Thoughts After A Decade of Wine Blogging

Posted by Tom Wark on Nov 20, 2014

Over the last ten years this wine blog has published 2,873 posts. This equates to 1.1 posts per week day since November 2004. So, I can say, at the very least, that I’ve achieved the “Daily” part of this blog’s name: FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog.

I can’t say for sure what else I have accomplished. I never set a goal for this blog at the outset or since. I only wanted to say things about wine, culture, politics and the business. I set a fairly low bar.

One thing that is interesting to note is that since its founding, this blog has reached 2.7 million unique devices (surely not that may “people” since we all use multiple devices these days to access our media). That’s something.

The number of postings has dropped off since May 21 when Henry George entered the world. I used to get up early in the morning to think and write. Now I get up early in the morning to feed and play with Henry, who, by the way, turned six months old today. My new morning routine is far more pleasurable than the old one.

A decades worth of blogging at Fermentation seems like as good as time as any to stop. And it’s something I’m thinking about. In addition to this blog, I also am publishing The Cider Journal as well as “SWIG: Sober Advice From Wine Publicists” along with my colleague and friend Julie Ann Kodmur. And of course on top of this there are The National Association of Wine Retailers, the American Wine Consumer Coalition, Wark Communications’ clients and, most important, my family.

It’s tempting to use this 10th Anniversary post to make a list of all the things I’ve learned about wine blogging or pontificate on how blogging and the wine media has changed in ten years or list my favorite posts or something else that marks the time. But that would take far too much time and far too much effort than what it would offer readers.

Instead, I simply want to say “Thank You” to those who have read this blog in the past, to those who read it now and to those who have continued to encourage me. To this day, I still feel an adrenalin rush when I notice a new comment on this blog or look at my readership statistics and know from this that what I wrote has been read.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that a good-sized chunk of my self-identity is tied up in this blog. It has been a slow and consistent build up the way FERMENTATION has taken over a larger and larger part of the answer to the question, “who am I?” You don’t see it happening. You don’t see it happening but it does. And if no blog posts ever appears after this one, rest assured I will in the process of dealing with a part of me being sliced off. I don’t know if I can do that.

It would be something if in another ten years I was writing a similar post as this. I’m not sure what. But something to note for sure.