By all accounts of the participants I've talked to or read, Antonia Allegra's "Symposium for Professional Wine Writers" is a great success.
The 3rd Annual SPWW happens February 20-23, 2007 again at Meadowood in Napa Valley. And for those of you who writer or read wine blogs, something very cool has occurred: Alder Yarrow of Vinography.com is one of the featured speakers.
Let me put this in context for you. Alder will appear as a featured speaker alongside the likes of Eric
Asimov (wine writer for the New York Times), Michael Bauer (Food Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle), Dan Berger (Editor at Large of Appellation America and one of America's most important
wine writers), Anthony Dias Blue (One of the most prolific wine writers in America in the past 20 years), Elin McCoy (Longtime wine writer and the unofficial biographer of Robert Parker), Karen MacNeil (A great writer and one of the foremost wine educators in America), and Jerry Shriver (Wine writer for USA Today, America's largest circulation daily newspaper).
I guess what I'm getting at is that the pre-eminent wine blogger has been elevated to a position alongside some of America's pre-eminent wine writers. I like the implications!
For two or three years there has been a feeling of "novelty" surrounding wine bloggers. Clearly the newness of the medium and the largely unknown quantity of the bloggers themselves has led to this view of the genre. Add to that the hype that has surrounded blogging in general during this period and the novel character of wine blogging makes sense.
But I think we are moving out of the Novelty Stage and Adler's inclusion as a speaker at the PWWS is one very good indication. But there's more too. The medium itself has been embraced by a number of print journalists whose beat is wine (Asimov, Boone of the Press Democrat, Bonne of MSNBC, Fisher of Dayton Daily News, Feiring of Time). Also, we see wineries beginning to reach out to wine bloggers with samples, invitations to events and simply adding them to the media lists that are use by a number of folks to distribute press releases.
How wine blogging has emerged to this point is undoubtedly a result of the readers of blogs. You guys tend to spread the word of something good, something found, or something new in a way decidedly more evangelistically than the typical consumer of wine writing. Wine bloggers too are an amazingly congenial bunch that have gone out of their way to promote their peers and helped raise one another's profile.
What's left to do? We need a breakout wine blog. A "must read" not merely for those who readily look to the Internet for insight, but also for those who consume wine reviews on a regular basis including retailers, restaurateurs and wineries. When this blog emerges, it will left others around it. But that's for the future.
For now, readers of Vinography and other wine bloggers can take certain amount of pride in seeing Alder featured at the SPWW. He is the right person for job. The added benefit, from the perspective of the world of wine bloggers, is that hes co-speakers and all those other writers at the Symposium will take note of the level to which wine bloggers can rise.
