In my travels last week I read Make magazine volume 9 and an idea occurred to me that might make some sense to explore. What if there was a Make for wine?
For those unfamiliar with Make, it’s a quarterly publication that chronicles all sorts of technology hacks, scientific experiments and crafts that use electronic parts as their basis. It’s sort of like a 21st Century update of what Popular Mechanics did in the 1960’s. For example this issue features how to make a guitar amp out of a box of Ritz crackers and $5 worth of parts, a bullwhip and how to make a video podcast.
Another data point came in my aggregator just yesterday with an impassioned plea for the wine blogosphere to be different from Ryan at Catavino. I agree and taken together have some ideas about the future of Winecast.
What if I transformed this blog into an online magazine with articles on wine regions, tasting notes, podcasts, home winemaking techniques and wine hacks? How about if an event calendar was added along with recipes and ways for readers to contribute content? I think it would be a lot like what Make is for their niche and something I’d like to do.
Now the project of figuring out how to deliver all this goodness begins… but I do have some ideas 😉
I think one of the things we need to do (and certainly have the technoogy to begin to do) is make the wine web more like a tasting room – allowing for high interaction with the winery and winemaker, making them as central as the juice.
Richard Shaffer
http://israeliwinedirect.terapad.com
An interesting idea, Richard. How would a virtual tasting room work? Live chat or forums or blogs or something else?
Or where you just using that as an analogy?
Hi Tim,
your idea is very interesting. I have an italian website with wine info from all the world and also a wine blog within it. I follow you from few months, I’d like to participate in your project. Why not? We wine blogger (etc) have the keys of the future of wine information, because we are wine lover, good writer for the web and overall also we manage thecnology. That is, all a modern communication need to be.
Fabio Ingrosso
http://www.vino24.tv
Thanks for the reply, Tim. Sorry it has taken me a while to respond. I think a “virtual tasting room” could include the kinds of things you mentioned (live winemaker chats, recorded interviews, series of harvest photos and essays, webcam, etc).
People seem hungry for a personal connection to the winery and winemaker (even from afar) and the opportunity to interact with the winemaker.
I think those who can make the winemaker and the land as important as the juice itself will do well and rise above the sea of wine brands.