As I’ve blogged here many times, I think wineries who are not involved in social media are missing something important. Not only is it less expensive than more traditional outreach, the results are often better from a brand and customer loyalty point of view. What social media gives you is that personal connection with the customer online, like you get in the tasting room.

So I’m going to talk about how wineries can take advantage of blogs, podcasts, wiki’s and social networks on my next trip to California later this month. Although there will be some slides involved, this will not be “death-by-Powerpoint” but an interactive talk in the vein of BarCamp. It’s open to anyone who whats to learn more about social media or who wants to share their learnings. I will prepare about 40 minutes of material and see what develops as we talk about this topic.

If you are interested in attending, just head over to my company wiki and add your name and winery or company. If you no hable wiki then just send me an email at acanmedia (at) gmail (dot) com and I’ll add you to the list.

The seminar will be held from 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29th at the Sonoma Wine Library in Healdsburg, CA. Here’s a map to the location. Special thanks to Patrick from Iridesse who arranged to get the room reserved and Josh from Pinotblogger for his advice.

Hope to see you there; so who’s with me?

PLEASE SEE UPDATE BELOW FOR BREAKING NEWS

After several days of investigation, including sophisticated reverse IP address lookups, I have confirmed that Lenn Thompson, founder and editor of LENNDEVOURS, is the head writer of the satirical wine blog Wine-ing 2.0. The true author(s) of this blog have been sought for the past week by wine bloggers on Twitter who previously suspected Randy Hall from Wine Biz Radio, MonkuWino from One Wine Per Week and St. Vini from The Zinquisition.

It was also confirmed that Lenn writes most of the posts for all three blog authors but his main persona is “Over Oaked”, a broadside at California wine. Deeper investigation also revealed that the most biting commentary from author “Over Extracted” is actually penned by LENNDEVOURS contributor Jamie Gabrini with much editing from Mr. Thompson.

Even yesterday on IM, Lenn denied having anything to do with Wine-ing 2.0 but an IP address sniffed on the site led back to Thompson’s Long Island home proving he was not enough of a geek to use a Tor server when posting to his clandestine blog.

Now that this mystery is solved, and the American Wine Blog Awards are behind us, it is not clear what wine bloggers will complain about on Twitter. But something will likely emerge in coming days. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: New information has come to light which has confirmed Lenn Thompson is NOT the author of the satirical wine blog Wine-ing 2.0.

I received word from my forensic data researcher that the data packets traced back to Mr. Thompson’s home actually came from a proxy server in Chicago.

I also got a call from Mr. Thompson’s wife, Nena, who said, “…he barely has time to write at LENNDEVOURS, so I’m sure he’s not wasting any time on this Wine-ing foolishness.”

I apologize to Mr. Thompson for any problems this story may have caused for him and will continue my investigation to uncover the true author(s) of Wine-ing 2.0.

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

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.

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.

…and not that “white” off-dry drek either, but the real deal from Lytton Springs, Geyserville and Hayne Vineyard.

Why do I match fish with a rich red wine when all the experts might suggest something lighter?

Because I like it.

This is at the core of a post over at Vinography about wine and food matching. Alder makes a compelling argument that wine and food matching is a “scam” to sell more, and presumably higher priced, wine perpetuated by restaurants and other wine wonks. And while I think there is some common sense to matching food and wine, I agree that much of the advice on the street is bunk. Drink what you like with whatever food you want.

Kudos to Alder for another provocative and educational post. This underscores the unique value of wine blogs as I don’t think we’d see an article like this in Wine Spectator or Decanter.

Read the entire article here.

There was a little bit of discussion in the wine Twitterverse this evening about a post over on PBS’ MediaShift blog. In a rundown on video podcasts, writer Jennifer Woodard Maderazo described most wine blogs as having, “…content dull enough to bore an enthusiast like me.” Not sure which wine blogs she is referring to but I thought it was a pretty interesting comment from a fellow blogger.

Sure, many of us are not as zany as the folks at Ask a Ninja, entertaining as Gary Vaynerchuk or as quirky as Rocketboom but I’d hardly call “most” wine bloggers boring. Many of us try to inform, educate and feature wines most people might like and write in not the same way as the established wine press (well, most times anyway). There is a camaraderie among wine bloggers that I don’t see in other parts of the blogosphere that is far from pedantic. Whilst we might be seen as somewhat geeky for our language and devotion to all things vino, I wouldn’t characterize the majority of wine bloggers’ work as “boring.”

But I’m biased. What do you think?

Speaking of wine racks, I noticed an interesting post over on Lifehacker today about a DIY wine rack made from recycled cardboard mailing tubes. All you need is a utility knife and a ruler to make this project from materials most of us have laying around. A great idea and unique use of discarded materials.

Support recycling and raise a glass to frugal wine storage at the same time.

I’ve been searching for the kind of post to return from my nearly 3 weeks of inactivity here and my blogging buddy Mark over at Uncorked emailed such a story. It seems some enterprising folks have cooked up some sort of “sports” bra aimed at athletic women who are aiming to tote a bit more in their chest on their workouts.

Yes, my friends, you can pack your wine, beer, spirits or diet Coke in your brassiere if you are so inclined. While you may be more popular during the tailgate party with such an accessory, I’d suggest you reserve this for later season games at Lambeau Field to keep the temperature of the beverage at “cellar temp.”

On one hand I’m amused; on the other, outraged as El Jefe from Twisted Oak certainly has this “wine rack” ground staked out.

I’m back with a lot more posts, podcasts and perspective.

Stay tuned.