2009 American Wine Blog Awards Are Coming
The 3rd Annual American Wine Blog Awards will begin accepting nominations on February 1.
As it has in the past, the American Wine Blog Awards seek to honor the very best in English-language wine blogging and to promote wine blogging in general. I've been very proud of the very high quality blogs that have been honored in the past and expect nothing more than the same for this year's awards.
As in the past, the nominations for finalists in the different categories come from the public. Those nominees, assuming they meet basic criteria, will be handed off to a set of judges who will together choose finalists in each category. Once finalists are determined, the winners will be chosen based on a vote of the public carrying and judges, with the public given 70% of the weight toward determining the winner.
I am very proud also to announce that this year the American Wine Blog Awards has three sponsors:
MUTINEER MAGAZINE
The good folks at Mutineer Magazine will be heavily promoting the American Wine Blog Awards both in their online and print publications with interviews, articles and more. This is very exciting for me and I'm very happy to have them on board.
RIEDEL CRYSTAL
The folks who make the most popular high-end wine stemware in the world have stepped up as sponsors of the American Wine Blog Awards. Being the extraordinarily generous folks they are, they have agreed to be the source of the actual awards. What these awards will be I will announce in a forthcoming post. Needless to say, it will be something the winners cherish.
OPENWINE CONSORTIUM 
There is no better industry organization to sponsor these awards than the OpenWine Consortium. OpenWine Consortium demonstrated their commitment to the wine blogging community in 2008 by sponsoring and organizing the first ever Wine Bloggers Conference. I'm very proud to have them as sponsors of this year's awards.
Wow! Is it that time of year already?
I look forward to seeing how this develops this year. Lots of new blogs out there and a stronger community of bloggers linking them together.
May the battle(s) commence!
🙂
The determining factors for winners are well-weighted. To give the public 70% of the power in this decision speaks to the function of these blogs and the loyalty of their readership.
Hi Tom,
Thank you (again) for hosting and coordinating these awards. I know it’s a lot of work, most of it thankless. So, thanks.
What do you think about adding a category this year for wine photography? I see a lot of traffic on our site from people searching for wine and vineyard photography, and I know that many of the top blogs take a lot of pride in the photographic work that they do. None of last year’s categories really seem to fit for this.
Thanks!
-Jason
And the judges are…??
…will there be a category for most acerbic? if so, we got it…