I was playing with a new service on twitter call TwitCam that allows you to create a video broadcast and then let people know, and chat, via Twitter.

It was fun broadcasting a wine tasting LIVE.

My first video was meant only as a response to a question, but it encouraged some feedback from others who tried to interact, so I thought I would do another and ask for interaction. I decided to run a wine tasting, not as a “presentation” (as most wine videos are), but as an interactive event, getting guesses on the wine from participants – a double blind tasting*.

The results can now be seen on the archived video here (or click on the image). I am not embedding it here as it starts playing automatically, which can get annoying.

We are only just starting to explore the possibilities of  bringing together different services such as twitter, blogging, video and audio. This is what can make communication and learning fun. Not just for wine, but in many fields. It is not a lecture, but a way to reach out to a lot more people around the globe and make friends.

If you participated or left comments later, thank you so much! I had great fun. So much so I’m planning on doing it again next week.

See you Thursday, 6th of August at 16:00 UK time (please check what that would be for you).

* a tasting where one person has to guess the wine based only from another person’s notes – who themselves doesn’t know what the wine is. Except I did. Hard to hide it from yourself really.

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My friend Christian Payne (aka @Documentally) has introduced me to lots of amazing technologies, especially opening my eyes to video, and this morning he pointed me to an incredible use of video technology to “immerse” the viewer in the action – yellowBird :: with the longest URL I have ever seen:

http://www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com

This technology (compared to the Google StreetView Car approach) uses multiple cameras to capture the action in all directions at the same time, merges them and then you can then change your viewpoint as you watch. Watch the video below and have a play – then imagine this as a tool for capturing the reality of harvest and the atmosphere of the winery. How much more would consumers understand about wine?

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It seems that Starbucks is about to start selling wine and beer alongside its coffee in New York Seattle.

Is this a victory for common sense and the treatment of the public as responsible adults, or something else? Sadly, it is probably 99% something else: financial self-interest.

Starbucks are in a whole heap of financial trouble and looking for ways to turn around the business. Their coffee brand has lost much of its lustre and now they have too many outlets selling too little coffee to keep shareholders happy (never mind all the jobs they provide). So, a new model is to be found.

Is the idea of alcohol served in a coffee led retail space revolutionary? Not at all if you have ever visited France, Italy, Spain and pretty much all of Continental Europe. Unfortunately it says a lot that this is not the norm in the US, or in the UK.

It worries me though, not because of what they are doing, but because of why they are doing it.

This will be one of the first experiments on liberalising the straightjacket of alcohol licensing in the UK and US, and as such it will be watched carefully and treated as a case study. If it were to be done properly, the staff in the local area would select suitable drinks for their clientelle, one they had a relationship with, to ensure they were selecting the mix that would be right. In practice it will be treated as an auction with the biggest brands bidding to be listed and ‘marketed’, and there is every chance the customers will not be interested.

Will that do anything for Starbucks?

Maybe in the short term, but if it is a failure in the medium to long term, it will not only be bad for Starbucks, it will make it that much harder for any well intentioned cafe owner doing it properly.

I must say I am very pessimistic about it working in the UK if all else stays the same.

If you like good coffee, like me, you will realise that the very robotic uniformity and ‘global solution’ approach to serving coffee that is killing Starbucks’ coffee brand is total anathema to the real world of wine and beer.

Dear Starbucks, don’t you realise we are laughing and crying when you say:

“We’ll be equally as proud of our beer and wine as we are of our coffee,”

PLEASE do this properly, or not at all!

Oh, and by the way, I’m available at reasonable rates to advise on implementing this in the UK, and while you are at it, I have an idea that will REALLY change the business – feel free to ask

Update: if you are interested in these two subjects you might also want to check out: http://coffeelikewine.blogspot.com/

Further Update (23:34): In case you didn’t decide to follow the link in the first paragraph, and have not read this story elsewhere, Starbucks is trialling this coffee + wine + beer concept in only 1 store in Seattle to be called “15th Ave. Coffee and Tea inspired by Starbucks” (except missing the inspiration bit in the name). This is not (yet) an announcement that they will do the same in the main Starbucks branded outlets.

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I was reminded of an important lesson in the wine business. Nature is in charge!

My family was given a present of the rental of a cherry tree (through a scheme with an orchard in Kent) where we can come down and pick all the cherries when ripe in exchange for paying for the upkeep of the plant in advance.

Two weeks ago, when a different variety of cherry was ripe and ready to pick, all was well. Unfortunately, a combination of rain and warm weather over the last week has meant that when our tree was due to be picked, mould had set in.

When we finally made it to our tree, for a family picking day with a picnic, I would estimate that 60-70% of the cherries were already affected by over-ripeness, mould or insect spoilage. Not fun. however, the truth is that a well managed cherry tree produces so much fruit that the little we collected was a LOT more than we need, so it was fine.

But, that’s not the end of the story.

We don’t mind. We don’t live off cherries (although my daughter would be happy to try). We only had 1 tree in an orchard of many thousand. But many of them were similarly affected. This farmer had been clever enough to shift the risk on to us by “renting” us the tree, but imagine if he had not. He would have had to sell the cherries themselves, and in that case 70% of his annual income might be lost due to bad weather.

This is the same for grape growers. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what effort, skill or investment you put into your vineyards, Nature is in charge. A single hailstorm, an unseasonal shower or two, or winds at the wrong time of year can ruin the entire crop. You would have nothing to show for your efforts at the end of the year.

As much as we develop the technology in the winery to make clean, reliable and safe wines, we are  TOTALLY dependent on Nature delivering us the grapes to make wine from, and if something goes wrong, there is no Plan B.

I often remind people that wine making is really just glorified farming. Today, I reminded myself too!

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Do you know what Malolactic Fermentation is?

If you do, you are probably amongst the tiny, miniscule, one-bubble-out-of-a-bottle-of-champagne’s-worth fraction of people in this country, including most wine lovers, that do. Congratulations!

In that case, I wonder whether this advert by Champagne brand Lanson that I saw this week on the London Underground is for you? It is certainly not for the average Champagne drinker and wine consumer.

The full text of the advert is:

“Since 1760, we’ve crafted Champagne the traditional way, choosing to avoid malolactic fermentation and insisting on 3 years’ cellar ageing. What emerges is an uplifting, crisp and fresh tasting Champagne with an exceptional purity of fruit.”

Does anyone in the wine business believe that consumers on the underground care all that much about the conversion of Malic Acid into Lactic Acid? I’m afraid that at best this advert was a bit of a waste of money for a good Champagne house, but at worst it confirmed that Champagne (and wine in general) is for snobs that know words like “malolactic fermentation”, “cellar ageing” and “purity of fruit”.

C’mon Lanson! Please use your undoubtedly strong brand, and your marketing budget, to do something a bit better and encourage the wine conversation. Oh, and while you are at it, you might like to improve your website – THAT is where you can reach out to wine experts and provide details of your winemaking.

Now, I wonder if there’s a name for the process of converting harsh, unapproachable advertising into well-rounded, consumer friendly material instead?

UPDATE 13:39 10/07/09: It occurs to me that really this is a classic error of selling Features not Benefits (loads of articles if you search, but this is a good one on selling the zaz.

COMMENTS: Thanks to all those who have commented on Facebook and on Twitter – it would be nice to pull some of that discussion together here too. Anyone?

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I am starting my research to create a better list of all UK Wine Blogs, and eventually hope to include the Irish too. I posted my original list last year and I’ve found it a useful reference as I don’t know of many other such lists out there.

I hope it will be a useful resource for readers and those who want to engage with UK & Irish wine bloggers. I also plan to use it to meet new wine bloggers, maybe find out more about what makes them tick and what they hope to achieve. I might even publish some of this as interviews on this site.

Please take a look at the re-published, but as yet not updated, list which I have put together on a new static page on this site, entitled (funnily enough) Wine Blogs.

I know there is a lot of outdated information and many missing blogs. Leave me a comment here (the comments on the page aren’t working in this template) and I’ll use that to update the list. Feel free to leave me links to your blogs or maybe links to others that you read.

I particularly want to hear any ideas on how to break up the list into categories.

Oh, and if you are looking for a more general list of wine blogs around the world, you should check out WineBlogger.info

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Gastronomes no more, it seems wine and beer bloggers have something to cheer and cry over at the same time.

Starting this month (July 2009), Wikio, the news site, has decided to split its previous ranking of top “Gastronomy” blogs into separate food and wine & beer rankings. It means it will be easier to spot closely related blogs, but I must admit some fondness for the previous practice that helped to bring food & wine (& beer) blogs together where they should be (see a previous post here).

So, without further ado, here is advanced notice of the top 25 Wine & Beer blogs in the UK & Ireland for July, but remember to read on below for some thoughts and Wikio’s answers to some of my questions:

1 Spittoon 2 Brew Wales 3 Pete Brown’s Blog 4 jamie goode’s wine blog 5 The Wine Conversation 6 Stonch’s Beer Blog 7 Tandleman’s Beer Blog 8 Pencil & Spoon 9 Sour Grapes 10 Bubble Brothers 11 Bibendum Wine 12 Bordeaux-Undiscovered 13 Drinking Outside The Box 14 Bordoverview Blog 15 Tyson’s Beer Blog 16 Robert Francis Wine 17 Irish Wine Contemplations 18 Barry’s Wine Notes & Memories 19 Burgundy-Report 20 Taking the beard out of beer! Ranking by Wikio.

First to some initial thoughts & reactions:

• Wine 13: Beer 7 (not a bad balance)
• There are at least 3 “merchants” represented in this list. These businesses have achieved a respectable balance of selling their own products and providing interesting and useful content, making them amongst the top wine and beer blogs. Well done folks!
• Several of these blogs in wine and beer are written not just by enthusiasts, but by journalists and authors with traditional media credentials (Jamie Goode, Simon Woods, Peter Brown, Tandleman and Melissa Cole). The cross over to new media channels will hopefully be good for them, for the quality of content in the blogosphere and certainly for readers everywhere.
• Now that food blogs have been taken out, we are left with just one female voice in this ranking, Melissa Cole at Take the Beard out of Beer! (what’s wrong with beards anyway?). That seems a little unbalanced.

If you’ve any more thoughts on the table, do let me know. Congratulations to those who figure in this launch report.

A Wikio Q&A:

So, what do I make of it in general? I had a few questions going round my head, so I sent them to Wikio, and here are some answers:

Q1: What is the most important factor in assessing a blog’s “Ranking”? Traffic? Links? Subscribers? What sort of things should bloggers focus on to raise their profile?

For our ranking the position of a blog depends on the number and weight of the incoming links from other blogs. We count dynamic links, which means backlinks or links found within articles. So blogrolls and the like are not taken into account. Also the weight of any given link increases according to how recently it was published. The weight of a link also depends on the linking blog’s position in the Wikio ranking.

I must admit I think that link measures might be a little “self-serving”, indicating what other bloggers are reading, not what the readers are actually looking for, but I understand that as a machine-measures it works to some extent (it is important to Google for example).

In terms of raising your blog’s profile, therefore, it is more effective to be noticed by other bloggers, by leaving comments on their blogs, contacting them, working with them, etc. rather than employing traditional marketing techniques to build readership. Ultimately, if your content is good, I expect other bloggers will link to it anyway, but it does make you realise that ranking is still a schoolyard “popularity” contest to some extent.

Q2: How do you measure subscriber data? Is this not biased by including feeds to other networking sites (e.g. friendfeed)?

We do not measure subscriber data or traffic, just incoming links. We chose this as a means of measuring the most well-referenced blogs rather than necessarily the most widely read. Bloggers know the other blogs and discussions in their sphere of interest better than anyone, so a link from a fellow blogger is, we feel, a strong endorsement.

Again, it is a shame that ‘real’ indicators cannot be used for ranking. A blog’s subscribers and their loyalty over time, would be very strong measures of how ‘good’ a website really was at delivering value to its readers rather than how good it was at including content others might link to. However, I do prefer that it is not included until a reliable and accurate way is found to gather the same information for all blogs.

Q3: Does including a weighting for links from other top blogs not entrench a hierarchy and act as a barrier to new blogs?

Well it is not the case that a link from the blog in 4th place is worth more than the one in 5th place. Just that one from a blog in the Top 100 is worth more than one from 101st – 1000th. So the degree to which this affects the rankings is actually quite low, and is more intended to combat spam at the lower end.

The idea behind this more general principle is just that blogs that are higher up are generally more active and are more likely to have a better acquaintance with the subject matter, so they are more likely to link to things that are worthwhile. But as I said in practice this weighting does not make a huge difference and is actually pretty light. And it only takes effect on the first 100, then the next 900, then the next 9000 blogs etc.

What is more important and accorded a more calculated weighting is how recent an incoming link is.

I understand the need to filter out the spammers and aggregators. I still think that valuing a link from a subset of blogs creates an in-crowd that does work, in some way, to keep others out, but if the weighting is low, I suppose the overall effect will be minimal. I’d also like to see how well that system works as I have found sites like technorati to offer questionable statistics these days that vary from one week to the next.

Q4: Who really cares about rankings? Does it add value for bloggers or readers, or just drive even more traffic to those who are already successful? Is this just about vanity for bloggers?

The aim of the rankings is more just to provide an easy way for people to find quality blogs on a given subject. But of course we’re happy if people take pride in their position

Q5: What innovations does Wikio offer, or plan to offer, that would engage bloggers in these rankings – or is this just reporting and should we just get on with our blogging?

In fact, we are aiming to introduce a new feature so I’m glad you ask this! We would like to introduce expert bloggers in each field to help us enrich and maintain the rankings (and hopefully launch more new ones, too). We have just published something about this on our blog: http://blog.wikio.com/uk/2009/07/wikios-experts.html

We’d like anyone who is interested to contact us on info AT wikio DOT co DOT uk

I’m sure I missed lots of questions, but if you have any of your own, let me know and I’ll pass them on.

So, if nothing else, I urge you to not just read but to include links to your favourite blogs in your next posts, particularly to help support those who are starting out and are not yet in the top 100.

Of course, links back to this post would be MOST appreciated too