Fifteen Years and 3,352 Post Later a Wine Blog Continues

Posted by Tom Wark on Nov 25, 2019

Just the other day while scrolling through my Facebook feed I came across a very simple post by a wine person. It asked the following question:

“ARE WINE BLOGS DEAD?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question. Nor was it facetious? Instead, I think the question was ill-formed. I think what they were asking (or should have been asking) is, “DO WINE BLOGS STILL MATTER?”

I contemplate this question on the 15th anniversary of FERMENTATION: The Dailly Wine Blog’s founding back in 2004. I tried to give this question genuine reflection. In the end, it seems so irrelevant that just as I start to contemplate the issue I am distracted by the appearance of a squirrel on a fence, never to return to seriously think about the question.

What I do know is this: You are reading 3,352nd post at FERMENTATION. This month upwards of 25,000 unique readers will visit this blog. Also, writing this blog is one of my great joys in life. Moreover, this blog is responsible for bringing me hundreds of thousands of dollars in income as it has served not merely as an outlet for my thoughts on the industry in which I work, but it has also served as a promotional vehicle for my public relations consulting work.

So, the answer to the question is, no. Blogs are alive. They just aren’t the shiny new thing they once were. Yet, the blog, with its well-known format, remains the most accessible, familiar and easy-to-maintain vehicle for publishing an ongoing commentary on the state of your world.

Of course, the vast majority of people with a substantial interest in wine or the business of wine choose not to publish in the blog format today—or at least many fewer than a decade ago. Instead, the social media milieu, with its quick hits format, shorthand language, hashtags, its sharing and liking, is the preferred method of communication even among those who think relatively deeply about issues. Oh well.

Going forward, I have no plans to change the way this blog functions, what it covers or really anything else about how I interact with this format. It works for me. It has worked for 15 years. Though I do have a confession. I’ve always wondered what I could achieve with FERMENTATION if I had the luxury of focusing 24/7/365 on its content. Now that would be fun. I could easily find compelling content to publish at least three times per day if not more and have the time to write and publish commentary and articles on the subjects. The wine world intersects with and is a reflection of the wider world of culture, politics, the arts, psychology and more. It is a vehicle for clarifying and teaching and discovery. There is never a lack if subject matter to explore. That’s what this blog is for.