Sep 4, 2012
Some people don’t like awards. I don’t mind them. I’m a fan of discernment and lists. Call it an affinity for critical categorization. And so I again thought it wonderful to see the presentation of the 2012 Wine Blog Awards not too long ago in Portland, Oregon during the Wine Bloggers Conference. This was the sixth year awards were given to wine bloggers to reward excellence. I began the awards back in 2007 right here on this blog. The idea…
Aug 31, 2012
I’ve been attempting to understand the meaning of Gore Vidal’s death since the unhappy day I was confronted with his demise. I get the sense that Gore’s death may mark either the finish of a writer who I loved reading and related to or it may mark the end of an important chapter in American letters. Either way, a great inspiration for this writer has been lost. I don’t know much about Vidal’s relationship with wine, other than he drank…
Aug 30, 2012
Seven years and nine months ago this wine blog was launched. And it has taken that long to make it look relatively pretty. Working with James Marshal Berry of Sonoma, California, the goal was to make FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog relatively good looking, more flexible in the way it presented information and owned by me, rather than Typepad. In reality there isn’t a great deal of change. The biggest of course in the new URL. It’s like picking up…
Aug 20, 2012
The recently concluded conference of wine bloggers in Portland, Oregon was, as always, enlightening, a great source of ideas for this writer, full of surprises, great fun, dashed with a few disappointments and provided and up-close opportunity to examine the state of wine blogging. With that in mind, I’ve culled the Top Ten Things I learned at the 2012 Wine Bloggers Conference: 1. Marketing Aside. Wine Bloggers remain somewhat uninterested in marketing their work beyond posts on Facebook and Tweets…
Aug 13, 2012
While it is true that upon launching a wine blog a "writer" does not necessarily appear, it is equally true that upon launching a wine blog, a new "publisher" has appeared. Continuing to think about the nature of wine blogging on the eve of the Wine Bloggers Conference later this week, it seems absolutely clear to me that the emergence of the "blog" has resulted in a paradigm shift in realm of publishing. And this is equally true for wine…