Mind you, this doesn’t even begin to cover the breadth and depth of the wine blogger trade. The North American Wine Bloggers Conference attracted over 300 wine bloggers to their Walla Walla gathering in June, instigating well over 200 articles on the event. This doesn’t even include the vast number of photos of videos produced!

The EWBC will be taking place in Vienna, Austria, on October 22-24th, and if you’re interested in joining, please make sure to put yourself on the wait list, located on the EWBC website.

Gabriella

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Environmental issues are a topical issue in the wine sector at the moment. The challenge is that in this period when the wine sector is having to rely on its capacity to attract new consumers, the prospect of using such a complex topic as a communications tool is akin to trying to attract teenagers to the subject of science through the appeal of winning the Nobel prize. Given that a very small group of consumers would find interest in such an appeal, this webconference has been organised in order to help illustrate the challenges, and just how long it can take the wine sector to develop value in such an obscure association in the mind of the wine consumer.

SIGN UP NOW: https://burgundy.dimdim.com/esc-dijon

Dr Andrew Monk

Dr Andrew Monk has two decades of experience in organic industry auditing, certification and standards setting and commercial interests across the organic supply chain formerly in horticulture and value-adding and currently in the organic waste-resource sector. Andrew has a PhD with a focus on organic production systems and sustainability in Australia.

Andrew consults to both public and private entities across the supply chain on environmental (including organic), issues and management systems, whilst being managing director of an environmental sector services company, Mulching Technologies Pty Ltd. Andrew is a prior CEO and current director of
Biological Farmers of Australia Ltd (BFA) and an adjunct associate professor at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW, School of Business, Economics and Public Policy.

Phil Reedman MW

Phil Reedman MW has long had an interest in the environmental and sustainable aspects of the wine industry as well as society at large. As a retailer with Tesco in the UK Phil was highly involved in the move to bulk shipping and bottling in the UK for many of Tesco’s own-brand wines and made space on their crowded shelves for wines from a number of organic producers.

When Phil established his own international retail and wine consultancy in 2007 he set it up as a certified Carbon Neutral business to offset the impact that his considerable air travel had on greenhouse gas emissions. In partnership with his wife Phil also has an interest in two luxury, award-winning, eco-accredited, carbon neutral holiday cottages in the English Cotswolds.

As a twelve year old school student he wrote to his local MP questioning the UK’s continued reliance on non-renewable energy sources when the UK had abundant and unexploited potential for generating energy from wind, wave power and geothermal sources. Phil is currently working on building an environmentally sustainable house in Adelaide.

James Millton

James Millton was the first certified biodynamic producer in New Zealand. His vineyards are situated in four locations in the Manutuke and Matawhero appellations of New Zealand. Traditional viticulture is practised in all vineyards. No insecticide, herbicide, systemic fungicide or soluble fertilisers are used in the vineyard, with The Millton Vineyard being New Zealand’s first commercial fully certified organic winegrowers. Following the indications given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in 1924 biodynamic techniques are used in all areas of the production. In 2009 the vineyards have been certified biodynamic with Demeter New Zealand. His website is here: http://www.millton.co.nz/

Logistics of a Webinar

Please be aware that the actual presentation will start at the time indicated when you register. The widget is set-up to show the time it starts, according to your computer’s time settings. So, as long as your clock and time zone is correct for where you are located, you should see when the event will begin. You should also receive a confirmation email of your registration moments after registering. If you have not received such an email within a few minutes, check your ‘junk mail’ folder for an overactive mail filter.

Be aware that you WILL receive an email before the scheduled starting time, telling you that the event has started. Don’t panic, as this email serves two purposes. The first is a reminder that the webconference starts soon. The second purpose is that the presenters need time to upload their presentation materials and to make sure that the sound and video settings are set-up for the event. If you click to enter the videoconference before the scheduled starting time, you will be diverted to a waiting room. The waiting room will then be opened at the scheduled starting time for all of those who clicked to join early. Although it might appear that nothing is happening in the waiting room, you will be added to the videoconference at the scheduled starting time, and not before.

Once in, you should be able to hear the presenter(s), see the presentation welcome page and be able to send text chats in the dialogue box, as shown on the right-hand side of the page. The presentation will begin and then progress from one presenter to the next. Based on the first event in May, we decided to allow more time for questions for this event. As such, we will have almost 30 minutes to answer your questions at the end. So please post your questions in the text box as they come to mind. We will be addressing each question in the order it is presented, and if this event progresses like the last one, we won’t have time to answer every question.

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• 10 Things I’ve Learned So Far at the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference
• Twenty-four Theses
• On Wine Blogging Shop Talk and Presentations …
• Head filled, heart too after WBC10
• 2010 Wine Blogger Award Winners Announced

Fine wine and wine gift baskets: Buy 6 or more bottles and get 50% off shipping with coupon code “wblog46″

For now though check out our wrap up from the fair!

Ryan and Gabrellia Opaz sum up the LIWF 2010 from ryan and gabriella opaz on Vimeo.

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• Small Ripples Can Make Waves in Wine Media
• Is wine quality objective or subjective in nature?
• Stop H.R. 5034—The Anti-Consumer Wine Bill
• LIWF 2010: “The Access Zone” a Place to Talk about Wine Online – Call for Papers!!
• Competition for Young, Innovative Winemakers! But Where are the Spanish and Portuguese?!!
• Twitter, how do I use thee? Let me list away
• TasteCamp East is happening very soon!!!
• Wine Blog Awards

If you have a link you want to share send it to links@wineblogger.info and we’ll make sure to check it out!

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Editor’s Note: Palate Press is an online magazine that features wine writers from all walks of life. From citizen bloggers to big wig writers, it’s packed with stories from wines across the globe. What’s unique about PP is its editorial process. Bloggers are an independent bunch and tend to stay clear from someone telling them what stays or goes before publication. Therefore, the mere hint of an editor is typically shunned before the 3 syllables escape one’s lips. Yet PP has thrived with its editorial review, allowing any writer to submit their article as long as they’re open to editorial criticism.

We want to congratulate founder, David Honig, and his crew for putting in the hard work, sweat and elbow grease it’s taken to get this project successfully up and running!! Below is an interview we conducted with David last week. If you have any further questions for him, please don’t hesitate to place them in the comments below.

Why did you think you could create what it turns out is quite an ambitious project?

In retrospect, an interesting question. I think the simple answers are (a) I didn’t think “I” could, but thought perhaps “we” could, and (b) I had no idea it would be as big as it is, so “ambitious” is only apparent looking back. But that’s too simple, so in a bit greater depth…

Palate Press: The online wine magazine, in retrospect seems quite ambitious, but I don’t think anybody anticipated it would be what it is as quite so quickly. Instead, we, and I must emphasize “we,” for it was from the beginning a group effort, really had no idea if it would work. We approached it, not as a project, but as an experiment in the next generation of wine blogging. We looked around and saw just how much great content there was out there, how hard it was to separate the wheat from the chaff, and wondered if there were a way to turn the best of it into something valuable.

I only began to suspect it might work when amazing people, people like WR Tish, Jeff Lefevere, Gabriella Opaz, and others said “yes, I’ll give it a shot.” It was always the team of people, as writers and as editors, that made success possible.

What have you learned in doing it?

I was an infant, and now I feel like a wobbly toddler. Walking and talking are tremendous achievements, but running and conversing are skills to be honed. I could barely begin to list all the things I have learned, but I will offer the first ones that come to mind, that I struggle with or enjoy daily:

For every ten people who enthusiastically volunteer to work on a project without compensation, one will actually do the work, and for every ten that actually do the work, only one will do so consistently and over an extended period of time.

People will ALWAYS surprise you. They will surprise you in good ways and bad. They will surprise you with their lack of follow-through or with their amazing dedication. They will surprise you with the quality of their writing, from poorer than you expected to astounding talent. The lesson to take from this, when dealing with a large group of people, is to be careful not to rely on your assumptions about them, but to let their personalities play out over long periods of time, until each individual settles comfortably into their own role, rather than trying to force them into the role you expect them to play.

It doesn’t hurt to ask. The question I got more than any other in the first few months of Palate Press was, “how did you convince Tish to join?” The answer was, “I asked.” I never expected him to say yes, but it cost little more than free email and we had the cornerstone of our launch.

It doesn’t hurt to beg, either. That is really a subset of “it doesn’t hurt to ask,” but really means “don’t take no for an answer.” Several of our greatest talents said “no” when first approached. They lacked time. They had their own website and did not see why they should cannibalize their writing for another. They did not see where the project was going. I suspect a few just didn’t like me, and that’s okay, too. So I begged. I became so annoying, for those I deemed essential to success, that it eventually became easier to just say yes (this is the same method I used to persuade my wife to marry me, by the way). Some saw the project as a success and stuck around. It was worth the effort.

Great content is not enough. I truly believe Palate Press has the best content about wine anywhere, but that means nothing if nobody saw it. It took press releases, cross-posting, Twitter, Facebook, and a constant effort to say “HERE WE ARE, LOOK AT US!” for people to notice.

Social media is the beginning, not the end. Wine blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Open Wine Consortium, etc., are a great way to jump-start an idea, but not the end. Eventually, you capture the few thousand people actively participating and just talking to each other. Success online will only come when you break out of that limited circle into the internet in general. That, in turn, means you have to think outside the blogger’s “what will make other bloggers think I’m great” mindset, and into “what do wine lovers want to read”? It also means formatting content for the general public, not other bloggers.

Editing makes everybody better. At first, we had a lot of push-back against editors, each blogger used to publishing their own content with the push of a button. Some stayed away, or left, because of it. But the ones who stayed all said the same thing, “editing made me better.” Of course it did. Yes, we have made errors as editors, but overall, and certainly in the long run, editors make writers better. Additionally, we have seen an interesting phenomenon. When people send stories to Palate Press, they send their very best. Almost universally, what people send in has obviously been more carefully written, and re-written, than something they would post on their own site. Whether it is the knowledge they would be edited or understanding that we have multiple stories to choose from, we get everybody’s best work. One interesting question is whether they go back and put similar effort into their own sites and if Palate Press helps increase the quality of content across the whole wine blogosphere.

What is the reception you’ve had to the ad network?

Shock and excitement. People inside the blogosphere forget how small a minority we are. People outside the blogosphere are just starting to figure out how the internet works. It is a revelation to a local wine store owner to learn that the local wine blogger might get 80% of his page views from thousands of miles away, but that through geo-targeting he can focus on-line advertising. Bigger advertisers appreciate the ability to focus on such a tight niche, wine, with such great economic demographics. Right now on-line advertising is down across the board, but as advertisers pull out of the doldrums they are looking for ways to believe on-line advertising can work, and a very large niche-network seems to be a model they are willing to try.

From the bloggers, it has been equally enthusiastic. Until now, most wine bloggers either did not bother with advertising or just took a few pennies from Google advertising. No single blog was ever big enough to justify a sales force. By collecting so many blogs together, now we can justify a sales force.

Perhaps most interesting, the bloggers in the Ad Network are also enthusiastically buying into the concept behind the magazine, understanding not just that the ads they run fuel the magazine, but that the magazine anchors the network. They also see, and I think are excited, that the magazine provides a venue where they can be professional writers, selling their content if they produce the very best. Our advertising partners have become a source of many of our new stories.

Where do you hope to be one year from now as a site and an ad network?

As a site, we would like to continue to grow in readership. I regularly hear we have the best wine content anywhere, and we need to work hard to keep that impression with those who have it, and give it to those who don’t have it yet. One big change we hope to put into effect by the end of the year is to be able to pay for every story we run, to truly turn into the site where everybody everywhere writing about wine turns to publish their work. We have been watching what is happening to newspapers, where wine columnist are losing their jobs. We want to hire everybody, one story at a time, and publish the best available content every day.

For the network, we want to be the place anybody advertising about wine turns. We want to be the place bloggers turn to if they want to “monetize” their blog. We want to reach the point where a person who googles “wine” sees our ads within three clicks. If we can do that, the advertisers and the bloggers will come to us.

Finally how can bloggers get involved? Can they submit stories, to Palate Press? How do they sign up for the ad network? Any restrictions?

We accept story submissions from anybody, anywhere, any time. Send a story idea, just title, lead, and a sentence or two of explanation, to submissions@palatepress.com. We review every story individually. Ideally, every time a blogger says to themselves, “I have a great one this time,” their next thought will be “this is something I should send to Palate Press.” Our only restrictions on stories are that we ask for an exclusive on stories we run, that they be original, and that they not expose us to potential litigation (no defamation or copyright violations).

Anybody with a wine or food site can apply to be part of the ad network. Just send a note that says you’re interested to dhonig@palatepress.com. We will accept anybody with a wine or food site with a reasonable amount of traffic, assuming there is not something obviously offensive about the site. We are thrilled to add “WhatIDrankLastNight.com,” but have not interest in “Porn&Wine.com.” We have network members with just a few hundred page views a month, and some with hundreds of thousands of page views a month. We also have sites in other languages and want more. We can create geo-targeted ad campaigns anywhere in the world and are not restricted to English ads.

Thanks again David, and again, please don’t hesitate to put your questions in the comments below!!

This international program, still young in its inception, was created to not only help preserve and promote the culture of wine, but also, help discourage abuse of alcohol. As wine bloggers have become one of the main channels for wine education, we felt it was important to help promote dialogue as to whether you would like to support the program.

Below are questions we posed to George Sandeman, one of the major spokesmen for the Wine in Moderation program, as to why bloggers should be interested in the WIM program.

If you have any questions for George, please don’t hesitate to place them in the comments. If you are interested in registering for the program, go here. And if you’re interested in reading a more comprehensive version of the interview, please go here.

Why is there a need for this initiative (Wine in Moderation was it – WIM)?

Over the last 20 years there has been both an increase in sensitivity and pressure on the need to reduce alcohol related harm. The various sectors of alcoholic beverages have taken up the challenge to ensure responsible marketing and to work with national and regional authorities to achieve this objective.
Wine in Moderation (WIM) is the program developed and in implementation by the European Wine sector.

After your speech at the EWBC, many wine bloggers mentioned that they had never heard of the project and were a little skeptical of its potential success. In your opinion, why should bloggers care?

Due to Wine in Moderation being in the early stage of implementation, it is quite natural that many wine bloggers who are not focused on the Alcohol & Health dossier would not be familiar with the project. It is natural to be sceptical of “new projects”, but in the case of WIM it is important to register that its success of depends on the weight and commitment of the entire EU Wine filière.

As socially responsible people, and linked to wine, bloggers should have the same concerns as other citizens.

There has been loads of debate as to how wine blogging is an effective medium to educate the masses about wine. Add this to the fact that bloggers are generally talking about quality wines, rather than about drinks that cause health problems, where do you see a blogger’s role in disseminating the “moderation” message?

For WIM there is no doubt that the support of wine bloggers is important in spreading the word about “wine in moderation” – especially because the consumers of quality wines are the cultural example to which we so often refer.

Where can bloggers garner more information and is there someone they can talk to directly about the project?

There is information regarding Wine in Moderation at www.wineinmoderation-eu as well as through the national organization responsible for implementing the WIM project in each country.

For a personal intervention, bloggers can contact the secretariat of Comité Vin – CEEV (ceev@ceev.eu) and depending on the type of information required (ie political or scientific) someone will be designated.

Also make sure to check out the discussion forum there. If your a wine maker, please leave a comment about what your harvest is shaping up to!

Editor’s Note: Yesterday, Rob Bralow of the “Wine Post”  published a piece that was both compelling and thoughtful, discussing the merits of having a little tete-a-tete between both old and new media. As a result, we asked Rob if we could re-post his piece here, allowing wine bloggers  far and wide to contribute to the conversation. Please chime in with your perspective in comments!

After the 2009 Wine Bloggers’ Conference, there were many bloggers who felt that too many public relations and marketing representatives were there. Not only were they there, but they were there to watch.

Megan (Wannabe Wino) wrote in her post “In the Fishbowl“:

“Have you ever felt like a goldfish? It’s quite interesting really. I think the focus of the conference this year seemed to skew more towards wineries, PR folks, and other industry types. And I felt like people were there to figure out what wine bloggers are, what their motivations might be, and how best to market (I think that’s what I want to call it…) to them.”

Russ (Winehiker Witiculture) wrote in his post “The 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference: a foundation for raising the collective spirit“:

“In the hotel’s meeting halls and hallways as well as in some Napa Valley venues, bridges were not particularly being built between bloggers, PR/marketing types, and winery reps. Perhaps those that were not regularly engaged in blogging or other social media avenues were on-hand merely to witness what all the fuss was about.”

These comments inspired me to dig a little deeper into the relationship between bloggers and public relations.

Media professionals and public relations professionals strike a careful balance in the wine industry. Writers jealously guard the access to their audience while starving for information that will continue to entice readers. Public relations agencies that represent wineries have an over abundance of information that they have been charged to communicate to writers, with the intent that these editors will express such information to their audiences. With the rise of the blogosphere, many more writers have entered the arena, creating an ever increasing pool of outlets for information.

Wine bloggers themselves tend to have very little training in terms of writing for an audience craving entertainment and information. The majority of bloggers are website designers, information technology professionals, lawyers and doctors; occupations that have either given them the necessary skills to run a blog or the resources to experience the world of wine, which can be an expensive venture. Their unifying characteristic is an overwhelming passion for an alcoholic beverage created from fermented grape juice.

There is a prevalent desire among wineries and wine producing regions to be on the cutting edge of technology and media. However, the reality is that the majority of wine producers do not have the resources to follow the ever-changing technological landscape of communication. To meet this need, digital technology firms, advertising firms, and public relations agencies are now in a competition to show that each has the best understanding of the new media outlets. The drive to generate results propels winery representatives to target a wider variety of outlets and any result becomes twice as promoted, both to the nebulous consumer as well as to the client, looking for their hired representative to produce. While sometimes misunderstood, a hired agency’s primary objective is to promote their client, with a strong secondary objective to promote themselves back to their client or other potential clients. This makes bloggers a very attractive focus for these agencies.

Bloggers are currently in search of credibility and recognition. Without certifications from wine education channels, such as the Wine & Spirits Education Trust or the Society of Wine Educators, most bloggers have nothing but their word and their writing to give them defined credibility.

Steve Heimoff, blogger and West Coast Editor for Wine Enthusiast responded to a blog post by Shana (ShanaRay.com), founder of Breath(e) Media and used an example of a wine blogger being invited on a trip to show that wine bloggers can fall into numerous traps that will in the long run hurt their credibility. He wrote in “When blogs go bad“:

“The worst thing a wine blog can do is to shill, however inadvertently, for a winery or region. The minute I read about someone’s “delightful” visit to so-and-so, they’ve lost me. Visits may indeed be delightful, but the writer shouldn’t say so, because it just sounds – I don’t know – smarmy and credulous. If the blogger describes the visit as “delightful” then her credibility suffers, in my mind. What if the wines suck? Would the blogger say so? Or is the blogger so delighted with the visit – with the hospitality of the owners, the personally guided tour of the winery and caves, the lovely luncheon by the pool, catered by the winery chef, and with the gorgeous tranquility of wine country – that he’s unable even to know that the wine is mediocre?”

Shana replied:

“The news (speaking generally) has always had a bias and used scare tactics or fluff stories for the sake of entertainment. I learned at a young age to take the news with a grain of salt… Same goes with anything I read online through a blog, a tweet, a review on Yelp, or even an article in a magazine.

…You stated that you were going to explain the difference of good and bad blogs “for some of us.” My case was that for the rest of us, we read what we like…”

In the end, the only measure of credibility that really matters is the size of a publication’s audience and their influence on the buying habits of other consumers.

Earlier this year Robert Parker was challenged as to the credibility of his contracted reviewers, a charge that Robert Parker has fielded in the past and will likely come across again in the future when he is forced to relinquish his publication to the next generation. However, no matter how many confrontations his publication encounters, the name of Robert Parker is perceived by the wine industry as one of the most influential in the business today because of the influence over consumer purchasing that the Wine Advocate’s ratings embody.

Once a wine writer begins to establish credibility, the agency world begins to take notice, giving a writer more access to different aspects of the industry. The more access a writer has to their subject, the better they become at communicating the nuances and differences, which then in turn leads to better writing and the potential for larger audiences. Then credibility is considered established and the flood of information from the agency world truly begins.

A Survey of Bloggers

In July, I surveyed 100 wine bloggers on their interactions with public relations professionals and wineries. Fifty-one bloggers responded and described an interesting story about how they find their information and how they interact with the public relations world.

Wine bloggers are being reached in a similar manner to how a traditional news reporter is targeted: press releases, focused pitches, invitations to events, etc. The tactics that result in the best response from both types of media are much the same. Mass distributed press releases and story ideas with vague introductions of “Dear Esteemed Blogger” are nearly instantly deleted, while personal correspondence and interaction are rewarded with attention.

And bloggers are definitely being reached. The survey revealed that 60 percent of the bloggers that responded are contacted at least once a week by public relations professionals, with half of those being contacted at least once a day if not more. From anecdotal reports, there are a select group of public relations agencies who are reaching out to bloggers and getting fantastic returns on their outreach. Combined with the fact that wine bloggers read each others’ blogs, the reach of a single blog post can influence another blogger to purchase a wine to review, which then increases the potential audience.

However, just because a public relations agency is reaching out to bloggers does not result in an instant review. The quality of the outreach is extremely important. Only 40 percent of the bloggers surveyed found that public relations assistance was consistently helpful. In fact, 21 percent found that PR people were rarely or never helpful, which highlights the issues of inconsistent quality among the public relations world.

The main complaints that these bloggers had were that they were not being engaged by agencies looking to promote their clients and just being sent mass communications in hopes that they will write about them. What most bloggers do not understand is that this is a common occurrence among traditional journalists and has been a long-time complaint for them as well. This problem is so well documented, that there is a blog set up specifically to expose poorly conceived or written pitches that are sent en-mass to journalists nationally. I leave it to bloggers that are also journalists to tell this story better than I ever could.

The problem stems from lazy public relations practices and just as lazy editorial practices. While it seems impossible for such tactics to yield results, I submit that they must. In the same way that the majority of people would never click on a link in an obviously SPAM e-mail, such e-mails continue because they find people naïve enough to pursue the 2,800,000 Euro prize they won from some far away country, otherwise they would have long ago been abandoned. There are publications and web portals that will publish whatever is sent to them.

Wine bloggers, like the rest of the technologically advanced society, find most of their information on the internet. The survey showed that of the 51 responses, 47 went to the website of the winery to find more information about the wine they taste. The next most common way that most bloggers learn about a winery is by physically visiting the winery. I will accept that this is perhaps biased based on the fact that many wine bloggers live in wine country, however this is a good indicator to show that all aspects of a winery’s image are important, from the wine in the bottle to the people at the tasting room and through to the messaging a winery puts on their website.

It is intriguing how contacting the public relations representative for the winery and reading other bloggers’ reports on the winery were at the same level for the wine bloggers that were interviewed. Almost every wine blogger has a good sense of the other bloggers in the wine category, and especially the top bloggers. The fact that most bloggers do not reach out to PR people as a first course show a possible reluctance on bloggers to trust these contacts for accurate information. It could also be that the public relations contact for a winery is simply not visible enough for a blogger researching a wine to find their information.

Among established wine journalists there has been a prevailing feeling that wine bloggers are only interested in receiving free wine samples, which is what drives a person to blog about wine. There is at least one blogger who promotes themselves as willing to review any wine that is sent to them. There are also plenty of other bloggers, such as Katie (Gonzo Gastronomy) who find this practice distasteful. As for the rest of the wine blogging world, the survey showed the majority of wine bloggers use samples less than 25% of the time to review on their blog. With the current increase in wineries with available samples looking for positive reviews, it is interesting that wine bloggers continue to purchase wines from wineries or trusted retailers in order to find content for their blogs.

Wine bloggers are an ever increasing force in the wine world, and the industry is paying attention. A well written, well researched blog post can become top news in the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, and has in the past. An event targeting bloggers can spread over dozens of websites. The next step in wine blogger evolution is discovering how the public relations community can work with these writers to not only elevate the wineries and wine regions that they work for, but to also highlight the select bloggers that have influence over consumer audiences.

Note: Rob Bralow has been writing the blog “Wine Post” for almost one year and currently works for Gregory White PR, an agency that represents high profile wine and spirits companies and regions. Any and all ideas and opinions expressed in the above article do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Gregory White PR.