The judges hath spoken, and the list of finalists are IN for the 2011 Wine Blog Awards!

I’ll skip the preamble about the awards and their background, since you can read all about that at the WBA website, and last time I checked all of you could read.  The important thing is that the 2011 WBAs are now in their public voting period (sounds serious, doesn’t it? like the stages of a parasitic infection or something…), which will run through this Monday (June 27), with winners being announced on July 23, 2011 at the North American Wine Bloggers Conference.

Which means that YOU can rawk the vote and help decide who is “WINNING” (wine-ing?) in the blog-o-world! Get yer wine bloggin’ vote on at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CNTK5P8.

1WineDude.com is included this year as a finalist in the Best Overall Wine Blog category.  It happens to be up against some (very) stiff competition, which I suppose is the highest  form of compliment that could be paid to a lil’ ol’ blog like mine: PR maven and wine shipping good-fighter Tom Wark’s Fermentation, my wine blogging consigliere & Forbes.com writer Jeff Lefevere’s Good Grape, CellarTracker.com über-reviewer Richard Jennings’ RJ on Wine, and the personal blog of Wine Enthusiast’s Steve Heimoff.  Great sites all, though the lineup certainly screams “single-contributor white guy club” this year.

Now this is supposed to be the part where I tell you how humbling it is to be named a finalist.  And it is genuinely humbling.  But I’m not gonna tell you that I don’t enjoy winning as much as the next guy/gal/hermaphrodite, because I do, and I have a (playfully) competitive streak, so saying that I wouldn’t be thrilled to win the award again would be disingenuous.  BUT…

As corny as it sounds I am honestly quite jazzed just at being named a finalist, because while I’ve been told by others that the nomination felt like a “given,” I can assure you that there’s been far more change “under the covers” at 1WD than one might guess from a quick naked-eye glance across these virtual pages, and it certainly never felt like a “given” to me…

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Last night I had the pleasure of both drinking some damn good nectar (2004 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance) and doing a Skype video interview with DrinkNectar.com’s Josh Wade.  Josh asked me about the “Advance Wine Blogging” panel at the upcoming 2010 Americas Wine Bloggers Conference.  He also interviews Joe (The Suburban Wino) Herrig about his “Top Gun Wine Blogging” panel at WBC10, which appears on the same post.

As for the wine, I’d link to the mini-review of the Constantia, if it weren’t for twitter going #FAIL Whale on me as I type this.  So, here ‘tis in unimpressive text form:

04 Klein Constantia Vin de Constance (Constantia): S.A.’s legendary Muscat lives up to the legend w/ orange, mango & spices to spare. $50 A-

Anyway, the interview is embedded below but I also recommend heading over to DrinkNectar.com to check out Josh’s posts and videos, if you’re not already a regular reader.

Cheers!

The 2010 Americas Wine Bloggers Conference is nigh upon us (June 25-27 in Walla Walla, WA), and I’m getting excited to attend (despite the major pain in the ass it is going to be for me to even get to Walla Walla from Philly in the first place).

There’s a great deal to be excited about in this case – the sponsors and participating wineries will allow us wine bloggin’ types to get a deeper dive into the WA wine scene; the lovable madness of the live wine blogging “speed tasting” sessions is back (in an expanded format); friend of the Dude and Wine Enthusiast West Coast editor Steve Heimoff will be delivering the keynote; last, but most importantly, there’s the opportunity to meet with friends, old and new.

This year’s conference will be a bit more involved for me than in the past (in other words, I have to be sober on Friday) as I’ve been asked to sit (with Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape and RJ Hilgers of RJ’s Wine Blog) on the “About Wine Blogging” Breakout Session panel, specifically for the “Advanced Bloggers” session.

Which is kind of odd for me, because otherwise that was the session that I’d planned on attending.

I’m totally cool with this – and in fact I’d told the WBC organizers to feel free to consider me to help out or sit in on a panel (though I’d imagined then that it would have been the “Novice Bloggers” track or something similar) because I really wanted to try to give something back to WBC and to other bloggers this year, if I could.

I know that a lot of other wine bloggers read 1WineDude.com, and I’m stoked to go to Walla Walla to meet / catch-up with you, and if there was any chance that I could help make the experience cooler for you (outside of spending my hard-earned cash on you, of course) then I really wanted to be a part of that somehow.  I also had a great time sitting on the Social Media / Monetization panel at the 2010 Professional Wine Writers Symposium, and so I thought I would potentially be bringing some legitimate and useful panel experience to the mix.

But now… the pressure’s on, and I’m hoping that YOU can help ME…

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‘Bits & bobs’ left over from Joe’s coverage of the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference in Sonoma.  You could call these rejects off of the cutting room floor, but we prefer the term “previously unreleased gems.”  Cheers!