Best of the wine blogosphere for March 30th through March 31st:

• Winecast set to launch Winecasting
• Dr. Vino: He’s NOT a doctor and he doesn’t like wine
• Message on the bottle
• 2008 American Wine Blog Award Winners
• US Government set to launch new Image based labeling laws

Tom Wark has announced the winners of the American Wine Blog Awards and revealed the judges who not only determined the final nominations but also accounted for 30% of the final vote. And it seems this combination proved successful as the winners didn’t all come down to who could motivate their readers or listeners. In fact, nearly every winner was one I voted for.

Winning for Best Blog Writing and Best Wine Blog is Alder Yarrow of Vinography. Another double winner is Dr. Debs of Good Wine Under $20 for Best Single Subject Wine Blog and Best Wine Review Blog. Both very deserving winners.

Rounding out the rest of the winning blogs, Steve at The Wine Collector took Best Business Blog, my friends at Grape Radio were recognized for Best Podcast or Video Blog, Tablas Creek got Best Winery Blog and Chateau Petrogasm won Best Wine Blog Graphics.

I’ve been somewhat critical of these awards but my remarks have not been taken exactly in the way I’d intended. I never meant my comments here or in the OpenWine Consortium to be taken as an “alternative” to the American Wine Blog Awards but some have taken this view. Whatever the outcome of the discussion, I fully support what Tom is doing to recognize great wine blogs and am looking forward to next year.

So what wine goes with crow, anyway

I read a lot of wine blogs each day and tag the best posts in Google Reader that appear on my blog sidebar. But most readers use blog aggregators to read Winecast so I will be publishing these links most every day. The first post is rather long as it covers nearly the entire month of March. A daily average is about 3-5 links.

Best of the wine blogosphere for March 2nd through March 29th:

• Louis Martini Cabernet Sauvignon Wines From The 60’s - Episode #432 -
• Rhone Ranger Rap -
• What I Learned about the Wine Industry -
• 2004 Ridge Vineyards “Monte Bello” Cabernet Sauvignon, Santa Cruz Mountains -
• Legacy is greater than Currency. -
• SFGate: Wine : After the leap: His celebrated winery sold, Warren Winiarski ponders his legacy - and his next move -
• Some of the Food Culture of La Rioja (warning may cause salivation) -
• Stop Whining About High Alcohol Wines -
• Should Wine Be a Family Affair? - When is it O.K. for parents to give teenagers a taste of wine?
• Portable Wine Tasting Device (no batteries required) -
• Living the Not So Big Wine Life -
• How Much Can You Drink? -
• The Best Grenache in California: Tasting Rhone Rangers 2008 -
• Wine Madness: Riesling and Supermarket brackets - vote your wines thru to the quarterfinals -
• The Limits of Our Knowledge -
• Tiny Shining Star: Matthiasson Wines: 2005 Napa Valley Red and 2006 Napa Valley White -
• The 80/20 Business rule…..heck Life -
• Tapping a Vein and Drinking the 2003 Hourglass Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon -
• Full Disclosure in the Wine World and a Few Little Known Secrets -

The Unfiltered podcast with co-host Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape rolls into it’s second season this Sunday afternoon and you are invited to join us.

Instead of recording our Skype call and producing the show for later release, we will be streaming live from Talkshoe. We have invited another group of wine bloggers, writers and podcasters to discuss the burning issues of the day. If you would like a jump on the topics, just head over to our del.icio.us feed and look for “episode 8″ links.

The best part of this arrangement is you can call in and be part of the conversation or you can hang out in our chat-room which I will monitor as we record.

We will start the show at 4:00 pm EDT this Sunday, March 30th.

So if you’ve wanted to be on Winecast, now is your chance.

Call in details:

Phone Number: +1 (724) 444-7444
Call ID: 16856

I’ll also record and release the podcast as usual on the feeds after we are concluded for subscribers.

Sometimes posts take several days, or even months, to get published here. Along the way, details are added and subtracted as I think about the story and form an opinion.

This is one of those posts.

I started writing this post on August 2, 2007 after 6 months inside what I began to call, “The Cult of Gary.” Of course, I was a lurker only commenting on the odd episode and not really participating with the discussion Gary Vaynerchuk has led for the past two years at Wine Library TV. And I think I nearly missed the point of why Gary connects with so many people; it’s his humanity.

But the first draft of this post did not mention humanity but focused on the ethics of using a scoring system in his reviews, lack of disclosure on the podcast of being a wine retailer and his unorthodox approach to palate training (I still would like to know what Bob Parker, Jim Laube or Steve Tanzer thought of Gary’s schtick on Conan O’Brien and Ellen). It also bothered me that Gary was so opaque to the wine blogger community who socialize on Twitter and often email each other on various subjects. Each time I hovered over the “Publish” button, something held me back from sharing my insights on the most celebrated wine podcaster in the world. Sometimes it would be to soften the language so it wouldn’t sound like sour grapes, other times it would be something Gary did that provoked more investigation.

So months past and the post stayed in my drafts folder waiting for more context in order to complete it. I found that context last week with this short video Gary published on his personal blog:

I have come to the conclusion that Gary is one of the most influential people in wine today not because he’s got the best palate — although he’s got mad skills there — but in the way he’s almost single handily changing wine marketing. He’s often quoted saying that the wine business is “broken” and he’s trying to fix it. I agree and applaud his efforts in demystifying wine and making it fun for those outside the wine blogosphere. Watching Robert Scoble’s video from last weekend shows this first hand:

My earlier concerns diminished as I realized that those of us in the wine blogosphere are not Gary’s audience. As the hardest working man in wine podcasting, he’s delivering the goods to tens of thousands who would be bored stiff reading about wine. Yes, I’d like to see some disclosure but this seems like a quibble when looking at the amount of good Gary is doing for wine podcasting and blogging.

So I think everyone interested in wine should watch Wine Library TV at least once a week. Because the kid has heart. And skills.

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. As soon as I think I have an idea so niche someone would not possibly do the same thing, that thing happens.

I like the view popurls gives me on the conversational web, all on one page. So I thought an aggregator of the wine blog world would be interesting so I hacked a proof of concept and shared with my Twitter friends. This was right after I saw Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop which launched with a food but not wine blog page. But that all changed when Josh at Pinotblogger Twittered about wine.alltop.com today.

It’s an honor to be on this page, but a double honor to be just “above the fold” and to the right of (hopefully) my future blogging buddy Eric of the New York Times. I’m not sure who to thank for my fortune. It might be the folks at Electric Pulp just up the road in Sioux Falls, South Dakota who put Alltop together. But I like to think it was Guy himself who remembered me as some schmo who asked for this autograph on my tattered old copy of The Macintosh Way last year when he was in Minneapolis.

So thanks, Guy… I owe you some nice wine and a good ticket to a Wild game when you are here next… and, yes, I’m kicking butt

Check out Alltop here.

Tom Wark of FERMENTATION has announced the nominations for this year’s American Wine Blog Awards. My work here didn’t rate a nomination this year which didn’t surprise me as my output over the past year has been substandard for such accolades, to be quite honest. So I think that puts me in the position to be somewhat objective and comment on blogging awards in general and these in particular.

My main concern with the American Wine Blog Awards is not the name, although I’d prefer something more international, no it’s the voting process. If the Oscars used the same system as these awards, ‘Spider-Man 3′ or ‘Shrek the Third’ would likely win Best Picture as they were the most popular movies last year from their box office receipts. Both are well crafted films but they are not in the same league as ‘No Country for Old Men’ which finished 36th in 2007 ticket sales but took the top Oscar this year.

Why this discrepancy? Because only those in the film industry vote on the nominations and final awards.

So I propose that wine bloggers consider an association that creates an independent awards program modeled after the Motion Picture Academy Awards. As a placeholder, let’s call it the “Wine Bloggers Guild” but we’ll change the name if the discussion warrants. I’ve started a new thread over at Open Wine Consortium for wine bloggers and podcasters to discuss this idea and see if there is consensus for my proposal.

My intention is not to criticize the American Blog Awards, just create an analog to the Oscars to Tom’s People’s Choice Awards. I think there’s room for both. What do you think?

For those who don’t watch Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV podcast you should check out today’s show where he announces the theme of Wine Blogging Wednesday 44 as French Cabernet Franc:

Note: aggregator readers may need to click back to the blog to view this video.

Most people are aware that Cabernet Franc is one of the 6 grapes allowed in red Bordeaux blends but the grape is made on it’s own in other French wine regions. In the Loire valley, red wines are made from mostly Cabernet Franc with the most notable wines coming from Bourgueil, Chinon, Saumur-Champigny and Anjou. Cab Franc is also grown in southwest France. Although this theme might be a bit tougher than the past couple months, most well stocked wine stores should have a few selections to choose from. And you could always buy online.

Join us on April 2nd by posting your tasting notes to your blog or create an account over at our community blog and post there.

In what can only be described as a publicity stunt, Dutch winemaker Ilja Gort of Chateau de la Garde has had his nose insured for $8M (euro5 million). This policy was taken out at Lloyd’s of London who also insure wine critic Robert Parker’s nose for $1M.

While I couldn’t find too much information about the wines, I did find this humorous video on YouTube of the $8M nose in action:

No, I will not be contacting the ladies and gentlemen at Lloyd’s any time soon

I wonder if you can…

But that probably doesn’t matter as the U. S. wine trade is addicted to the 100-point scoring system as the default method to differentiate and sell wine. Why? Because it makes sense to the American consumer brought up with the same system in school. Everyone, it seems, wants an A in either their term paper or glass of Chardonnay. And retailers feel compelled to sell and promote highly rated wines as they drive traffic to their store.

So that’s what makes this proposal to abolish the 100 point system so interesting to me. No, it’s not from a blogger or consumer but from a wine retailer. Isn’t this cutting off your nose to spite your face, you ask? I hope not but a reading of David Lillie’s proposal makes clear that he wants wine lovers to look beyond just the numbers and concentrate on the enjoyment a wine can bring.

He concludes his argument underscoring that precise scores are not the complete measure of a wine:

“The most important argument against the point system is contained in the dedication and hard work of thousands of producers, mostly European but with a growing number in the US, whose efforts to bring delicious naturally made wines to the consumer cannot possibly be graded with a number.”

This got me thinking about the parallels of wine and film criticism. Before I got into wine, I spend a couple years in film school and remain an avid film buff today. One of the elements that make great movies are the technical aspects along with the story and performances of the actors. When these are in the right balance, magic can happen. There are other times when the intention of the director is to just make an entertaining film. Here the technical aspects are most likely emphasized but there is still room for creativity as viewers of recent works of Michael Bay and Paul Greengrass can attest.

I’ll make my comparison to wine illustrated by a couple examples. I think Sergio Leone’s “Duck, You Sucker” is one of the best films in the Western genre. My wife, on the other hand, thinks it’s a long, boring and strange movie. The opening set piece includes some of the most interesting use of the camera in movie history. I see the homages to other Westerns; my wife sees extreme close-ups of peoples’ mouths while eating. It’s the context of the viewer and knowledge of film that makes all the difference in appreciating this work.

As blogged here recently, Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel is one of my personal favorite wines. But I couldn’t get my mother to drink it because she thinks all red wines, “…smell like dirt!” She can’t imagine how such a wine can taste good if it smells like it does to her. But she is an avid Chardonnay drinker who values Charles Shaw wines that I find lacking. Is she wrong? Of course not, it’s our context and experience with wine that is different. I’ve learned to appreciate the nuances in wine where she just wants something nice to drink with dinner.

So my rating of 92 or 4 stars will not convince my mother to try Ridge Zinfandel and she probably doesn’t care that I rated Charles Shaw Chardonnay an 80. Nor will my wife sit through another Sergio Leone movie when she’s perfectly happy watching “Top Gun” for the 50th time on cable.

The same can be said for wine and too many wine lovers use ratings as a way to select “good” wine when they should let their palate decide. Yes, there are technical aspects that some of us obsess over but the bottom line is the wine should taste good to you no matter what the critics say.

I don’t know David Lillie or his store, Chambers Street Wine in New York. But I’ll bet it’s a lot like Solo Vino where every wine is hand selected not for it’s Parker score but for it’s expression of the variety and region of origin. Scores will be with us for a long time, but it’s voices like Mr. Lillie that have me seriously thinking of not using the 100 point system in my reviews.

Hat tip to Craig at The Wine Camp Blog for Twittering the link this morning.