Reading the Blogs

by Rob Bralow

Last week I was on Jury Duty for most of the week. It was long and boring, and it allowed my Google reader to pile up with posts. When I got back to the office on Thursday, I found over 600 blog posts waiting for me to read them.

Oh yes, I took a look at every one of them. But I really did not read most of them. The vast majority of the posts were wine reviews. Are they interesting? Not really. Seriously, reading the tasting notes of 200 people over 7 days is almost worse than sitting in a windowless room deciding the fate of another person.

It is just that tasting notes from someone else do not really mean anything to me. There are a few bloggers that I might ask for a Zinfandel recommendation, because they live in the heart of Zinland. If I did not turn to my friend who works at Sunset Corners in Miami (she's a bubbly fanatic) there are one or two bloggers that I might ask for advice.

But what are people writing about right now? The answer is whatever marketers are sending out samples of. And that is low priced, high volume wines that everyone has named "value" wines. So far I have tasted many of these "value" wines and I value very few of them. Therefore, I am not really interested in the majority of reviews of these wines. Whenever I see a review of a wine I have tasted, I stop a moment to see if they author agreed with my taste. I have found more and more that I find glowing reviews of wines that I do not think are worth the price of the glass the wine is in.

What I do read are the commentaries that very few bloggers write about the wine industry and their experiences. Not necessarily the review of the wines, but their view on how the wine industry is moving. These are interesting and incite my curiosity. I want to know what these writers are thinking. I want to see if I agree or disagree. I want to know how their ideas will become the next evolution of new media, of wine sales, and of how all of us think about wine.

I will definitely be one that writes reviews of wines I have tasted, because that is what I do, it is the reason why wineries send me their wines. But hopefully I will intersperse nuggets of interesting commentary throughout my wine reviews to keep you interested in my writing.

Find Your Muse - Wine Blogging Wednesday #63

Words are taken for granted in this world of instant information. No longer can we laugh out loud or properly use letters like R and U. The evolution of human interaction is being condensed into one hundred and forty characters and considered equivalent to a yellow canary named by the Warner Brothers.

When writing a wine blog there are hundreds of ways to proceed. Wine Blogging Wednesday, founded by Lenn of LENNDEVOURS, creates a focal point once a month for wine blog writing. My thanks go to Lenn for inviting me to host this month's edition.

For the next Wine Blogger Wednesday, I present a simple challenge with the following guidelines:

• Choose a wine they you know well and have enjoyed many times, but perhaps have not had the time or the motivation to write about OR a wine you have seen in your wine shop that you have been meaning to try.
• Time how long you enjoy the wine. Round numbers are more than acceptable but exact numbers get extra points.
• Take twice that amount of time to write your blog post. Use the time to find out something you might not have known about the wine and to edit your writing. A wise man once told me that there is no good writing, only good rewriting.
• NO SAMPLES! Too often the wines written about are out of convenience rather than genuine interest. Make this one of the wines that you decided to purchase.
• Last but not least, give your writing some flare. Use a style that will challenge you. Be creative and enjoy writing for the sake of the words. Be picky about which words you use. Think about the rhythm and the rhyme. Poetic phrase will be rewarded.

My coach always told me that the simplest tasks can sometimes be the most difficult. There is a lot of room to maneuver in this challenge, but do not make the mistake of waiting until the last week to begin writing. You may find yourself running out of time.

The deadline: November 18

Send your submission by e-mail to me.

Happy writing!

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.