Jun 23, 2011
The Wine Blog Awards Finalists in 8 categories have been announced and voting is open to the public until June 27th. This is the 5th Annual Awards. I have a special interest in these award, having founded them back in 2007 with the hope of turning on readers to the best of the wine blogging world and encouraging wine bloggers to excel in this medium. What gets me most excited about the Wine Blog Awards these days is the category…
Jun 15, 2011
Looking over the agenda at the 4th Wine Bloggers Conference set for July 22-24, I came across a pretty interesting looking session: "Ignite Wine". It's described this way "At an Ignite show, volunteer presenters each have five minutes to enlighten the audience on a subject of his or her choice. The key is the format: each speaker must bring 20 slides, each automatically set to advance every 15 seconds" Sort of a well-organized, well-wired soap box dipped in wine. However…five…
Jun 8, 2011
Every now and then I receive emails from folks who want to offer me advice on my writing and on the focus of this blog. I always appreciate this kind of correspondence…even when done anonymously. This happened again yesterday in response to a blog post on the very close relationship between the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission and Texas Wholesalers. The email, sent from an anonymous Gmail account, got off to a good, solid start: "Until you actually work at a…
May 30, 2011
I don't know how many wine blogs there are today. Over a 1000 in the English language is the best I can offer and even that is such a useless estimate. Most folks who have gone about attempting to categorize and list the various wine blogs that exist eventually just start to list them. Alder at Vinography has a pretty damned impressive list—about 700 or so in English. But that's the best that even he can do: "Blogs in English"….
May 27, 2011
Thinking About… THE REVELATIONUpon reading Anthony Lane's remarkably thoughtful analysis of Terrence Malik's new film, The Tree of Life, in The New Yorker, it finally hit me why wine critics likely won't rise to the quality challenge laid down by critics surveying other pursuits such as film, literature, dance and music: As an object of analysis and thoughtful critique, a wine provides no interpretation of the human condition, giving its critics little to grasp on to in order to engage…