Mar 7, 2007
The measure of a person’s commitment to an idea must surely be the length to which they are willing to go to make their point. When a person is willing to go the distance, and do so with the kind of delicious satire that Darryl Roberts of Wine X Magazine does, you really have to step back and marvel at the brilliance. As we recently heard, Roberts shut down his subversive Wine X Magazine after years of publishing. In doing…
Feb 20, 2007
It would be easy to easily suggest that "magazines come and go in the wine industry" in a cavalier fashion. But the fact is, magazines rarely come to the wine industry. When they do, it’s a big deal. It was a big deal when Wine X came to the industry. Wine X promised to deliver Generation X to wine marketers. With it’s somewhat irreverent attitude yet deathly serious proposition that wine needs to be fun, it delivered that audience. Now…
Feb 7, 2007
The work to get out the word on the great wine bloggers that were named finalists in the American Wine Blog Awards, as well as the vibrancy of the wine blog world, is underway. A press release has been issued over the wires via BusinessWire. It has been indexed on Google, Yahoo and will hopefully catch the attention of editors and writers across the country. We’ve also sent press releases out to wine media and wine writers across the county…
Jan 29, 2007
Last night I sat down in the studios of KRCB-FM for an interview with Michele Anna Jordan, host of Mouthful. My co-guest was JohnG of Quaffability. We were there to discuss the wine blogging phenomenon. This was the fifth radio interview I’ve done in the past couple of weeks on the subject of wine blogs and a very interesting pattern has emerged: Nearly every interview moves past the issue of wine blogging into a wide ranging discussion of wine in…
Jan 24, 2007
For those of us that believe Californian wines have tended toward the overly extracted, alcoholic and bombastic over the past decade or so, there is always the hope that the tide will turn; that the pendulum will swing in the other direction toward more restraint and balance. We are looking for signs. I found a promising sign. Such a sign is likely to come from someone who tastes lots of wine and who also has noticed the tendency (rush?) toward…