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HiYa! If you're new here, you may want to Sign Up to get all the latest wine coolness delivered to your virtual doorstep. I've also got short, easily-digestible mini wine reviews and some educational, entertaining wine vids. If you're looking to up your wine tasting IQ, check out my book How to Taste Like a Wine Geek: A practical guide to tasting, enjoying, and learning about the world's greatest beverage. Cheers!

The good news for wine lovers is that there’s a ton of wine-related content on the ‘global interwebs,’ much of it available for free (because content is a commodity now, people).  The bad news is, not all of that content is reading that would appeal to a wider audience (wider than the friends and family of many of those writing the content, that is) – that’s not at all meant as a dig at the vast majority of wine blogs that act as personal journals chronicling passionate consumers’ journeys into the amazing world of wine; it’s just the truth in terms of how much of that content is presented and targeted (trust me, not too many people would want to read my personal journals… but the point is that a small group of people close to me might).

The better news is that, for those looking for the most surfable waves among the vast oceans of on-line wine content, the judges for the 2010 Born Digital Wine Awards have done a great job of vetting some superb individual pieces of that content for you. You can thank them later (I recommend flowers, because those people get a ton of wine already).

The Born Digital Awards program is brainchild of Gabriella and Ryan Opaz along with Robert McIntosh, who together have started building up an impressive set of wine-related media ventures in Europe.  The idea was to build on the success of the Wine Blog Awards in highlighting outstanding wine-related websites, but with a Pulitzer-style twist: focusing on individual pieces of content (video and writing), and awarding actual cash to the winners.  I don’t know anything about the judging process itself beyond what’s already been published at borndigitalwineawards.com, but I do know that the list of judges contains some pretty amazing wine writing talent.

The finalists in each of the award categories were published last week, and the winners will be announced on May 18th at 5:30 PM ET, streamed live from the London International Wine Fair.  I’m humbled to be among the short-listed finalists (go ahead… make the height jokes… you jerks…), but that’s not why I’m talking about the awards here.  I’m talking about the awards because I wanted to post the entire list of links to the short-listed finalists below (after the jump) – there’s just some great f*cking content in the list, and if you’re into wine it’s a treasure-trove of cool-ass shiz to read.

WARNING: You may get tired of seeing Blake Gray’s and Alder Yarrow’s names in the list, as they’re each finalists for something like 900 of the categories (ok… two…).  In all seriousness, those guys are friends of mine (as are several of the other finalists, actually) and I’m happy to see their stellar writing included in the list (and even happier to be included in any list with those guys).

Now get reading (and watching)… and enjoy!…

Best Editorial Wine Writing

• Oliver Styles: Sherry Cartels and Bordeaux Negociants
• Erika Szymanski: Top Ten Microbes in Your Wine
• Tim Atkin: Towards a New Chile (Part 1)
• Blake Gray: The 10 Most Overrated Wines
• Jamie Goode: Wine Tasting: Subjective or Objective
• Alder Yarrow: The Philosophy of Wabi-Sabi and Wine

Best Investigative Wine Story

• Ken Payton: Hac(k)ing a Wine, The New Science of Cork Taint
• Per Karlsson: VinNet: Spännande ny nyhetssajt om vin? Eller olaglig marknadsföring?
• Richard Ross: Phylloxera – the English connection
• Alder Yarrow: The Coming Carnage in the California Wine Industry
• Blake Gray: Sustainable Wines and Whole Foods Market

Best Winery Self Produced Content

• Bernhard Fiedler: Alkohol-Zunahmi
• Randall Grahm: Love Among the Vines
• Kerith Overstreet: Hubris – It’s Not Just for Icarus Anymore
• Randall Grahm: On a Mission: The Germ of an Idea
• Brian Overstreet: Anatomy of a 91 Point Wine Score

Best Wine Tourism Feature

• Marc Hinton: Madrid to Ribera del Duero
• Wink Lorch: Wine Days Out in the French Alps
• Joe Roberts: Endangered Species: Santorini Wine Fights for Its Survival
• Ryan Reichert: A Long Walk Thorugh the Wines of Spain
• Tom Fiorina: Corsican Wines and Corsica, a twenty-year journey of discovery

Best Wine Themed Video

• Jay Selman: The Scent of Black
• The Qwoff Boys: Palm Trees & 100 Year Old Port
• Adrian Franklin: Opening a Bottle of Port with a Feather
• Zev Robinson: Life on the Douro
• The Qwoff Boys: Peter Lehmann Kitchen

Cheers, and best of luck to the finalists!