Two To Spend Time With

Posted by Tom Wark on Sep 12, 2007

I still get a real kick out of discovering new wine blogs by folks who are doing it well or have real potential to do it well.

I tend to judge blogs on a variety of criteria, but mostly it boils down to 2 things: 1) do they have interesting things to say and 2) do they say them in a compelling way.

Two such blogs have crossed my radar of late. Both are nicely designed, both have a casual air about their prose and both are written by folks with a good deal of wine expertise.

WINE SCAMP (A good name) is the product of a Society of Wine Educators Certified Wine Expert who gets around…geographically. Currently a Texas gal, the Scamp writes nice, long, contextual and informative reviews of wines that have a breezy, easy, well-informed quality to them. One of the signs that I like a blogger’s writing style is that I read the posts, rather than skim them. I’ve been reading the Scamps posts. She appears to be on a twice to three times per week posting schedule.

The casually named TIM’S BLOG is an extension of Wine Expert, a leading supplier of home winemaking kits with a market that appears to be mainly in Canada. There are very few parts of the wine industry that are better suited for a blog than the home winemaking sector. Talk about the potential for community.

Tim’s is a surprisingly wide ranging blog given the focus of the business he is involved in. He prose are casual and filled with opinion. Tim’s posts appear to be inspired by his own approach to the industry combined with a regular communing with other bloggers and writers. He’s on a regular schedule of blogging too which is admirable.

I’d bet we are up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 wine blogs by now. I come across a lot of them. These two are keepers.