1WineDude.com friend, fellow blogger, and wine media maven Mike Wangbickler (a.k.a. Caveman Wines) recently gave a presentation on the topic of social media marketing at Napa Valley College.  It’s a fantastic primer for folks in the wine biz who need an introduction into the concepts and approaches behind engaging wine consumers on-line, so I’m sharing it below.

Even if you’re not in the wine biz, it’s a good and quick read (and contains some startling numbers on the growing influence of peer networking when it comes to consumer purchases).

Great work, Mike!

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Cheers!

Well… duh, right?

Anyone that has spent more than a cursory glance through the (virtual) pages of 1WineDude (or has had the unfortunate experience of sharing a long car ride with me when I’m driving, which of course entitles me to choose the music played on the car stereo) is familiar with my affinity for Canadian power rock trio Rush – or as I like to refer to them, The Greatest Band in the History of All Mankind.

Most music fans are familiar with Rush’s complex (and lengthy) musical endeavors, as well as the high-pitched vocals of front-man Geddy Lee.  What many people don’t know is that the band are big-time wine geeks, especially Geddy who owns a cellar in excess of 5,000 bottles in his Toronto-area home (apparently its bottle capacity has been expanded - twice).

Which, in my mind, is simply even more reason to be a total fan-boy for that band.

Anyway, Rush is (improbably) riding a high of popularity now that they are well into their third decade as a touring and recording rock band, their pop-culture coolness hitting a zenith with a recent appearance on The Colbert Report (excerpt below).  Geddy Lee was recently featured in Entertainment Weekly’s “Three Rounds With…” feature, talking about… wine (and recent album releases and the band’s cameo in the new film I Love You, Man).

This got me wondering… can wine appreciation be considered cool? I mean, I love Rush, but for a long, long time, it was definitely not cool to love Rush.  Now, they’re getting mentioned on TV and mainstream magazines as if they’re Coldplay.  Same with Lord of the Rings – when I was a kid, it was not cool to love those books.  Now, the movie adaptations are winning Oscars and kids play with LotR action figures.  I’d have gotten my ass kicked for playing with LotR action figures…

I do believe that wine may be hitting a similar point in the ‘coolness trajectory’ now.

Instead of it wine appreciation viewed as the ultimate hoity-toity, snobbish enterprise (anyone remember The Onion’s coverage of Pompous A__hole Magazine?), it’s almost starting to achieve a mild pop-icon status, especially with the advent of magazines like Mutineer, events such as Wine 2.0 and Wine Riot!, the Twitter Taste Live phenomenon,  and an explosion in the number of wine blogs and consumer involvement in on-line wine social networks (e.g., the Open Wine Consortium)in the last 2-3 years.

What do YOU think?  Is Wine appreciation is becoming cool?

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Cheers!
(images: Entertainment Weekly)

Those (recently hungover) of you who took part in the 10th Annual Open That Bottle Night may still be wallowing in the glorious, albeit headache-riddled post-celebratory vibe of having enjoyed a special bottle of wine for no particular reason at all.

That’s right, baby – we opened it up, and drank it all… just because it was there!

Those of you who joined me and the dozens of others in the interactive, on-line tasting for OTBN at Twitter Taste Live might also have come away with a few other realizations about wine in the world of high-tech.

I certainly did. And I’m not talking about the fact that Craig and the Bin Ends Wine staff did such an excellent job rounding up great wines from the Wilson Daniels portfolio, as well as hosting the event (though those things are certainly true).

No, I’m talking about some truths that run deep into the world where fine wine and technology intersect – and they are truths that anyone involved in selling wine in this highly interconnected world had better sit up and notice, stat.

And here they are…

3 Truths Revealed from the 10th Annual Open That Bottle Night

1. Wine is more social now than ever.
   It probably seems silly to point out that wine is a social beverage, since as a collective populace we’ve known that for a few thousand years.  But it is worth pointing out that the Internet is highlighting wine’s social gadfly status and taking it to new and ever-more-interesting heights.Open That Bottle Night probably saw its largest participation ever this past weekend, thanks to the advent of social network.  On-line social networks (including Twitter Taste Live and the Open Wine Consortium) were all over OTBN this year.  Let’s look at the twitter event – thousands of new twitter accounts are created every day, and the network handles millions of messages on a daily basis.  The OTBN Twitter Taste Live event trended to the #2 topic during it’s run this past weekend – which means that potentially millions of on-line eyeballs were watching a several dozen wine lovers chatted to each other in real-time about what they thought of the Wilson Daniel wine selections.  Which leads me to truth #2…
2. The Internet itself IS social networking.
   Millions of people may have been watching the OTBN TTL event, if even for only a few minutes.  That is a golden marketing opportunity in terms of exposure for Bin Ends Wine and Wilson Daniels.  While it’s still a bit small-time in comparison to television ad exposure, it’s far cheaper and far more effective, because a) more and more people are turning to alternative means (like the Internet) for product recommendations and b) those same people are more willing to trust a friendly recommendation than one given to them in a one-way message from traditional advertising.The days of one-way, traditional media advertising – including advertising for wine – is going the way of the dinosaur and Wayne Newton’s career. Leading us to truth #3…
3. You don’t need a master plan to get started in getting social, but you’d better get social now.
   Twitter.com doesn’t really have a master plan for utilizing the Internet and on-line social network to make money.  Bin Ends Wine and Twitter Taste Live probably don’t have one, either.  But it doesn’t matter right now – they’re in the game, pushing the envelope to see what will and won’t work in the space.  Bottom line is that whoever is involved in making wine social on-line right now is going to reap the benefits, even if they’re not sure what those benefits are yet, and it doesn’t cost them much in terms investment (or overall risk) to do it.If you’re in the wine business and you’re not part of this trend, you need to get involved, and you need to do it NOW, even if you don’t quite “get it” – it will come to you eventually, so not understanding the clear benefits of using social networking needs to be the last thing you’re worrying about.

As for the wines we tasted for OTBN, here are my mini-review takes:

05 Marc Kreydenweiss Kritt Pinot Blanc “Les Charmes” (Alsace): Citrus & pear, w/ a honeyed finish that seems to last for an hour. Great buy.

06 Domaine Pierre Morey Aligoté (Burgundy): Someone just shot an acid laser into my mouth! Needs seafood cerviche (the rawer the better).

05 Domaine Marc Kreydenweiss Perrières (Costières de Nîmes): Brings the barnyard funk, in a good way, w/ dark cherry, leather, & bacon. Yum.

06 Tenuta di Biserno Insolgio del Cinghiale (Tuscany): Kickin’ blend with tobacco leaf, smoke, & dark jammy fruit. Prepare ye some Bison!

Hey, look at that, there’s an example of how this social on-line stuff spirals outward in ways that you don’t think about right away – those mini-reviews are even more exposure for the Wilson Daniels wines, at almost no cost to them… so those 900+ of my twitter followers who didn’t see the wine reviews this weekend in real time might catch them if they’re among the few hundred following my wine mini reviews, or they could be among those visiting the blog daily, or they’ll see them if they are part of the few hundred that subscribe to my blog via email…

I think (I hope) that you get the point – start getting involved!

Cheers!

(images: twittertastelive.com, 1winedude.con, twitter.com)

For a while now (not sure how long exactly… after a certain amount of wine those sort of details get fuzzy…), I’ve been part of an on-line community called Foodbuzz.

I’m what they call a featured publisher, and to be honest I’m not sure exactly what that means, except that I was kindly invited into the community at the ground level to help them seed the wine-related side of their foodie content (as well as Philly-area food content) in preparation for their official launch.

Full disclosure: I’m also an affiliate with Foodbuzz, which means that once every blue moon I get a $4 PayPal payment from clickthrus, but I hope you will believe me when I say that this isn’t exactly buying them coverage with this post – I just wanted to mention them because their site looks like a very cool spot for foodies to hang out and connect. At times I’ve found the website a bit sluggish, and the tabs and menus can be difficult to navigate (for me, anyway), but otherwise it’s top-notch.

Foodbuzz has been on my ever-growing list of social networking sites that I need to spend more time on, sadly a list that has been expanding exponentially since the birth of my baby daughter.

But… if I was going to jump into a foodie network ASAP, then Foodbuzz would be the place.

Not only do they now have 1000+ bloggers from nearly 50 countries providing interesting (not to mention mouthwatering) foodie content, they are also one of the nicest group of affiliates that I’ve ever been involved with, on-line or off.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that Foodbuzz has officially launched its online publisher community - you can check out the details here – which means that you can join up.

I’ve just this week finally met up with the local Foodbuzz featured publisher crew for dinner and drinks – always a tasty proposition in the Philly corner of the world – at Fork in Old City Philadelphia, which has a very interesting wine list, by the way, and great eats. Following is a list of the other Philly-area Foodbuzz Featured Publishers that attended – click away and check out their way cool foodie blogs:

These are all talented writers and passionate foodie peeps – so go check them and Foodbuzz out (and pay Foodbuzz more attention than I have lately!). If you join up at Foodbuzz, feel free to friend me up while you’re there.

Cheers!
(image: flickr.com – snddsn)