Category Archives: blogs

London Bloggers Prize Winners

Thank you so much to all those who came to the recent London Bloggers Christmas gathering at Ember, and who took the time to write their thoughts about the wines and link back to the wineries who generously provided the wines to taste.

Here is a list of all the reactions to the event that I could locate (including those who didn’t link to the wineries) that also linked back to this site – who knows what else happened out there (let me know!)?

Miss Geeky – Not too late! keep up the efforts, and great to chat to you

>Re:Photo – thanks for the photos and the comments on the videos.

Wadds’ tech pr blog – thanks for the review, hope you liked the presentation

Timinator – glad you like the Vivanco white rioja

Caroline’s Miscellany – thank you so much for your thoughts on wine and particularly for the wine facts of London

A Yankee in London – thanks for the kind words on the presentation, great to see you again

Chris Gilmour’s Diary Vol. 14 – greetings from the short chap on the stool 🙂

Fake Plastic Noodles – shame you didn’t get to try more of the wines, but thanks for the nice comments, and for your support

Jazamatazz – thanks for tasting your first sherry!

Tony Scott – looking forward to our wine/beer/cider tasting in the near future

Chris Reed – ginger and proud – glad you are hooked on the events, and hope you enjoyed your bottle of CVP

Londonist – always great to get a mention on this site, and thanks for the photos Chris!

The process was to award a “virtual ticket” for each link to a winery blog involved in the tasting, and many were generous enough include links to all the wineries as well as some specific links of their favourites. We are all very thankful for your support.

In all 62 tickets were placed in the draw which offers a pretty good chance of winning, but the ultimate and sole winner* of a case of 6 bottles of Dinastia Vivanco Crianza (offered by me, but through my Rioja winery blog at thirstforrioja.co.uk) is …

Caroline’s Miscellany

Caroline, if you would drop me a line with your address at [email protected] (or through a comment on this site), I’ll arrange for the wines to be delivered to you asap for you to enjoy. Congratulations!

Thank you again to all the wonderful London Bloggers who participated, to Andy Bargery who allowed me to sponsor this event, to the wineries who provided their wines, my mum & dad (etc.), and finally to those who read this blog and make it fun to write about wine and help to share the love of wine.

* in case you were wondering, I gave everyone an entry in a spreadsheet for each link (up to 8, one for each winery), then assigned each “ticket” a random value from 1-100, sorted on this basis & numbering each entry, then picked a number between 1 & 62. The winning ticket was #16

London Bloggers Prize Winners pre-announcement

How to find your new favourite wine blog

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A short update to let you in on an exciting development.

There are quite a lot of Wine Blogs out there – by some estimate there are around 1,000, and very few of them have much profile (i.e. traffic) yet. A few (mainly American) sites have gathered a reputation beyond a small circle of followers, such as Vinography, Fermentation, Dr. Vino and Good Wine Under $20, and a few Europeans are also regularly quoted, such as Catavino and Wine Anorak. These are the sites that get mentioned most often in articles about wine blogging online and in print, but they may not represent the kind of wine blog YOU want to read.

How do you find a blog about the wines of India, or a Wine Marketing blog in French?

Last year, Guy Kawasaki launched the popular Alltop into the wine arena with wine.alltop.com (where you will find this site listed, of course) but by its very nature, the site is still limited.

Now, Catavino Marketing has taken this to the next level (with just a little input from friends) by relaunching a great wine blog resource at http://wineblogger.info

The site has existed for around a year, listing the growing number of wine blogs around the world, but with quite a lot of effort, and some nifty programming, Ryan and Gabriella have now categorised these blogs into languages and even some topic categories so you can find the kind of blogs that are most interesting to you. What is great is that you do not even need to visit each one, but you can see the latest 5 posts from each one and even a preview of the post itself.

Of course, the technology and design may not be radical but it IS important because it is a major resource for the wine blogging world, and the kind of thing that no commercial organisation was going to get around to build for us as it is unlikely to make money. We ought to be doubly grateful for the skills and dedication to the wine blogging cause of Catavino Marketing & friends.

I’m certain we will see this site grow as a resource for wine bloggers and those who like to read them over the next few months, so do keep an eye on it, and if you find something new and interesting because of this, do let me know.

Wineries and Social Media

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Here are a few more details on the talk I will be giving tonight for London Bloggers at Ember. I am probably not going to show these slides, they are more for my reference, but they might jog some memories after the fact! I will post the text of the presentation after the event.

Below you will also find a list of the wines we will be tasting, and the links to the winery blogs that supplied them for you to taste.

There is an added incentive to come along. There will be wine bottles to win for those who dip a toe in the wine conversation! Read on.

Wine Conversation 081209

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wine london)

The wines we will taste tonight are:

Vivanco Viura/Malvasia 2007, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco – courtesy of thirstforrioja.co.uk
Riesling Kabinett Trocken 2007, Weingut Clauer (and if you are really nice to me, a taste of Riesling Auslese 2003, Weingut Clauer) – courtesy of winzerblog.de
Higueruela 2007, from Sta. Quiteria – courtesy of tintoralba.com
Dinastia Vivanco Crianza 2004, Bodegas Dinastia Vivanco – courtesy of thirstforrioja.co.uk
Bellamarsilia 2007, Poggio Argentiera – courtesy of poggioargentiera.com
CVP 2007, La Casa de las Vides – courtesy of casavides.com
Syrah 2004, Cortes de Cima – courtesy of cortesdecima.com
Antique Oloroso Sherry from Fernando de Castilla – courtesy of jerez-xerez-sherry.blogspot.com (who also writes about sherry here)
Special Reserve Tawny Port, Quevedo Port – courtesy of Quevedoportwine.com

And stay tuned for a series of videos we will be showing on the night. I shall link them up here tomorrow for you all to enjoy.

Blogging Matters to Harpers

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I had a piece published on the Harpers, or should I say Talking Drinks, web page yesterday.

I had been talking to their web editor for some months as I knew they were looking at this area, and we had similar views. He invited me to write a short piece about the state of blogging and introducing the concept of blogs to their (probably sceptical) readers.

Hopefully I did the latter, but there wasn’t room enough to explore all the sorts of conversations that are going on in the space available. That’s what I do more of here.

If you are interested, please take a read and let me know your thoughts on “Why does wine blogging matter?” and pass on the link to others as well.

The wine business has always sought ways to reach out to consumers and communicate the personality and individuality of their wines, and now blogging – whether it be by the winemaker, the consumer with first-hand experience, or the trade professional offering a trusted review, makes this possible.

Lots of fun stuff to discuss at the upcoming European Wine Bloggers Conference

See you there?

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