since then my knowledge of the wine world has exploded and my interest has grown even faster. One of the first things that I learned is that no matter how much I know, it is only a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall wine world. I remain largely ignorant of the inns and outs of most European wine regions, my experience of California is lacking in the extreme, and my palate has a long way to go before I would consider it sophisticated.

Most of the bloggers I have met are a good deal older than I am, married, and have been buying and tasting wines for many years. Living in New York does not give me a great deal of budget to spend on wine, I am not married, and I am a servant to the movement of time.

But something that does bring all of the wine blogging community together is the unquestioned passion that has spilled over onto the internet. There is just no way to realize how much goes into blogging until you actually start doing it. To keep up a blog, any blog, requires commitment and the decision to spend time on it. And time, as well all know, is an incredibly precious commodity.

In my opinion, the wine industry and marketing world is absolutely right in treating bloggers as a group to put more effort into. Bloggers do not get paid to express an opinion online, with the exception of a few exceptional bloggers. Bloggers write for the passion of writing, and I would challenge anyone to say otherwise. No one spends 15 – 20 hours a week on something they do not care about.

I am very happy to count myself a part of this community and now that I have met more of my peers, I am comfortable in saying that I feel like I belong.