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?

I’ve been catching up on my blog reading today and noticed an interesting new feature of Google Reader: friends shared items. As I read wine blogs, I “star” notable posts but always wondered what the “share” choice was for. Now I get it and am enjoying reading links shared by friends, listeners and readers.

If we’ve crossed paths via Gmail or Gtalk, it’s likely that you will see my shared links automatically appear in your Google Reader. I’ve also posted the widget to the right sidebar of the blog so you can see what I’m reading. Because I went back and shared all my previously stared items today, most of what is there now is a bit old. Going forward, you can keep up with the best posts from wine blogs in my shared feed.

One of my blog subscriptions is to Hugh MacLeod’s personal blog, gapingvoid. If you don’t know Hugh, he’s the guy who is behind Stormhoek’s conversational marketing success. I interviewed him and Stormhoek principal Jason Korman last year.

Yesterday Hugh posted some thoughts on his blogging (or lack, thereof) that rang true with me:

clipped from gapingvoid.com So this last week I’ve been telling people I work with, I’m changing the game plan. I’m going back to basics. From now on building “the gapingvoid brand” will become my first priority.

Like Hugh, I’ve let the various demands of commerce get in the way of my blogging and podcasting here. So it’s back to basics with daily posts and more wine reviews. My bi-weekly podcast regime is also back in action, which will be maintained from here on. It’s easy to let this blog slide as it produces next to no income but it’s what the conversation triggers that produces the reward.

Winecast is back in business full-time… thanks once again, Hugh!

Every so often, a perfect storm of work, personal commitments and an occasional Ken Burns documentary keep me from posting here. Usually it’s just several days but in this case it’s been over two weeks. So forgive me if I post a bit more frequently over the next few days to catch up…

Besides not writing or podcasting I pretty much stopped my blog reading. As I returned to Google Reader last week, I had the maximum 1,000+ posts on each of my subscription categories. So I simply pressed the “Mark all as read” button on most categories except for wine blogs.

In my perusal of the past several days, a few posts stood out. But none of these got me thinking more about wine blogging than Jeff’s post over at Good Grape on how 98% of Wine Bloggers Are Hacks. When I saw Ryan’s post today asking the difference between amateur and professional wine writers, I started to think about my credentials, or lack thereof, for what I do here.

Jeff’s post highlights veteran wine writer Matt Kramer’s piece about how 10,000 hours of training is the minimum to attain expert status in any field. Said another way, that’s 3 hours a day for 10 years. It’s been 9,458 days since I turned 21 back in the early days of the first Reagan Administration. To be fair, my wine drinking started three years earlier due to the drinking age in New York being 18 at the time but I really didn’t get into wine until I transfered to a university in northern California in 1980. If I assume that I spent an hour each day studying wine since then, I’m nearly at that 10,000 hour mark now. But my daily consumption of wine didn’t really begin until the mid-80’s and tasting wine is not the same as reading about wine.

So I’m still very much a hack by this definition.

Ryan’s post this morning asked when a blogger crosses the threshold from amateur to professional status? Since by definition an amateur does not get paid for doing a particular task this seems like an easy question. But in this age of affiliate marketing and sponsorship most wine bloggers can earn some sort of income from blogging. But this is not yet enough to earn a living for any wine blogger I know so I guess most of us are still amateur wine writers (or critics, if you like).

But I don’t think this matters very much as wine bloggers are starting to be taken seriously by consumers. Expert or professional status might have been the hurdle for wine writers in the print era but in today’s low-cost, online personal publishing era this barrier has evaporated.

I’ll still working on getting my 10,000 hours in, anyway

Now seems like the right time to put on the table how this system might work in practice. After thinking about this some and considering what Ryan wrote the other day, I humbly propose we wine bloggers adopt the following rating scales:

Overall Wine Quality

* Flawed, Not Recommended
** Average
*** Very good, Recommended
**** Delicious; A Wine of Distinction
***** Outstanding; A Classic Wine

Value/QPR

* Bad Value
** Average Value
*** Good Value
**** Great Value
***** Excellent Value

We can discuss the merits of adding half-stars to this mix once I get a read on the community’s reaction to this proposal. In the meantime, vote on what our icons should be below (aggregator/email readers might have to click back to the site to vote):

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this modest proposal. I believe we are making some progress here.

OK, I admit it; I’m the Mr. Spock of wine bloggers.

El Jefe laid me bare in his post early this morning (insomnia?) with his poetic argument regarding scores. Let me be clear here, the score is the exclamation point on a bit of prose on the wine in question. Sure, I’m a bit clinical and detached in my reviews sometimes but I do have some passion to spare that Spock might not express. I’ll work on expressing this a bit more.

But I stil think the 5-star (or glass/bottle/cork/bung/unicorn) system is the way for us wine bloggers to go…

Discuss

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the “why do you blog” meme to come my way and Gabriella from Catavino did just that 4 days ago. So I thought about it for a while and have come up with a few reasons:

1) I want to share my passion for wine: This is really the heart of the matter; I love wine and want others to discover it, too. I hope what I do here will get more people into wine.

2) I want to grow & learn: The podcast and blog have compelled me to try new wines I would not have otherwise. This has opened up an entirely new wine world to me. Each week I look for new wines to try and not the big jugs of plonk.

3) Wine blogging & podcasting is cool: OK, so this was one of the reasons back in 2004 when I got started. Now it’s just nerdy but I don’t care

4) I like the gigs: Kinda like a musician, this blog has provided me with employment marketing the beverage I love. How cool is that?

5) Because I can: I wish this didn’t sound so egotistical but the tools to share my thoughts about wine are well within the reach of tech geeks like me. I hope more folks with similar passions and technical chops follow, although it’s really pretty easy these days…

I hope I’ve shed some more light on why I do what I do and now will tag a few others in the wine blogosphere and ask the same question: Why do you blog?

St. Vini from The Zinquisition
Beau Jarvis from Basic Juice
Andrew Barrow from Spittoon and Wine Sediments
Tyler Coleman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino
Mark Fisher from Uncorked and The Dayton Daily News

You have all been tagged!

I read (skim mostly) my blogs through an aggregator so I rarely visit blog websites but I did find myself on Vinography this evening and I’m glad I did. Alder has posted a very handy pocket tasting guide that summarizes most all the classic wine aroma terms. Like a lot of wine geeks, I have aromas wheels for reference but they are rarely at hand when I need them in caves, winery tasting rooms or large tasting events. Now I’ll have them in my wallet.

Thanks, Alder!

If you would like to hear what it sounds like when the tables are turned and another podcaster interviews me, check out the latest edition of Blography from the Baltimore Sun. I think host John Lindner does a nice job of learning about Winecast, Wine Blogging Wednesday and me from his line of questioning and his editor does some magic to make me sound somewhat like I know what I’m talking about

Check it out on the player below:
mp3