Wine PR People are “the bomb”

I got a nice e-mail from a colleague in the wine PR biz who took me to task over my stated support for Zinfandel being named the California State Wine. Jo Diaz had other thoughts on the subject.

I hesitate to froward FERMENTATION readers over to Jo’s argument against Zin being given this honor because, well, I rather like being the "Wine PR Guy" in the Blogosphere. If Jo’s blog were no good I’d have no problem sending you all there lickety-split. But that’s not the case.

Diaz is one of those PR types who has been practicing these dark arts for many years. She’s a wonderful writer and, as I hope you’ll note, she’s got an authentic voice that works well in the context of the blog world. Clearly she’s working harder than I because she doesn’t populate her blog with as many posts as I do. But I hope that will change…that is, I hope she’ll write more because she has some very compelling stuff to read. Jo’s articles on wine reviews and on independent wine writers are particularly good.

The quality of Jo’s writing and thoughts in her blog really shouldn’t surprise me or anyone else for two reasons. First, she’s been in the business long enough to demonstrate she has talent. Second, she’s a wine PR pro. This latter reason needs a bit of explanation.

For all the "flack" PR types get, the type of work we do takes us in close contact with every part of the wine business. We need to know the winemaking, administrative, distribution, accounting, regulation, media, grapegrowing and consumer buying habits as well as other parts of the wine business. We get exposed to a lot that those in other positions of the wine industry don’t. So it follows that while we may not have a particularly deep knowledge of any one particular area, with the exception of media and consumer habits, we have a very broad knowledge of things wine. Jo certainly has that.

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