Vineyard & Winery Management

May/June 2014

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1 0 V I N E YA R D & W I N E RY M A N A G E M E N T | M a y - J u n e 2 014 w w w. v w m m e d i a . c o m EDITOR'S DESK takes a lot of stories and wine reviews to fill all that cyberspace. This subject was a hot topic during the "Meet the Bloggers" session at our Wineries + Breweries Unlimited confer- ence in Richmond, Va. As the session moderator, I assembled a panel of top wine bloggers/writers: David White of Terroirist.com, Joe Roberts of 1Win- eDude.com and Fredric Koeppel of Big- gerThanYourHead.net. The audience was comprised of vint- ners from the Midwest and East, so I asked the panelists – all based in east- ern states – what sort of outreach they receive from wineries in those regions. "In my 30 years of writing about wine… I have received communications or samples from one winery in Virginia and one in New Jersey," Koeppel said. "I think that there may be a view that, 'We don't need national publicity,' but I think that is a parochial view." White said he "very rarely" receives communications from eastern wineries. "If the ambitions of a winery extend beyond wedding traffic, bachelorette party traffic and sweet-wine traffic, you have to reach out to a national audi- ence," he said. "The stories (of regional wineries) are really tailor-made for blogs, because we're always looking for those types of unique situations, those struggles – especially if the product is good." Blogs offer an unprecedented oppor- tunity to reach out and think big. What are you waiting for? Salute! If you've spent any amount of time perusing wine-related blogs and online forums, you've probably seen some sniping from "traditional" media types about wine bloggers, and vice versa. In a nutshell, old-school wine writ- ers are calling bloggers "hacks," and bloggers are calling traditional media "dinosaurs." The name-calling is not universal by any means, but there's been enough of it going on during the last few years to establish some ugly stereotypes: the bitter old print-media writer vs. the arrogant young blogger. While there are people who fit those profiles, the rest of us are open-minded enough to realize that there are crossover opportunities for both sides – bloggers landing wine-writing gigs for traditional-media publi- cations and traditional wine writers gaining new audi- ences through blogs and social media. Although it saddens me to witness the struggles of my traditional-media friends to make a living as freelance rates plummet, there are many wine bloggers who I admire and respect for their passion, intelligence and pursuit of wine knowledge. Of course, the real winners in this brave new world of wine writing are wineries. Never before have there been so many outlets and opportunities for getting your stories out to the wine- drinking public! Remember in Ye Olde Days, when getting reviewed in The Wine Advocate or Wine Spectator was a winery's only hope for publicity? Now there are hun- dreds of blogs and websites devoted to wine, and they're not just publishing on a monthly basis – they're publishing (and tweeting) weekly or even daily. It Comments? Please e-mail us at feedback@vwmmedia.com. Wine Blogs Offer Opportunities

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