Alternative title: “What I Learned (So Far) At the 2010 Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa”

1. Symposium Chairperson and Wines & Vines editor Jim Gordon, may, in fact, be the sweetest and most patient person on the planet (there remains one more day of symposium activities in which to properly test this theory).
2. The amount of downtime built into the entire week of Symposium activities is approximately 47 seconds.
3. The amount of raw talent and brain power among the symposium attendees is staggering, but is immediately doubled in terms of IQ points the moment that AbleGrape.com founder, Yahoo search pioneer, and twitter search guru Doug Cook walks into the room.
4. When you read aloud (over a loudspeaker) a tasting note that you’ve written in which you compare a glass of Syrah to an uncomfortable satin thong, you will piss off famed author, wine educator, and television personality Karen MacNeil [ Editor’s note: this was recently substantiated via personal experience. ]
5. Both Eric Asimov and Steve Heimoff are practical, warm and charming in person (meaning that I have lost at least two bets and the week isn’t even over yet).
6. Harlan wines will be poured judiciously at Symposium after-hours gatherings, but only when I am not available that evening to attend any of them.
7. Journalism jobs, freelance writing gigs, and book deals net you more money than Amazon.com affiliate fees. But not much more.
8. If you take the ethical standards of critical writing / wine review writing, combine them in number, double that number, square the result, and divide by 0.0002, you will arrive at roughly the number of ethical violations that I might have inadvertently committed.  Before lunch. On day one.
9. When Alder Yarrow uses the term “folks at our level” and you realize that he is talking about wine blog writing and is including you, you have to suppress the urge of performing a double-head-fake and then blushing.
10. If you are serious about wine writing, then you should get serious about attending the Symposium in 2011.

Cheers!

I am giving up on what has become a totally fruitless quest ending in a miasma of heartbreak and despair; I hereby renounce my Sisyphusian efforts, and will no longer roll this impossibly heavy boulder of writing wisdom up the mountain of populist adversity, only to have it come heaving down to crush the vulnerable bones of my hopes time and time again.

Not that I feel overly dramatic about it or anything.

What is the heart of this painful linguistic matter?  The brilliant and terrible rays of sunlight on the wax wings of my personal flight of Icarus?

It’s the rampant misuse of the word varietal.

To quote Inigo Montoya, “Joo keep using daht word. I donah tink it means what joo tink it means…”

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Last week, Vino 2010 (self-described as “the biggest Italian wine event ever held outside of Italy”) officially touched down in NYC.

One of the most anticipated discussions of Vino 2010, at least in the eyes of PR, media, and wine writers, was the panel “Blogging on Wine and Social Networking: New Tools in reaching Consumers of Italian Wine” moderated by Anthony Dias Blue.  1WineDude.com readers will already know that I was a bit concerned when I’d heard that Dias Blue would be moderating, as I felt that he was too publicly anti-blogging based on quite negative statements he’d made about wine bloggers last year.

That was before I learned of the panel members, who included some very pro-blogging (and very, very talented) friends of mine (blogger Alder Yarrow, PR wiz Steven Raye, and search guru Duog Cook), and the very public and open way in which the panel would be held.

The panel result is freely viewable on the Vino 2010 website, and has been included below in its entirety.  All 2+ hours of it.  If you care at all about wine PR, wine writing, wine blogging, and how to engage them all in the changing wine marketplace, then Id say all 2 hours are required viewing – and this is coming from a guy who normally cannot watch more than 3 consecutive minutes of video at any one time.

Why?  Because the panel members offer advice on how to engage wine writers in the new decade that is so spot-on it might as well be a blueprint for how it should be done.

Why is that important?  Because wine brands need to get into the engagement game if they have any prayer of truly understanding (and ultimately influencing) the conversations happening about their brands.

And I know of what I (virtually) speak here, because last week I started getting a firsthand lesson in brand-awareness…

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Last week, I found out that I finished in the top ten of PostRank.com’s list of the most engaging wine blogs of 2009.  PostRank’s list is based on algorithms that measure online social network reactions to blog articles.  I think, anyway – it all seems a little complicated and makes me glad that I like writing instead of math.

I’m pleased as spiked sangria punch to be sharing the top 10 list with such talented and esteemed company.

I’m less pleased at how similar we all seem to be.

As you will note from this handy inset graphic, the list is comprised almost entirely of white males (click to embiggen):

To be fair, both Decanter and Lenndevours are blogs with talented staff, not all of whom are white males.  Just the vast majority of whom are white males.

The lack of diversity is kind of odd, and sad.  I wonder if we represent the majority of wine consumers?  I doubt it, considering the studies that point to women being the driving force behind wine consumption (especially in the U.S.).

I’ll stop now as I expect to get flamed for even bringing up the topic (those of you who know me have figured out by now that I can’t help myself) and turn to the somewhat safer discussion of which 2009 1WineDude.com blog posts PostRank measured as being especially engaging.  But I’ll warn you, that this list had me scratching my head just as much as I did over the ‘white guy convention syndrone’ of the top 10 list…

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