Blogging and the Mutiny on $0.04 Per Day

Posted by Tom Wark on Feb 18, 2009

Mutineer Magazine, the newish beverage pub that is actually printed on dead trees instead of floating in the ether, is a sponsor of the American Wine Blog Awards. They will as part of our agreement broadcast the news of wine blogging, the Wine Blog Awards, the Finalists and the winners as far as the eye can see—or at least as far as their are eyes to see there magazine.

The very, very good news not just for the American Wine Blog Awards but also for Mutineer Magazine
and for the literate drinker everywhere, is that Mutineer has secured national distribution for its publication. This is pretty important. Outside of raising the money to begin a dead tree literary vehicle, getting that vehicle on the streets where it can be gawked at and actually read and caressed is probably the most difficult thing for a new magazine.

As I've said before, I pick up Mutineer and I see a mature, refined, more readable and more useful version on of Wine X, minus the limiting demographic emphasis. Darryl Robert's Wine X Magazine was in fact groundbreaking and influential. And it produced for Roberts a good deal of hate mail from wine traditionalists. I rather doubt that Mutineer Magazine has had to screen its emails for dusty particles the same way Roberts did.

Like Wine X, Mutineer is targeting a younger demographic and doing so with its choice of editorial, it's contemporary design, its less than stodgy tone and with its embrace of the online world. And yet behind Mutineer is Alan Kropf, a man with a resume: Alan studied with both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine and
Spirits Education Trust. He was the Sommelier at the
Beverly Hills Hotel. Before Mutineeer he wrote for Sante, The Tasting
Panel, and SommSelections. He has also spent time working in the wine program at
Gordon Ramsay in West Hollywood. And while he edits and publishes Mutineer, he is also writing his first book
and is a wine consultant to restaurants and collectors.

All this brings me back around to the American Wine Blog Awards. Mutineers is the right media sponsor for this third version of the Awards. Like the American Wine Blog Awards and wine blogs in general,  Mutineer Magazine is new, is sprinkling its wisdom across a landscape of recent converts to wine, is seeking to change the perception of what wine writing and what wine reading entails and is beginning to burst out across a larger landscape.

So here is what I NEED every reader of Fermentation to do: SUBSCRIBE TO MUTINEER MAGAZINE. (Yes, keep your subscriptions to the other wine and food pubs you get, too). But Subscribe to Mutineer to thank them for supporting wine blogging in a big way. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to support the evolution of wine writing and reporting. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to show them that Fermentation has at least a little influence. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to help make them profitable so we can have good stuff to read on planes, bus trips, and road trips where we are trapped in a car with someone who still isn't over being dumped by Sally Smith in 11th grade.

We are talking $15 a year for 6 issues. That's $2.50 an issue; $1.25 per month. $0.04  per day.