“The web is theoretically infinite; readers value blogs that sort through the confusion to find things of interest. Some of the highest-traffic blogs provide nothing but links.”

That’s a bit from Tom Johnson’s article on Palate Press about the pitfalls of contemporary wine blogging.  He runs his own blog which will apparently change names frequently.  I think the quote above summarizes a concept that I talk about a lot with winemakers.  Aggregate content!  Link to other people!

While Tom’s article picks on wine reviewers and wine bloggers in general, I deal specifically with wineMAKER blogs and I think we have some additional psychological baggage.

Winemakers feel like running a vineyard blog means talking about yourself all the time.  And it’s cool to do that sometimes.  As the Hosemaster of Wine once said, it’s hard to find a blog that primarily focuses on a topic other than the blogger.   But don’t spend all your time doing that.

Unless you’re already insanely famous, very few people will devote time to you on a regular basis just to find out what the weather is like on YOUR vineyard.  And while it’s fun to drum up support for real world wine tastings, only a small geographical area can show up to your tasting.  The Internet gets read by everybody!

“So what do we blog about!?”  You blog about everything.  Writing a good wine blog is probably 90% reading.  You read newspapers and other blogs and then you blog about the most interesting stuff.  But winemakers have an edge.  We are uniquely positioned to hear stuff firsthand instead of discovering them through traditional wine press.  So keep your ear to the ground and talk about things that you find out about in the wine world.   Talk about everybody.

If you spend all day pruning, it’s likely you didn’t get exposed to any cool ideas to put in the blog.  But on a day where you see other people, keep your eyes open and think “would this be interesting to wine drinkers?”