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American Wine Blog Award Winners

Wineblogawards I'm very happy to announce the winners of the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards. The winners in the seven categories each had to be nominated first, then be chosen as finalists by a panel of judges, then be judged both by the public as well as by the same set of judges. There was most certainly some vetting going on.

Many of the winners will be familiar because they've all earned good sized audiences. But they will also be recognized by anyone familiar with blogs as those who work very hard to deliver regular and outstanding information to to their readers. The winners work hard at this.



So with that:

Best Wine Writing On a Blog


VINOGRAPHY



Best Graphics or Presentation


THE GOOD GRAPE



Best Single Subject Blog


LENNDEVOURS



Best Business/Industry Blog


THE WINE COLLECTOR



Best Winery Blog

MICHEL-SCHLUMBERGER'S "BENCHLAND BLOG"



Best Wine Reviews


BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD



Best Overall Blog


VINOGRAPHY


The sponsors of the American Wine Blog Awards are
RIEDEL CRYSTAL
MUTINEER MAGAZINE
OPENWINE CONSORTIUM

The winners of the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards will be presented with their Riedel Trophy at a ceremony occurring at the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference.

Voting in Wine Blog Awards Over

The final voting for winners in the American Wine Blog Awards has ended.

The winners will be announced very soon.

I want to thank everyone who nominated blogs, the judges and all those who voted for the finalists.

I also want to thank the sponsors:

RIEDEL CRYSTAL
MUTINEER MAGAZINE
OPENWINE CONSORTIUM

TWO DAYS Remain in Wine Blog Award Voting

AWBA-Logo-2009web

Only two days remain for voting in the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards. The voting will close promptly at 11:59pm on Wednesday, March 4.

All but one category remain very tightly contested.

I URGE you to get your vote in if you have not already and to tell your friends to do the same.

VOTE HERE

The Passing of the American Wine Blog Awards

WineBlogAwardsLogo This is probably as good as time as any to make a little announcement.

This will be the last year I host the American Wine Blog Awards.

Upon their conclusion this year, I will pass ownership on to the OpenWine Consortium, which will both own the rights to them and be responsible for their administration if they choose to continue them.

It's not a matter of the American Wine Blog Awards being too difficult to administer. Nor it is a matter of them taking too much time to administer. It's a matter of my belief that they can be better administered and grow in significance and grow in purpose if they are administered by an organization like OpenWine Consortium.

If I'm correct, and I'm sure I am, then their beginnings here at FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog can be seen as an incubation period; a period when they didn't necessarily grow, but had a chance to find their footing and survive. Outside FERMENTATION, at OpenWine Consortium, my hope is that the Awards will grow, develop and evolve into something more...and different.



2009 American Wine Blog Award Finalists

WineBlogAwardsLogo
I am very pleased to announce the finalists in the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards and that the voting is open.

CLICK HERE TO CAST YOUR VOTE IN SEVEN CATEGORIES.

The Finalists In Each Category Are:

BEST WRITING ON A WINE BLOG
IN VINO VERITAS
THE POUR
DR.VINO
VINOGRAPHY

BEST GRAPHICS & PRESENTATION ON A WINE BLOG
THE GOOD GRAPE
HOSEMASTER OF WINE
CHATEAU PETROGASM
WILMA'S WINE WORLD

BEST SINGLE-SUBJECT WINE BLOG
BESOTTED RAMBLINGS
LENNDEVOURS
GOOD WINE UNDER $20
NAPA VALLEY WINE BLOG

BEST WINERY BLOG
MICHEL-SCHLUMBERGER BENCHLAND BLOG
TABLAS CREEK VINEYARD BLOG
DRY CREEK VINEYARD'S WILMA'S WINE WORLD
BEDROCK WINE CO. BLOG

BEST BUSINESS/INDUSTRY WINE BLOG
WINERY WEBSITE REPORT
WINECAST
THE WINE COLLECTOR
RETHINK WINE BLOG

BEST WINE REVIEWS ON A BLOG
BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD
GOOD WINE UNDER $20
WICKER PARKER
VINOGRAPHY

BEST OVERALL WINE BLOG
VINOGRAPHY
DR. VINO
THE POUR
LENNDEVOURS

These finalists were determined by panel of judges evaluating blogs nominated by the public. The winners are determined by a vote of the public (THAT'S YOU!) for 70% of the weighting and by a vote of the judges for 30% of the weighting.

VOTING ENDS ON MARCH 4TH AT 11:59PM

The American Wine Blog Awards are sponsored by Riedel Crystal, OpenWine Consortium, and Mutineer Magazine. These three sponsors have helped make these awards possible, have been very generous and deserve your attention.

NOW...GO VOTE!!
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46 On the Occasion of my 46th

In honor of the 46th anniversary of my birth, I present 46 things I want:

1. A time machine
2. A full vertical collection of all Stony Hill Chardonnays
3. A wine cellar with a couch in it
4. A doubling in Fermentation's readership
5. A national policy on wine direct shipment laws
6. A fig tree
7. A 1963 Warres port
8. A marching band playing happy birthday using wine glasses and spoons.
9. A new collection of heavy bottomed tumbler glasses
10. One week in Burgundy
11. One week in Mexico
12. Massive coverage of the winners of the American Wine Blog Awards
13. To Try a 100 year old Cognac
14. A seat with my name on it at the Campbell Apartment
15. Bliss
16. To see a regular wine column in the New Yorker
17. 10 acres and a long winding road.
18. A champagne dinner for two, in July, at night, in the middle of a vineyard
19. A new hound puppy.
20. A new hound puppy that can be trained to mix drinks.
21. To host a dinner party with Alice Feiring, Robert Parker, Randall Grahm, Steive Heimoff and Dan Berger
22. Making a living by just blogging (a good living)
23. A two hour televised debate on the utility of the 3-tier system
24. A gift of the URL: fermentation.com
25. The same linens they use at the Waldorf
26. A box of Butera Lonsdales
27. A couple cases of Roederer Estate
28. A huge turnout for the next Wine Bloggers Conference
29. Dinner with Gore Vidal—before it's too late.
30. An office with 4 TV screens built into the wall
31. My own wine brand to market and sell—"Fermentati"
32. The elimination of all ants within 1 mile of my home
33. A meal cooked for me by Michele Anna Jordan, Nancy Oakes and Elizabeth Falkner
34. A small, compact, antique bar that opens to reveal countless bourbons for my home
35. A regular byline in a print publication
36. A way to peruse 200 more blogs than I already do each day, but in the same amount of time
37. X-Ray Vision (to inspect older wines—get your minds out of the gutter‚
38. To attend the Wine Writers Symposium in 2010
39. To find my tickets to the April McCoy Tyner concert.
40. A massage
41. Enough Dry Rose to fill a tub
42. A cocktail named after me
43. Self Distribution in every state in the country
44. To sit in a barber chair and have my face shaved by a pro
45. My own tuxedo (42-short)
46. 46 more years.

Blogging and the Mutiny on $0.04 Per Day

Mut2 Mutineer Magazine, the newish beverage pub that is actually printed on dead trees instead of floating in the ether, is a sponsor of the American Wine Blog Awards. They will as part of our agreement broadcast the news of wine blogging, the Wine Blog Awards, the Finalists and the winners as far as the eye can see—or at least as far as their are eyes to see there magazine.

The very, very good news not just for the American Wine Blog Awards but also for Mutineer MagazineMut1 and for the literate drinker everywhere, is that Mutineer has secured national distribution for its publication. This is pretty important. Outside of raising the money to begin a dead tree literary vehicle, getting that vehicle on the streets where it can be gawked at and actually read and caressed is probably the most difficult thing for a new magazine.

Mut3 As I've said before, I pick up Mutineer and I see a mature, refined, more readable and more useful version on of Wine X, minus the limiting demographic emphasis. Darryl Robert's Wine X Magazine was in fact groundbreaking and influential. And it produced for Roberts a good deal of hate mail from wine traditionalists. I rather doubt that Mutineer Magazine has had to screen its emails for dusty particles the same way Roberts did.

Like Wine X, Mutineer is targeting a younger demographic and doing so with its choice of editorial, it's contemporary design, its less than stodgy tone and with its embrace of the online world. And yet behind Mutineer is Alan Kropf, a man with a resume: Alan studied with both the Court of Master Sommeliers and the Wine and Spirits Education Trust. He was the Sommelier at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Before Mutineeer he wrote for Sante, The Tasting Panel, and SommSelections. He has also spent time working in the wine program at Gordon Ramsay in West Hollywood. And while he edits and publishes Mutineer, he is also writing his first book and is a wine consultant to restaurants and collectors.

All this bringsAWBA-Logo-2009web me back around to the American Wine Blog Awards. Mutineers is the right media sponsor for this third version of the Awards. Like the American Wine Blog Awards and wine blogs in general,  Mutineer Magazine is new, is sprinkling its wisdom across a landscape of recent converts to wine, is seeking to change the perception of what wine writing and what wine reading entails and is beginning to burst out across a larger landscape.

So here is what I NEED every reader of Fermentation to do: SUBSCRIBE TO MUTINEER MAGAZINE. (Yes, keep your subscriptions to the other wine and food pubs you get, too). But Subscribe to Mutineer to thank them for supporting wine blogging in a big way. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to support the evolution of wine writing and reporting. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to show them that Fermentation has at least a little influence. Subscribe to Mutineer Magazine to help make them profitable so we can have good stuff to read on planes, bus trips, and road trips where we are trapped in a car with someone who still isn't over being dumped by Sally Smith in 11th grade.

We are talking $15 a year for 6 issues. That's $2.50 an issue; $1.25 per month. $0.04  per day.


Riedel and the Wine Blog Awards

RiedelA 1416_13small Nearly everyone I know who has taken the Riedel Taste Test remarks that out of the Riedel glasses wine tastes better or it is more expressive or it is more complex than when tasted out of other glasses. It's a remarkable set of statements when you think about. Same wine, different glasses, different taste experience.

Riedel has administered these comparison tastes tests probably 100s of times across the globe for wine professionals, restaurant servers and others. The consistent result has to lead one to conclude that wine tastes better when consumed out of a glass designed for the type of wine being drunk.

And yet the wine is the same, regardless of the glass that is delivering it into your mouth. And it is this fact that leads many people to poo poo the claims made by Riedel that the design of the delivery vehicle for the wine is essential to truly experiencing the wine.

The Riedel folks are very well aware of this disconnect that many people have expressed where their claims are concerned. It is for this reason that they have gone to great pains to explain in detail just exactly what they believe are the reasons for the difference a glass makes.

I encourage you to visit their website and read through their "Information Page" where they go to great lengths to explain themselves. In various "chapters" they discuss:

-How Glass Contents Determine Glass Shape
-The Details of Bouquet
-The Details of Taste
-The Scientific Background of Taste
-Taste/Olfactory Confusion
-The Modalities that Sense Food
-The Anatomy of Taste
-Genetic Variations Surrounding Taste
-"Supertasters"
-"Supertasters" and Alcohol
-The Tongue Map
-Effects of Temperature on Perceived Sweetness of Sucrose

The lengths to which Riedel has gone to explain the impact of proper glassware in fact goes beyond the requirements of marketing and into the realm of education.

Suffice to say, my respect for Riedel has been fairly impressive. But not just for their dedicationWineBlogAwardsLogo to their craft. Riedel has gone out of their way to be sponsors at 1000s of wine events, donating likely millions of glasses over the years to professional and consumer tasting events.

Of course I became even more enamored with Riedel when they agreed to sponsor the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards. The Winner in each of seven categories will received a hand blown Crystal "Saint Emilion" Magnum (Pictured above) Decanter etched with the winner's  Name, Blog name, the name of the award, and the year of the award. It will serve as a beautiful trophy and memory.

Wine Blog Awards Nominations Go To the Judges

AWBA-Logo-2009web The Nominations gathering process in seven categories in the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards closed on February 8. Today, all eligible nominees were delivered to the panel of judges. They will determine who the finalists are in each of the seven categories. The public will then vote for the winner, which will give 70% of the weight for the ultimate winners and the panel of judges will vote for winners in the seven categories, representing 30% of the weight to determine the winners in each category.

The process of wading through all nominees in each category was carried out me. It is a true PROCESS. It means checking to make sure that minimum requirements were met: That they are a blog and that they posted 52 times in the 2008 Calendar year. One good friend suggested I take on an intern in order to do this. He possesses a sage mind. However, Going through these blogs, one by one, is incredibly enlightening for me. So, I do it myself.

My hope is that in about ten days we will announce the finalists in each category. Between now and then I will be introducing you to the sponsors of this Award. They deserve some attention and they deserve some notoriety for their efforts.

Thank you for everyone who participated in the Nomination Process, who nominated bloggers, who helped promote the nominations and those who support this effort to draw attention to the best in wine blogging.

Wine Blog Awards Nominations End in Two Days

WineBlogAwardsLogo
The nomination process of the American Wine Blog Awards ends in 2 days on February 8. If there is still a blog that has not been nominated in one or more of the seven categories that you believe should be, then it's probably a good idea to do that now.

Best Wine Blog Graphics & Presentation
Best Industry/Business Wine Blog
Best Wine Reviews on a Wine Blog
Best Overall Wine Blog
Best Single Subject Wine Blog
Best Winery Blog
Best Writing On a Wine Blog


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