Wine For Newbies

I discovered a really cool new Web 2.0 thingy today, posterous. It’s sort of like in between Twitter and full-blown blogging. You kind of need to see it in action to fully understand it.

Anyway, Catherine and I fly out on October 17 for a week at the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival. I’ve  previously raved about it being a great way to learn about wine, so I won’t do so again here.

With my own posterous web page, I can use my iPhone to take pictures, notes, etc. and email them so they will appear on my page. Posts will also automatically show up on Twitter.

Posterous may be just the trick for sharing quick wine experiences that don’t deserve a blog post but that also aren’t quite Twitter-appropriate. Stay tuned!

This evening I learned that this blog has been chosen to be featured in AllTop.com’s wine page. Being included alongside luminaries like Vinography.com, Wine Spectator, and eRobertParker.com is a real honor. There are tons of other great wine bloggers in that list, and I urge you to go check them out.

What’s AllTop.com, you ask? As the site describes itself, it’s almost like a digital magazine rack. Each page (and there are dozens of them on a lot of different subjects) pulls the headlines from the sites that the editors feel are among the best on the web. Each headline links back to the original article. So, you can do all of your wine, autos, politics, or whatever reading from one web page.

To all of you who submitted this site to AllTop, who subscribed, follow me on Twitter, and have left comments to show this site has loyal readers, I thank you. Now I’m fired up to go write some more kick-ass articles.

Alder from Vinography is wrapping up his trip, and it sounds like it was a major success. As I noted on his blog, it’s interesting that Pinotage makes a good rosé. I say that because a number of Pinotages can be very smoky–I describe it as drinking a campfire. I would be very interested to see how that characteristic would affect a rosé wine. Of course, not all Pinotages are this way, and some of them are downright excellent.

I urge you to read Alder’s articles about his trip to South Africa. He’s putting a wealth of information in there that will build your knowledge base.

Technorati Tags: wine, South African wine, pinotage

Alder Yarrow over at Vinography writes about his explorations of South African wines–while visiting South Africa. This southern hemisphere nation is perhaps my favorite wine-producing country in the world. Hell, I even like Pinotage. The closest I get to a good visit to South Africa is dining at Jiko, a restaurant at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge that has a 100% South African wine list–and it’s a darn good list, too.

South Africa is one of the world’s most dynamic and up-and-coming wine regions. South African wines were largely unknown for decades because of the economic embargo against the former apartheid regime. Since the early 1990s, South African winemakers have quickly pushed their wines toward the top tier of quality, and they have achieved much success with their efforts. Sometimes the names can be tough to pronounce (I’m still working on Buitenverwachting), but the wines are very easy to enjoy. The only down side for those of us in the US is that we get very little South African wine in our markets.

Hats off to Alder. I’ll be following this series closely, and you should too.

Technorati Tags: wine, south african wine

Wouldn’t it be great to have a single web site where every outstanding wine site is featured? It’s out there, and it’s found at wine.alltop.com. Update constantly, it’s a site you absolutely need to bookmark and visit every single day. AllTop.com is the brainchild of Guy Kawasaki. I’ve known about Guy since the 1980s when he was an evangelist for Apple Computer (as it was known back then). Guy wrote a brilliant book, The Macintosh Way, and I also loved How To Drive Your Competition Crazy. His other books are brilliant, of course, but these two stand out in my mind. They still live on my bookshelf after many episodes of removing those books headed to the local library’s book sale. 

Bottom line, you need to become familiar with AllTop.com. 

Why isn’t this site included there? Because this site doesn’t kick ass–yet.

Yes, I know–not too long ago I posted that I was hanging up this blog. Sharp-eyed readers will note that post is no longer anywhere to be found.

Over the weekend I came to the conclusion that my soul still needs to teach people about wine. So, like Lazarus from the grave, the blog has been resurrected.

But that’s not enough. I am not interested in simply writing random posts about the wine world. I want this web presence to become the go-to resource for learning about wine. Will that involve new podcasts? Possibly, but that’s not in the immediate plans.

What is in the immediate plans is to write a series of kick-ass articles that will make you forget all about the old podcast, all about every other book about wine that may be occupying space on your bookshelves, all about every wine education experience in your past. That’s a pretty tall order, I must admit–just thinking about it scares me. But that’s the goal. As someone wise once said, better to aim for the sky and end up in the treetops than aim too low and end up wallowing in the mud.

Over time, I will probably collect some or most of these articles and publish them as an e-book that I will offer for sale. Why sell something that can be had for free on the web site? Well, sometimes it’s nice to have all the items together in one place. Also, it can be nice to have an e-book available for when there’s no Internet connection. Sometimes, it’s nice to be able to print something out and have physical paper in hand–the perfect environment with which to enjoy a good glass of one’s favorite beverage.

The advantage to the web site, however, will be that we can create a conversation from each article. I will try to ask questions that invite you to leave a comment. Others can reply, and I can get in on the discussion. As always, the web site will remain free, but I will allow advertising by interested parties. This, of course, will require a new look for the web site, so keep your eyes open for that. In the meantime, please pardon the cyberdust.

I will need your help, though. I can write great articles all I want, but if no one reads them, it doesn’t do me much good. I need you to spread the word to your friends. Don’t become a spammer, but make your wine-loving friends aware of the articles as they show up.

I think this is going to be great for everyone. I will satisfy my need to teach about wine, you’ll learn more about it, and we’ll have a blast along the way. So, be sure to buckle your seatbelts and get ready for a great ride.

As regular readers know, I’ve taken quite a bit of time off here to enjoy a bit of a sabbatical from the blog and things related to WFN. I’ve enjoyed the time off, and I think it’s time to get back into being a hardcore wine enthusiast again.

With that in mind, I plan to do a few things. First, I plan to get back into regular participation in Wine Blogging Wednesday events. Second, I plan to start a series of articles to accompany the podcast episodes–not necessarily show for show, but a logical progression of topics that hopefully can evolve into a book.

As for the podcast…I’m not sure what to do with that yet. Maybe we’ll start up Volume Two and cover topics that we haven’t touched upon so far (which would be mostly about different wine regions). Maybe we’ll go back and re-record the episodes to eliminate certain annoyances. I still believe firmly that podcasting has a role in wine education, and given that some 44,000 episodes were downloaded in the month of March, 2008, alone, obviously a lot of people agree.

Look for the first article in the near future. I’m working on it (and revising it) even as you read this.

Zoiks–where did the last couple of weeks go?

While I try to figure that out, please allow me to brag a bit about my being featured in an Indiana University online magazine.  Kind of a nice thing, no?

Let me begin by saying that I really appreciate all of the nice comments and emails I’ve received since I announced that WFN as a podcast has come to a close. It’s rewarding to know that the podcast has been useful to so many–which, of course, is why I want to leave it “out there” for new people to discover. I’ll probably have to record a show that will be seen as the most recent and that will explain how to use the podcast.

I certainly don’t intend to auction off my recording equipment, but exactly what role it will play in the future of this wine resource is unclear at this point.

At the risk of sounding like sour grapes (no pun intended!), I have a few observations about podcasting to share. When podcasting first started off, it was a great thing–independent voices from around the globe could bring us news, views, humor, education, and much more. Podcasting was a true social media–we, the society were its producers. The mainstream news and television outlets were nowhere near it.

If you look at the iTunes Store today, you’ll see that the top podcasts come from CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox News, CBS, NPR, PBS and so on. Professional content dominates, and with so many podcasts out there, it’s becoming harder and harder for the amateurs to be heard. I am hopeful that good amateur shows will not be shut out by the corporate media, and it’s clear that guys like Gary over at WineLibrary TV are enjoying success that most of us can only dream of.

What makes podcasting great is all the “little guys” like Gary or the crew over at Grape Radio who are sharing their passion for wine (or whatever topic) with us. All of these shows have a place in podcasting, and it will be great if the can continue to grow their audience. One way I may try to help is by directing your attention to great wine podcasts that I run across.

As for what I’ll be doing here on this page will get worked out. I’m headed off to Walt Disney World and the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival on Friday, so I’m sure that will give me plenty of material to write about. And you can count on some pictures as well.

To all of the fans of my podcast, I again offer you my sincerest thanks. Spread the word about the audio resource, burn episodes to CDs and give them to friends, whatever you’d like to do. I’m blessed to be able to help people learn about wine without having to pay a fortune to take a class (although, I have to say, if you want to pay me a small fortune to fly out to your place and do some teaching, don’t hesitate to ask!). Thanks for all you’ve done to make the podcast what it is.

As for the future, it’s a blank page–which can be the most frightening thing in the world because there’s nothing on it. But it can also be the most exciting thing in the world for the same reason–it’s waiting to have something drawn or written on it. Right now, I’m looking at a blank sheet, and it’s kind of exciting. Stay tuned!

Dr. Vino has posted his report on 50–count ‘em 50–WBW participants. Good numbers, and looks like a lot of good wines, too!

Technorati Tags: wine, wine-blogging-wednesday