“Dear Blogger, Thanks!”

Image via Wikipedia

One under-appreciated gift is a simple “thank you” to a person, friend or stranger, who has done something for you that you have gained from.

You’ve probably guessed that, since I am writing on this site, I mean the wine writers and wine enthusiasts that spend hours each week writing articles, blog posts, tweets, status updates and more, to spread a knowledge, appreciation and access to wine.

Most of those who benefit from this activity, especially online, do not have to pay anything for this benefit.

Unfortunately, because it is free, its actual value is not appreciated by everyone. We are used to there being experts available at the end of a Google Search or on Twitter and Facebook who can answer our questions or suggest what wines to bring to our friends’ dinner parties.

“You are the best!”

So this year there is an extra thing you can do for your favourite wine content creator. A simple “thank you” will do wonders, but what greater compliment to a writer, videographer or photographer could there be than their fans nominating their content as “possibly the best in the world”?

The second edition of the Born Digital Wine Awards (BDWA) is now taking submissions for entries, and we would love to share YOUR favourites along with great content from all over the wine world. What’s more, your favourite could win the originator €1000 in the process.

Please, revisit your favourite content and encourage the author to submit their content to the BDWA.

The BDWA only accepts submissions from the originators of that content, but your comments on your favourite sites, blogs & networks, or send tweets, emails or private messages will let them know what you think of their content and encourage them to participate in the awards.

We all benefit in the end from better content and a greater sense of community.

Thank you!

Related articles

• The Born Digital Wine Awards is Now Officially Accepting Submissions (prweb.com)

I was considering this the other day when staring at a rooftop as I walked to my metro stop. The rooftop was nothing very special, but it created a nice negative space when presented against the deep blue sky. By itself, on a wall in a frame with a nice touch of sepia or black and white, the image might have been perfect to complement a room or become a talking point in a conversation. It was then that I realized that the same image when presented online, might at its best get a retweet or two, or maybe a stray comment on flickr, but would more likely stream past in a flurry like one unique snowflake tumbling to earth lost in the blizzard of others content.

Marketing your brand can be quite similar, and I think that to better understand what it takes to make your snowflake stand out you need to understand how to make that rooftop photo more relevant. What the photo of the rooftop was missing is a story. Something that links one idea to another. 1 photo in a post on a blog is nothing. Most likely you can give me any photo you take and I’ll find 300 just like it. But if you give that 1 photo context, and a relation to an idea you could keep me interested for a longer length of time.

Taking the rooftop photo example, imagine if I created an album of rooftops from around my town of Terrassa? Or images of the building who’s roof caught my attention? Weaving these images with small bursts of focused text in a post begins to give me a reason to stick around and keep reading.

Same thing goes for branding. One mailing, one website(by itself), one Twitter account, these are not going to do anything to further your brand. They provide no value by themselves. It’s only when you link them or use them to create layers, of stories, ideas, or contexts, that the real magic begins. If you havea winery with 200years of history, that is one layer, and while in some cases that layer can have influence it does have a expiration date and it really is not that unique in the world of wine. What about the story of today, or yesterday. What other stories are you forgetting to tell?

Think about what your “slideshow” is in relation to your brand. If you do you’ll be giving the consumer something to talk about.

“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it. - Steven Wright”

Never a truer statement spoken. Winemakers live by this motto as they craft their blends, each year learning from the previous year’s mistakes. This is why we have regions tied to single grapes, or styles of winemaking. Without others’ failures and triumphs we would not have Pinot Noir in Burgundy, Sherry in Jerez, and Port in Portugal.

Sadly, however, lack of experience often stops people from trying new things, afraid that the experience they seek is a prerequisite to trying something new. It’s not. There are many ways to gain experience, both by trial and error or from building on the experiments of others.

Surprisingly, today many wineries are still waiting to see if social media works. Ryan O’Connell of O’Vineyards recently heard a press attaché in France tell a group of winemakers the following:

“…you can’t share a story on sites like facebook or twitter. She also highly distrusts blogs and advises winemakers to be skeptical toward them. She assures us that she isn’t on facebook….”(via)

Unbelievable.

It’s time we all move on.  Social media does work. End of story. Blogs are just publishing tools, and bloggers are people that use them. Facebook and Twitter are communities, and at any time in the history of the world, communities can be found building commerce, telling stories and sharing ideas.

If you don’t believe it go out and look at the experience of others, and then join the conversation with the rest of us, using our experience as you see fit.

Ryan

Success Stories (feel free to ask them what they think):

https://www.facebook.com/Outsiders.Languedoc

http://quevedoportwine.com

http://lagramiere.com

http://ovineyards.com

http://www.twistedoak.com/

Before
After

Amusing automatic translation on Facebook

It appears that when a Page (not a User Profile) posts an update to their wall, readers will see an option appearing below offering a translation.

[I'm not entirely sure how it decides this, but presumably it checks the language of the text and compares it to the default on the machine you are using.]

Most importantly ALL Pages have been opted IN automatically (typical Facebook!) so you are using this already if you have a Page active and you should therefore know about it.

When this was launched a month ago it was only for a few languages (Korean, Japanese, Russian, Taiwanese and Chinese-Hong Kong), but as of very recently (today?) it seems to work for Italian, Spanish & Portuguese into English, so I assume a lot more languages are now available.

It even appears to work in the comments to be able to continue the discussion.

Benefits of using a Page

Making your content available to users who may potentially be interested, but who do not speak the language you prefer to write in, means that a great deal of interesting wine content can now spread around the world.

The big question will be the quality. The post I saw this morning was from Spanish to English and was perfectly adequate, but others have reported that the tool (supplied by Bing in this case) is not particularly effective. Interestingly, there is an option for users to install a Translation App which allows you to submit a modified translation. The Page Admin then, presumably, gets the option to approve and select the best translation, however when I tested it this morning, this process seems a bit complex and will need some refining.

I expect the quality of translations will improve over time. Mechanical translations have been available for some time, but often meant browser plugins or copy & pasting text. Now admins can use the tool to publish content quickly, so it could mean a lot more content is suddenly available.

Just one more reason that brands, wineries and businesses should remember to use a Page for their communications and NOT a fake user Profile page. You have been warned!

Related articles

• Bing Powers New Facebook Page Post Translation Tool (insidefacebook.com)
• Facebook Makes Translation Available To All Pages (allfacebook.com)
• Facebook Translation Powered by Bing Translator (searchenginejournal.com)

This blog, in large part thanks to its longevity but also some very active and loyal followers, regularly appears on lists of “top wine blogs”. Of course, there is no easy or accepted way of defining what these top blogs are, and every time this comes up, the usual discussions arise (see my recent post about the UK Wikio rankings). However this is measured, it means that those of us involved in publishing it get asked to share ideas and our ‘secrets’ with others, which is always fun and good for the ego*

The first interview was with Cision UK, a PR services company, and I will share that with you if/when the video is public. We had a bit of fun with this one.

I also met with PeerIndex, one of the leaders in the field of online influence measurement. I wrote about online influence on this blog in the past (“Writing Under the Influence of Twitter” and “Measuring Influence or Communication Skills“). They asked to interview me for some thoughts on influence and wine, and the result is this video, shot on location at Around Wine (thanks to the very generous Daniel, aka @winerackd). Please excuse the lighting which makes me look like I’m wearing Tim Minchin style mascara:

One of the quotes which seems to have caught some people’s attention was:

“I have no influence. People who follow me make me have influence, so effectively they are the influencers.”

This may seem backwards, but the point I was trying to make is that influence is being viewed backwards. The individuals with lots of followers do not necessarily have the ability to influence the behaviour of others. We ought to be looking at how these particular users represent the shared interests of those in their networks.

I can’t make anyone drink a bottle of wine … but if you can convince me that I should drink yours, then maybe you’ve got the message right that will make others do the same.

Trying to target bloggers as mouthpieces for PR messages doesn’t work, but learning to engage with them is a great way of engaging with consumers in general.

Just a thought.

* It also goes to prove my point that any measure of “influence” is self-referential because if you are seen as influential, you attract more attention, links and interviews … and therefore more success which then means more “influence”

Related articles

• Shock! Wine blog helps to sell wine (wineconversation.com)
• What Exactly Does a Social Media Influence Score Mean? (fastforwardblog.com)
• Review: Tim Minchin’s Comedy Prom at Snape Maltings (cassiefairy.wordpress.com)

It would appear to be widely accepted in the wine trade that if only consumers knew more about wine, the more, better (and higher profit) wines they’d buy.

“Consumer Education” in the form of brochures, seminars, events, newsletters, websites, apps, social networks, trips etc, form part of most every wine marketing plan (assuming they’ve even bothered). To quote one recent example, Tom Lewis (aka @CambWineBlogger) in a discussion on this topic initiated by Wink Lorch (aka @WineTravel):

(what we need is) more wine education, so people start to want better wines and feel confident about searching for them …

In other words, it isn’t a problem with the wine or how it is made available, it is really about a lack of knowledge. We can fix that. Right?

The basic mental model this is based on is something like this:

Simple model of ROI in wine education

If you increase Education (i.e. invest some effort to learn) then consumers get a corresponding increase in Enjoyment. The more you put in, the more you get out.

Of course, this is flawed. Nothing in life is that easy for a start, but if this isn’t right, what might the model actually look like, what would it teach us about how to improve the customer’s “ROI”?

Let’s start with a couple of assumptions:

1. You don’t NEED to understand wine to appreciate it
2. Wine doesn’t matter – at least to most people

To an ‘expert’, wine might mean more than just the alcoholic beverage you actually drink. It is also the final outcome of a winery/winemaker’s efforts and the story of that creation, but also the culture of wine that led to this effort in the first place.

BUT, the vast majority of people are not, and do not want to be, experts. For many, wine is a slightly extravagant way of getting intoxicated.

However, there are always those whose interest is sparked by something, maybe a story or an unusual experience, or they see some potential reward in knowing more about wine, so they consider “learning about wine”. What awaits them? What are the “investments” they need to make, and what are the potential “rewards”?

Investments

TIME: the most obvious is the amount of time one has to spend; wine courses, reading books, magazines and blogs, attending tastings, in the wine aisle and in shops, browsing, taking notes, recording, reviewing

MONEY: this is an expensive hobby. Wine tutors, books and tastings all cost money. In addition, as you explore wine more, you inevitably spend more per bottle than before (I remember my WSET tutor apologising for this fact in my first ever class).

EFFORT: it isn’t just the time and money, you have to care! To get a lot out of your wine studies, you must dedicate a certain effort to recall information, to look out for materials, to pass exams that open doors to the next level of education achievement

FACE: “Oh, you’ve done those wine classes. Why don’t you choose the wine today?” says your boss, your partner, best friend, etc. The cost is the performance stress every time a wine list arrives at the table, and the risk of failure.

Well, that’s all well and good, but there are great rewards, too. Right?

Rewards

EXPERIENCES: Knowing more about wine means having an idea of what you want, and getting what you expected; the “right” wine for the moment. It means you can match these moments according to the style of a wine, but also to its story and personality (celebrating a surprise win? Why choose any old Champagne when you could be drinking that English sparkling wine that surprised everyone by beating the Champenois by coming top in a recent competition!)

AVOID MISTAKES (?): It is related to the above, but many people who start in wine education do so to “buy better wines and know which ones are actually cr*p”. Avoiding such mistakes is a strong motivator to get started … but how realistic is it?

SAVE MONEY (?): Another reward people might hope for is that by knowing more about wine, they can spend the same, or maybe even less, than they do now but find wines that please them more. [If only! There are very few, except for maybe City employees drinking expensive wines on expense accounts, that might fall into this category.]

… : What else?

The problem is, the rewards are a lot harder to list and quantify than the costs. Unless you are looking to invest in wine and you want to know what to buy and sell, then wine knowledge is a personal achievement.

Unlike other popular hobbies, wine knowledge is hard to share. If you had ‘invested’ the same in learning about music you could talk to your friends in the pub or at work, it might even help on quiz night. If you’d been studying electronics, or flower arranging, you could make or fix something. Wine is more esoteric.

So what might the graph of Return vs Investment for wine education actually look like for an average wine consumer? Well, I suggest it might look like this red line:

An alternative view of the ROI from wine education

To explain, let me highlight four consumers at particular locations on this continuum:

A. The Average Consumer

You don’t need to know about wine to appreciate it. In fact, good shops and even the supermarkets are doing some of the work for you. They’ve selected wines, categorised them, written tasting notes and might even be willing to recommend one specifically for you. Effort required = ZERO.

This is where the VAST majority of consumers exist (in the UK) and, in fact, where a lot SHOULD stay, and as the retailers get better, the “Return” increases further. Consumers are unlikely to really lose out in a competitive market.

B. The Wine Student

Having been tempted to start studying about wine, you find out you’ve paid several hundred £pounds for a course plus materials, given up several evenings and maybe even a weekend to attend the course. You’ve learned about many parts of the world that make wine. You have a list in your head, and maybe your wallet, of 50 grape varieties, and an understanding of the basics of winemaking.

However, when presented with a choice of wines in real-life situations, you are no wiser than before. You “haven’t done Italian wines yet” and you are not sure how what you learned about the three sub-regions of Rioja can help to choose between the 10 different Crianza and Reserva wines on offer on the supermarket shelf.

In fact, you might even enjoy wine less if you avoid all the supermarket offers and instead take gambles on slightly more expensive wines you think you recognise, but turn out not to be what you expected.

You’ve been through basic training. It is a good foundation, but are you avoiding mistakes or making more? Do you feel more confident in restaurants or less? I know I suffered and almost gave up.

What are the options? Stop chucking money at it and go back to A), or plough on and invest more in the hope of getting greater rewards in future? Most people do the former.

C. The Wine Geek

You’ve spent a long time at it and wine studying is part of your life. You are comfortable spending time reading wine magazines and books, you’ve taken some courses, you’ve even visited some wineries. Your overall experience of wine is much improved and you are quite happy for people to ask you for advice.

The fact is, however, that you may still not have recouped what you’ve invested to achieve this. There are a lot of points between B) and D) where you are still in “deficit”, but as your appreciation increases, so do the ways of getting other rewards from this investment. You might get invited to exclusive tastings, meet winemakers, get invitations to visit wineries, take a look behind the scenes where tourists don’t normally go, and so on. It may also be that you are becoming known to your friends as “the wine expert” and are now able to help them find better bottles and have more fun. Your wine knowledge is appreciated as a skill, not an affectation. Great reward indeed!

D. The Master of Wine

Eventually, all this effort pays off and you are king, or queen, of the vinous mountain and you’ve probably earned the right to use the letters MW after your name. Few wine labels hide secrets from you, and many of the great names in the wine world know your name and send you personal messages and invitations. Your friends all applaud your status. There’s always much to learn, but you’ve cracked the code. Very few people ever reach this point.

Conclusions

What might this mean for our wine conversation?

First, lets all agree that the vast majority of wine consumers are exactly where they want to be: Enjoying the simple pleasures of drinking simple wine at affordable prices. The “heart zone” is real. We might argue over whether it is growing or shrinking, but there are plenty of places to pick up a decent bottle of wine without being asked to present a wine certificate.

Secondly, the “bubble zone” is real too. Why is it we have to convince people they NEED more wine education? It is because it is hard work and the rewards are not obvious. We don’t need to convince football fans to “learn” team histories, squad changes, fixture lists, etc. These happen normally because more people care, and once you’ve done it, they are rewarded in lots of subtle, social ways. They can join in more discussions with friends and even strangers in pubs and workplaces. Can they do that with wine? No! If you want a barometer of what a society thinks are “important” social topics, check out the categories in the local pub quiz. Sport. Films. History. TV. Literature. Where is Wine?

Instead of pushing people to invest more effort in wine education, we should be increasing the rewards for making that effort, responsibly.

Coming back to the assumptions mentioned above, we need to try to make wine matter while remembering that you don’t need to understand wine to achieve this.

Nike & Reebok didn’t make trainers ‘cool’ by explaining the technology of sports shoes, or by making them cheaper. They made them something people thought mattered, so the could compare with their mates, and invest in.

The best return on investment for the wine business is NOT to “educate” wine drinkers about the features of the wines, but to make wine in general a more relevant part of their lives, and therefore one they will want to be involved with. This is about making wine more fun, less stuffy, easier to share, more relevant, popular and engaging. This is not the same as lowering prices and quality.

Let’s get our trainers on, hum some Pink Floyd and go out and make wine more rewarding too!

It seems so obvious from the outside. Winemakers and wineries in a region should cooperate to promote the region and give consumers a clear idea of what that region offers to encourage them to give their wines a try. Yet in practice, when you delve into any region or country, what you see are arguments, divisions and recriminations.

It is something I saw a glimpse of recently during a trip to the beautiful region of the Langhe in Piemonte (thanks to Berry Bros & Rudd), but I stress that this was only the latest example of something I see everywhere.

The conversation started as “How can we (all) make people more aware of the Nebbiolo grape” … but quickly turned into a discussion about who should or should not be included, how “there’s really nothing else in the world like nebbiolo, and everyone should realise this”, and about the classification of vineyards.

Italy is already famous for its complex regional boundaries and multi-layered wine classifications. So how is it that wineries can possibly rationalise “making things easier/clearer for the consumer” by creating further sub-divisions of wine regions and new DOC’s?

I felt the odd one out when I implored the wineries to spend time finding what they have in COMMON that is unique instead of worrying about local matters, but how to explain this view?

Wine and Movies

Winemakers, their wines and their wineries are all great characters. On their own, each one is different, has its own background, personality and role to play in this world. Yet, individually, they are walking biographies, of interest only to the already devoted fans. They lack a context & excitement. They lack a narrative.

To quote an interesting article by Caro Clarke:

“Plot is what happens. Narrative is what the reader sees and hears of what happens – and how he sees and hears it.”

Movies NEED great characters, but they also need a narrative, a story that affects not just what we learn, but HOW we understand what it is all about. There has to be something that brings these characters together, gives them a way to express themselves, makes them interact, highlights their brilliance … and their flaws.

• Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) needs Los Angeles, computers, satellites, guns and terrorist threats to make sense as a character, otherwise he might just be a moody, aggressive law-enforcement officer with a sadistic streak and a knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time
• King George VI (Colin Firth) needs the pageantry and social norms of British Royalty and threat of war of 1930′s London to make us care about his fight with a speech impediment, otherwise he’d just be an unfortunate toff who wouldn’t make much money as an after-dinner speaker

Ultimately, there has to be something that engages the viewer and consumer and keeps them in their seats. THIS is what the region should be providing. But just like every movie needs its actors to play the parts, it also needs directors, screen writers and camera operators (and many more skilled folks, including Best Grips, whatever they are). A great movie only emerges when all of these people, and their skills, come together.

The same is true for wines. There are great wine makers, great wineries and amazing wines, but they make a much greater impact when they are put into a context that consumers care about and understand. EVERYONE needs to play their part in promoting the region, and the individuals involved need to learn to think of the overall effort as well as their own objectives.

Consumers are looking for ways to understand wine, so let’s give them the stories they need to convince them to bother paying attention, and then spend their hard-earned money on our wines.

In response to this, Vrazon is planning on running workshops for wineries and regional bodies to help them develop this concept for their own situation. Look out for announcements for dates and locations in 2011 and 2012 but we hope to have one up and running in conjunction with the 2011 European Wine Bloggers’ Conference

Let’s hope that in future we can tell more interesting, unique stories that make sense of the great wine characters that do exist out there.

“Yet if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.” Peter Benenson

Please feel free to employ this whenever you come across egregious examples of “digital wine imprisonment” then give a “Toast to Freedom“.

[Template Letter - amend and complete as appropriate]

Dear [Winery]

It has come to my attention that the amazing, delicious and unique [wine], a wine celebrated by wine lovers across the world as an outstanding example of the craft and science of winemaking, has, by your actions and inactions, been digitally imprisoned and locked away from the gaze of millions of potential appreciative drinkers.

It was clearly established by international convention that the use of Flash-based web sites is cruel and unusual punishment, tantamount to torture. Wine lovers wishing to enjoy [wine] should not have to wait ages for screens to load, to sit through cringeingly self-congratulatory and irrelevant films, or install plug-ins just to watch bubbles burst on their screen or photographs drift in and out of focus.

The people of the world have the right to read about, listen, watch and interact with [wine] wherever they are on their Apple-branded mobile information consumption devices, not be blocked from such communication by your vanity-driven technology choices (but to be fair, I am also writing to the dictatorship at Apple to end such restrictions).

[Wine] has a message to share and a role to play in bringing happiness, cultural expression and camaraderie to people everywhere, so why do you insist on hiding this beautiful personality behind appellation schemes designed to be penetrable only to the most bureaucratically minded?

Why do you refuse to use the communication channels available to share information that is actually useful? Why is your label treated as an ID tag instead of a loudspeaker? Why have you failed to create a platform, such as a blog or other open media channel, to allow interaction to happen? Are you hiding something? What are you afraid of?

Why do you still speak in “wine code”, excluding those who are uninitiated in its damson-scented, mineral and toothsome ways?

Does [wine] really drink well on its own, and does it HAVE to be a great match for chicken and pasta dishes?

It is time for [wine] and its story to be set free from these injustices and allow it the opportunity to travel the digital channels unimpeded.

I shall be asking my friends and elected representatives to make these same points to you at every opportunity. I trust that this pressure will help you realise the greater potential of a more open future.

Yours faithfully

A Digital Wine Lover

* this is not meant to make light of the incredible achievements of Amnesty International. On the contrary, I hope it encourages you to read about their work and join in. The Amnesty story began with the letters of one individual concerned about the plight of one small group of students imprisoned for making a toast to freedom (hopefully with wine). Maybe together we can effect change for the general good too.

UPDATE: 03/06/2011 – Thank you SO MUCH to Lizzy Tosi for translating this letter into Italian

Related articles

• Iconic images mark Amnesty International’s 50th anniversary (cnn.com)
• Amnesty International: 60 years of service and its vision and relevance are undimmed (guardian.co.uk)
• Amnesty International marks 50 years of fighting for free speech (guardian.co.uk)

Last week’s Access Zone activities at the 2011 London International Wine Fair (LIWF) were not only great fun and a way to spread the word about social media in wine, but they seemed to strike a chord with the wine trade present.

Gabriella, Ryan and I were very pleased with the buzz around the fair and online about the range of events, seminars, projects and announcements that Vrazon helped to make happen on the relatively small space of the Access Zone. After all, that was the idea. This wasn’t intended to be another “theatre” for presentations, but an interactive space where we could start discussions with a presentation, then have as much participation as possible. As Ryan Opaz observed:

“The only way this will work is if the audience interrupts a lot.”

Every major announcement was well attended, with participants filling the aisles and following on the livestream. We are extremely grateful to all those who took the time out to listen, ask questions, answer queries and generally make the experience of the LIWF as useful as possible.

The archive of the live access zone video and interviews can now be browsed; more polished videos will take a little longer, but BIG thanks to MadCatMedia for making the magic happen

Day 1 – Tuesday 17th May

The Access Zone really kicked off with two big events on Tuesday – the social media Q&A sessions with ourselves and other volunteers, and the launch of the Disrupt Wine (you will be able to learn a lot more about the Disrupt Wine on the dedicated site being built).

Where else would you get the combined talents and different perspectives of Wink Lorch, Louise Hurren, Andre Ribeirinho and Ryan O’Connell on a roundtable? It was a lot of fun for Ryan and me to moderate and be involved in. The overall message from these discussions could probably be summed up a:

“Be yourself, and good stuff will happen”

It was also amazing to be able to create a blend of three different varieties from three different winemakers in three different countries – and made on the stand! We are very grateful to Thierry’s who took the brave step of returning to exhibit at the LIWF by investing in a stand that would sit alongside the Access Zone. Most importantly, they also agreed to the concept of developing a pan-European wine blend on the stand in only three days. It was a privilege to work with Markus Huber (of Weingut Huber in Austria), Emmanuel Laurent (of Rodet in Burgundy) and Giorgio Flessati (of Viña Falernia in Italy) on this project. Evidence, if any was needed, of their own commitment to doing something different and offering creative, fresh thinking to the UK wine trade.

We ended the day with the visit by Naked Wines and their archangels, learning about their latest developments and watched them select a range of new wines. Naked Wines are now also listing the Disrupt Wine on their new marketplace – do check it out and get involved.

Day 2 – Wednesday 18th May

The Wednesday was time to showcase Vrazon‘s other main projects, the Born Digital Wine Awards (BDWA) and the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC). Congratulations to all the winners and runners up in each of the 5 categories of the inaugural BDWA, many of whom, like Wink Lorch, Tim Atkin, Richard Ross and Mark Ryan were on the stand to hear the results. The response was wonderful, particularly as there were some very deserving finalists in the spotlight, including both new names as well as established writers. Congratulations to all of them!

For more details and a full list of finalists and winners, visit http://borndigitalwineawards.com

We also took the opportunity to announce the overall theme for the fourth edition of the European Wine Bloggers Conference, which will be “Storytelling“, and that George Taber will be our first keynote speaker. Of course, this was all accompanied with a delicious glass of Franciacorta from our host sponsors for 2011. Please visit the EWBC site for more information, and if you are thinking of coming, please do book your tickets soon as the number of tickets is fixed and we anticipate them selling out early again this year.

But it wasn’t all about us, it was also a chance for Ryan O’Connell’s to give hints and tips for wineries looking to take advantage of social media, and to hear more about what Palate Press is up to to help wine bloggers make money from their blogs – check them out!

Day 3 – Thursday 19th May: The final day

The final day was once again dedicated largely to Disrupt Wine - selecting the delicious winning blend (50% Gruner Veltliner, 40% Falanghina and 10% Macon Chardonnay) as well as unveiling the label design incorporating the audience’s own tasting note contributions.

We also had great discussions on blogging by David Lowe (@bigpinots) and another general Q&A with Ryan Opaz. Lots of great content there for reference.

On top of all this there were dozens of great interviews with bloggers, publishers, retailers and winemakers, open tasting sessions and PLENTY of networking, much of it brought to you live but also recorded to watch again.

We hope all those who made it to the stand got something out of it. Not everyone at the fair will have seen the value of Social Media in wine, and it certainly is not a tool to replace everything that is done to sell and promote wine, but it is a great complement for the best brands and people, and we hope to see more great stories being told after this event.

These were three intense days, but with the help of our many friends listed here, as well as the organisers of the LIWF, and Thierry’s, we feel it was all worthwhile for all those involved.

See you next year!

Robert McIntosh, Gabriella Opaz & Ryan Opaz

If you are coming to the event, do come and visit us for a good chat, coffee (courtesy of Thierry’s), free wifi and lots of content and networking opportunities.

If you cannot make it to the show for whatever reason (at least it is not for volcanic eruptions this year) then log on to the live stream on the LIVE ACCESS ZONE page