Apologies for another in a line of short hiatus on this blog. Once again work and family take priority over my online musings, and the good news is that there are lots of interesting projects underway – I just can’t find the time (except just before midnight) to share much about them.

Other than the 2010 EWBC (have you signed up yet?), my priority at the moment is to do something a little contrary. I am considering splitting off some of my content from this site to a separate ‘home’ on Posterous, so that I can then re-integrate it here, but as a separate area. As someone who (tries to) blog about marketing and wine in the UK, I also get invited out to wine tastings, dinner and trips and I want to find a way to allow readers to select those parts of most interest to them. I also want to find the easiest ways to make sure I get you the fun stuff faster and more effectively, hence using posterous (if you have not checked it out, do!).

After that, I will try to properly integrate other content streams so that this site, or something like it, can bring more of my ramblings together in one place.

So, this place may seem a little quiet for a bit, but if you really miss me, you can check me out at any of the following places:

• Thirstforwine on twitter
• Thirstforwine on posterous
• Thirstforwine on facebook
• Thirstforwine on flickr
• Thirstforwine on linkedin
• Thirstforwine on youtube
• Thirstforwine on twitpic
• Thirstforwine on audioboo
• Thirstforwine on foursquare

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EWBC Petrol Art

It is too early to really be able to take it all in, but I am back from Lisbon and the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC) 2009.

The conference this year was about 3 times the size of last year’s event, with around 120 bloggers and a great number of producers and other wine businesses there to support the event and promote their wines. That is a big change in a year, and makes me wonder about next year.

I have so many things in my head that writing one post seemed incredibly hard, so I thought I’d kick it off with a brief summary and a few notes of thanks to get the flow going, then over time I can post my thoughts on the sessions, the people, the location, the sponsors, the food, the practicalities of running a large conference and more. Wow, so many things to think about.

First, I need to restate my thanks to Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino. Although all three of us are listed as ‘organisers’ the load of all parts of the conference was not exactly evenly distributed and Gabriella in particular really does deserve an extra reward for making things happen as well as they did – just don’t hand her an open bottle of wine! (photo by eatlikeagirl)

Secondly, as with all conferences of this type, we struggled to keep everyone online so they could email, tweet, blog and generally record their impressions. The hotel network did not, unfortunately, seem up to the task as promised, but the boys from Adegga who are already experts in their own areas (check out their brilliant wine social site) also became our de-facto IT support setting up, monitoring and moving the network for 120 people. Thanks Andre, Andre and Emidio!

I must also mention all those who were at their second EWBC event. They too took on informal roles to support the team, welcoming new friends and encouraging the discussion, and I still think we managed to keep the tone very friendly despite growing the event so considerably. This is down entirely to the community-mindedness of all those involved. Thanks everyone!

So, briefly, what did I learn?

• I really enjoyed Portuguese wine and must buy more of it to learn the key regional differences
• Portuguese food is amazing and deserves a more relaxed enjoyment of it than I was able to devote
• The people of Portugal are very warm and generous. We were always well treated despite being so unusual and being so poor at speaking their language
• That cork is making great efforts and inroads, via people like Amorim, to gain our trust in it again as the best closure for quality wine (more on this very soon)
• That bloggers themselves are still a strong community with an inclination to help others and share, so we need to build on this while we can
• That differences between bloggers on certain issues that might seem important, such as monetisation, are vastly outweighed by what we have in common and we need more opportunities to meet face to face to remember this
• That one of the main barriers to more international cooperation is language differences, something that can be easily, if expensively, overcome, and that otherwise we would benefit a great deal from working together. So, how do we fix this? Certainly not by sticking to our local cliques
• That we still have not yet truly captured the essence of what the consumer is looking for regarding wine in social media, but we are getting closer
• That I have a weakness for 70’s & 80’s dancefloor classics and revivals

All of these deserve a post of their own, so hopefully I’ll be able to raise some of these issues in more detail soon

In summary, if you like writing about wine and you didn’t make it to Lisbon this year, pay close attention to this site and to the event site to grab a place for next year!

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Yes, you will see that ‘code’ a lot over the next few days.

#EWBC is the twitter tag for all content related to the European Wine Bloggers Conference which takes place this weekend in Lisbon. If you need to know more about it at this stage, head over to the European Wine Bloggers site.

I will be up at 4am, in a tax before 5am and flying at around 7am, so I doubt I’ll be fully functioning tomorrow, but hope to be better rested for the event kicking off on Friday. However, you can still reach me on twitter (@thirstforwine) and via email (thirstforwine AT Google’s Mail Service)

I am really looking forward to catching up with the wonderful friends I made during the first event last year, and meeting a whole range of new people this year. Our ultimate goal is to create a strong network of friends around Europe, and the rest of the world, so we can do even better, more useful and creative things to do with wine. If you want to help, then join in!

There are almost 120 people coming to the European edition, and some 250 made it to the US version. The enthusiasm for meeting face-to-face is increased and facilitated by social media, despite our critics. Let’s show them some of what they are missing out on by not joining in enthusiastically!

See you in Lisbon!

Is there something intrinsically “Italian” about a website built in Italy like there is something uniquely Italian about the country’s wines (beyond the obvious language issue of course)?

I don’t think so. However, there might be something uniquely Italian about how a problem is addressed and solved. For example, I’m attending a “wine” conference in Genoa, and amongst the 20 or so speakers at yesterday’s “unconference” were two olive oil producers and a producer of wonderful balsamic vinegar – all talking about the same issues of building their brand, sharing their personality and delivering expert content using the web. Who knows, maybe this cross-fertilisation of ideas might bring new insights or opportunities?

This is the sort of “outside the box” thinking and discussion we hope will emerge from bringing together bloggers who have an interest in wine, including food, travel and maybe other bloggers, at the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference (EWBC). Maybe it will be the Italian balsamic vinegar, or the Spanish wine tourism or maybe the Portuguese designer that will spark the discussion that will lead to a new approach to sharing wine online. Who knows!?

In the meantime, I must say I’ve been reminded of, and impressed by, the range of wines made in Italy, but which are so hard to find outside of it. It is a shame it is so hard to find wines such as the indigenous Pigato, Ciliegiolo, Cesanese and Cannonau – instead of the ubiquitous Pinot Grigio (does anyone know of a great resource on Italian grapes to link to?). I urge you to explore these further.

And on that note, I’m off to taste more wines from 125 producers at TerroirVino. A presto!

This weekend I will be heading off to Genoa (or Genova as our hosts call it) to attend TerroirVino.

TerroirVino is the creation of my friend Filippo Ronco, who has also established one of Italy’s premier wine resources, TigullioVino. I met Filippo when he attended last year’s European Wine Bloggers’ Conference and I was very impressed by his determination to create a whole series of tools for wine lovers and publishers. His business also covers an advertising network for bloggers and the Vinix wine social network.

TerroirVino is a conference and tasting. On Sunday I will be taking part in Vinix Unplugged, an unconference to discuss wine, food and marketing online. I will be on at 15:00 (I think) to present the 2009 EWBC (European Wine Bloggers Conference) and some of this may be streamed live here. Monday promises a wonderful array of top Italian wines as there are 125 exhibitors pouring their wines in the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. Expect a few tweets and twitpics from me to make you all jealous.

I hope to let you know what exciting things are happening in Italy that might have an impact beyond that country, and hopefully also meet some of the marvellous range of Italian wine bloggers attending the event. Most of all, I look forward to sharing information about the 2009 EWBC with everyone.

If you are coming to the conference or tasting, please say hello – or even Ciao!

A presto amici!

Image by Ryan Opaz via Flickr It has been a little quiet around here, and that isn’t JUST because it took me a while to recover from twittering about wine until 2 am on Friday.

Firstly, I’ve been working on some thoughts on monetisation for wine bloggers which are being posted on the European Wine Bloggers Conference site (part 1 is live now, the next parts go up over the next day or two) as are part 2 and part 3 – part 4 is our discussion at the conference which I will report on after the event.

Secondly, the conference takes place this weekend in Rioja, in both Logroño and Briones (at the Dinastia Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine) from where we hope to be able to bring you some Live Blogging!

Unfortunately our internet connection will probably not support live audio/video streaming, but our friends from Vinus TV will be putting the materials recorded during the day live as soon as possible (I do hope Gema comes to the conference!)

A few of us will be trying to keep you updated through the use of Cover It Live, but as it will be my first chance to use it, I have NO IDEA how effective it will be, but head on over to the EWBC site and check it out if you can on Saturday.

I may be offline for a day or two, but hope to keep you updated here, or on the EWBC site, as to the build-up of the event, some of the wonderful wines we taste and the new friends I make.

Wish me luck!

Well, that’s a headline guaranteed to bring in the masses!

In fact it is just a tease. I’m working on an article on this topic as part of the UNconference over at the European Wine Bloggers Conference.

I have a few ideas of HOW it could happen, but I wondered if anyone had any ideas of IF this has happened?

If anyone has any concrete examples of promotions going on out there (past, present or future), I’d love to hear about them as I hope the article will act as a major discussion point for a good while.

If anyone has a blog out there who has made money, or a service they want them to know about, get in touch.

I recently came across this example from Berocca which I thought was pretty cool, even if it doesn’t pay the rent, and of course there are networks like FoodBuzz and VinoClic.

But are any wine brands, of food brands, spending their marketing budgets and arranging media placement on wine blogs?

Please let me know in the comments or by email: thirstforwine@gmail.com

(oh, and I’m trying to keep this a Stormhoek-free discussion – we’ve all read about that one already)

Gabriella asked me an interesting question regarding the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference yesterday. We have focused a lot on getting bloggers excited about the opportunity of the conference, but what do our READERS think about it? Why should THEY care?

Admittedly we have not clarified that point very much, although it has always been part of our thinking.

Ryan and Gabriella were kind enough to post my response on their site, which you probably already read, but just in case, check it out here:

Why Should Readers Care About the European Wine Blogger Conference?

“In my view, the most important goal of the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference is to start a conversation between the European voices at this party. Readers in Europe, and indeed the rest of the world, want to hear a familiar perspective on wine and one that is relevant to them.”

There are so many articles on the topic or rating and reviewing wines that I hesitate to write another one, but one thing I have discovered in my brief research is that almost all of it is based on attacking or defending the 100 point scale.

In fact, in my very first post on this blog (back in June 2006) I said:

This is not a site about wine tasting notes, collecting and investing in ‘fine’ wines, ranting against the 100-point systems and a certain reviewer (although it may come up from time to time) or matching it with food. When I say “Wine Culture” I am thinking of how the vine, its fruit and the fermented by-product has played some role in our lives for thousands of years, and how even today this agricultural product is present in our digitised, mechanised and hectic lives. Just as well.

However, the European Wine Bloggers’ Conference is encouraging us to discuss the issues that ALL wine bloggers face, and this is most certainly one of them. One of the latest posts by Ryan Opaz is:

To Rate or Not to Rate – That is the Question

There is a high likelihood that if you have a wine blog you will be tasting wines and writing up the results in some manner (there are a few weird sites like mine that don’t, but we are not common). If so, should you be rating them for your readers?

One argument, for example here on Fermentation, is that wines ought to be judged on some objective criteria, whatever these may be, and if we fail to establish what these are and how they are measured, then the whole business of rating is worthless.

On the other hand, companies like Wine Spectator, rely on a fixed scale to be able to classify the thousands of wines they deal with.

But where do bloggers come into this?

One of the themes that keeps coming up in my thinking about wine blogs is that the majority of them are NOT objective writers trying to be “journalists”, but rather they are, and should be, individuals with opinions looking to entertain. This means that we bloggers should be encouraged to say what we think, whether we are experts on the subject at hand or not, just as we would in a conversation with friends, not writing a piece for Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Wine reviews in this context are not supposed to be “objective” reviews. You don’t go round talking to your friends about that 88 point wine you drank the other night, do you? In fact, these are a form of word of mouth recommendation and as such a recommendation should be simple; buy it, or don’t buy it!

If bloggers could agree on this as the start of a common recommendation system, we would have a way of cooperating and make wine blogs a more influential voice for consumers looking for recommendations and information (as discussed recently on 1 Wine Dude).

And what would this scale look like? It could be simple binary: yes/no; toast/bury; etc. but this is a little too simple even if it is a model that works elsewhere.

I would like to throw out the following for discussion, and I’m sure someone, somewhere, is already doing this, but unfortunately I have not come across this*:

+2 I loved it and would really recommend you buy this
+1 It was OK and largely worth the money
0 OK, reasonable but not memorable and there are probably better options for your money
-1 A bad investment of time and money.
-2 I hated it. Avoid at all costs.

Points to note:
1. It uses +/- numbers so that the aggregate reviews can be summed, and strong feelings have more impact than lukewarm ones, after all there is a difference between a recommendation that sounds like “Yeah, buy it I suppose” and “go out and buy all the bottles you can, now!“

2. It is based on no more than personal opinion at that point in time (taking into account cost, perceived value, quality, context, etc.)

3. It gets around the issue of the “great value” wine that only scored 87 points, compared to the exhorbitantly expensive 93 pointer. Which would you rather recommend more to your friends?

4. It could be refined further, but ought to remain simple

Most bloggers I know who rate wines point out that this is just their point of view and you need to read the rest of the text about quality and context anyway. They also point out that it is only a reference point and that once you get to know them, you can get a feel for whether you have similar tastes, and therefore whether you could use their ratings as a guide to your own shopping.

In this case, let’s ditch the intermediary step and go straight to the heart of the matter – buy it, or don’t buy it.

* this is not completely true as I read a blog some years ago that had something like this but I cannot locate it any more as the conversation about 100-point scales drowns out all other discussions. Please send me any suggestions for where to find such scales.

Apologies for the silence but I am on the road at the moment, enjoying an unseasonably warm Rioja at the moment.

Just met with the Catavino crew, Gabriella and Ryan Opaz, and we still have lots to discuss about the impending European Wine Bloggers’ Conference. We also talked about so many other issues that make me want to sit down and get on with exploring my thoughts here. Oh well! Soon enough!

In the interim, you can also find me dropping in on some discussions on wine & technology issues on the Open Wine Consortium, a new social network for those involved in the Wine 2.0 developments. More on this soon (but you can read about it elsewhere too)