I’m happy to announce what most of you reading this already know, which is that I’m now a featured contributor to the video blog on Wines.com. You can check out my first installment, in which I brave the wilderness of my backyard to talk about the brouhaha surrounding the Natural Wine movement.
The idea behind my vid series over at Wines.com is to take the concept I tried out in “simplifying” the world of Port in about 5 minutes of video, and use that compressed-and-pithy format to dissect other aspects of the wine world, wine biz and wine industry. It’s a paying gig – modest, but fun, and it’s great to be working with the team at Wines.com again, who are an amicable (and smart, particularly when it comes to leveraging social media to engage their customers) bunch.
Does this mean fewer episodes of the already-too-infrequent 1WineDude TV?
The short answer is, “yeah, sort of.”
BUT… having said that… the “sort of” part probably needs a bit of embellishment…
Read the rest of this stuff »
Yep. Really.
I’m crazy excited to tell you that I will soon be authoring a freelance wine column on Playboy.com.
So now you have some legitimacy behind the “I’m just going there for the articles, honey!” excuse (you’re welcome!).
The folks behind Playboy.com reached out to me many moons ago, and the whole thing has been even many more moons in the making, so I’m thrilled to be able to get started – and humbled and honored by the opportunity to work with such an amazing brand. I don’t know how long this gig will last, and the column doesn’t have an official name yet (please shout out your ideas in the comments – I’ve got a feeling those will be very entertaining!), but we have some great ideas for content, which naturally will be exploring the more sensual sides of wine.
Now, I’ve never featured beautiful nude women on 1WineDude.com (though I’ve come close!), but I suppose you could say that there’s a bit of “spiritual alignment” in my writing style and the serious-but-accessible-and-slightly-irreverent take on the subject of wine that Playboy.com was looking for. To me, it’s a bit like Forbes.com bringing on Jeff Lefevre’s smart, analytical writing style, or how the populist, grounded voice of Vinography’s Alder Yarrow fits in so well with JancisRobinson.com. So you can add one more name to the list of home-grown wine bloggers being tapped by long-standing on-line brands.
There are a few things you probably should know about this Playboy.com gig…
Read the rest of this stuff »
Well… if this isn’t “proof that social media has forever changed the landscape of wine” (their words, not mine), then I’m not really sure what is.
Ok, so it’s not really proof, but it’s hard to deny the traction when someone like me makes the top 20 in a list like this. And #14?? Seriously?!? WTF?!??…
Read the rest of this stuff »
I was recently interviewed by WineSpiralProject.com, as part of their series on wine industry innovation, in which they interview personalities in the wine world and ask them to share thoughts on the wine biz and how it can/should innovate.
Yeah, I know, I’m not 100% certain why they picked me either, but what’s done is done so let’s just roll with it, okay?
You can check out the entire series of interviews at this link; I’ll give the the super-short, edited-down-to-the-bare-bones-Cliff-Notes version of my interview right here:
Wineries are amazing at production innovation; Wineries suck at engagement innovation.
It’s not in bottling lines or fermentation vessels that we need an innovation push in the wine biz; we need innovation in adjusting the attitude that most wine producers have towards consumers. What do I mean by “engagement innovation?” Short answer: using the single most innovative outreach platform ever developed in the history of the human race – the Internet – to directly engage the people who buy their shiz. This may sound like common sense to you, but a lot of the producers I encounter seem to need reminding that those consumers – and not critics – are the ones who matter the most…
Read the rest of this stuff »
