Wine Blog WATCH….Truly
The future of Television is certainly linked to the Internet. Is the future of the wine blog linked to video.
I encountered my first Video Wine Blog today, produced by the Wine Library, an Internet-based wine retailer. While its production value was not on par with what you might find on cable TV, Wine Library TV certainly demonstrates that the technology is here to exploit video via the Internet to educate people about wine (and sell more wine).
We’ve discovered centuries ago that the intricacies and interest generated by wine can be expertly communicated through the written world. We know too that audio is a capable medium for delivering information about wine. Yet both these mediums have one thing in common: they rely on words, on literacy, to create a mental picture.
Video is different, it seems. For a Video Wine Blog to go beyond what can be accomplished through mere words the producers really need to exploit the potential of the moving image. Otherwise, you have a podcast that just takes up extra bandwidth and delivers distracting movement on your computer screen.
This is not to say that Wine Library TV won’t succeed. Clearly there is motivation and wine experience behind it. But for it to truly work I need them to deliver something to my computer screen that makes me WANT to WATCH. I’m not sure a very educated wine guy sipping wine, spitting it and talking into the camera accomplishes this.
For video to work it needs to take us places that mere words cannot. It needs to put us in the vineyard, in the winery, on the street. It needs to show us things we can not fully appreciate with mere words and sound. Accomplish this and you succeed with the Video Wine Blog.
In earlier posts I’ve been very bullish on wine blogs, suggesting that they will grow tremendously in 2006, that more and more wineries will adopt them for marketing purposes, and that more and more consumers will come to rely on them. I see the emergence of the Video Wine Blog as part of the same phenomenon that is driving the success and production of mere wine blogs: technology allows us to communicate individually more efficiently with a wider circle of like minded people.
The idea is brilliant, the execution very good. Only problem is that Wine Library is one of the most egregious “Chicken Littles” of the retail biz, in that the store’s main raison d’etre seems to be to hype 90+ rated wines. Wine Library is so deep in the ratings game that when Gary has a wine that he wants to recommend, he just gives it his own 90-point score. And most if not all of these rah-rahs are accompanied by warnings of limited time/supply. I get the email feeds from WL just to see how many new ways he can hyperventilate. I think this new TV blog thing is far superior to the printed emails, giving him a chance to offere background and context. I’m hoping it eventually makes him less accountable to the critics and more sensitive to the notion of diverse wine styles as well as to diverse customer tastes.
Hi, this is an other example.
http://cibovino.blogspot.com/2006/02/salento-in-questa-campagna-si-produce.html
Tish I agree (chick little hurts a little) but scores are something we are into and excitement( you call hype ) is in my heart, but I felt we could give more and the reason we aren’t making a huge production out of it is because we want to make it personal and easy. I will try hard to do the right thing and hopefully make it WORTH WATCHING. funny enough this is one of my favorite blogs, TOM keep up the amazing work and you may think it’s funny but I am as happy as a school boy you guys picked us up…I think this is a cool way for us to give back, I’m going to work hard and I hope we can change the way people look and think and by wine. ALL the best to everyne, as long as you and your loved ones are healthy the rest of this stuff is easy :)…thanx Tom and thnx Tish for the bashing it really fires me up to do better!
haha, funny to see this post and comments with all the hindsight 2010 gives us. I wish I had been following Fermentation way back in 2006. 🙂