Evolution of a Wine Blogger

Here and now, in my apartment, there are 40 cases of wine samples.  The window is open and the heat is off, all the better to simulate cellar temperatures.  When the sun shines, which it is not, I pull down the shades.  My daily ritual is to select the wines I want my appointments to taste, open the bottles and make sure they're not corked, put caps with pouring spouts in them, set them in a particular order in my Winecruzer, and hit the road -- or the subway, bus and bumpy sidewalks of New York, to be precise.  The routine: retailers, generally in late morning to early afternoon; restaurants and wine bars, late afternoon. 

Given our late start and the season, and given the glum economy, I sometimes feel like a Jehovah's Witness banging on the neighborhood doors at some inopportune hour of Saturday morning.  I once joked about being taken for a JW (in Italy!), but now I feel a tiny bit of compassion for those dogged souls.

All of which alters your estimation of and feelings toward wine blogging.

 

When I started this blog in 2005 there weren't that many wine blogs.  What, 100?  200?  In the entire world?  Now the field is flooded.  They've grown to occupy every ecological niche -- every type of wine, every wine region, every wrinkle of personal obsession.  Many, if not most, are begun by people who were like me three years ago.  Lovers and enthusiasts, people who were thrilled by the prospect of a vast community, theoretically worldwide, of like-minded folk.  They write reviews, they engage in energetic debates, they revel in controversy, in oneupmanship, in ego trips, in genuine curiosity and in a desire for far-flung camaraderie.  Their methods and motivations are many.

Plenty of the bloggers are thrilled just to receive review samples from a distributor or winery.  Free wine!  They feel they've somehow entered into a world of wine relevance or importance.  That may lead to a sort of fatal attraction, with the result that some real amateur wine bloggers, those who are not already in the business, acquire a yen to get into the wine business, for example as a journalist or
"wine writer" (presumably of wine guides or other volumes).  You still encounter bloggers who must fancy themselves the next Robert Parker, right down to the scoring systems and vocabulary of gustatory likenesses.

There are also those slightly mad people whose passion for wine leads them to take extraordinary risks, to stake their lives on wine in more tangible ways.  Like to sell it at retail, or to import it, and go on the road like the apostles in Acts.  It's no exaggeration to say that it takes a considerable leap of faith to go this way.  And it's no lie to say that once you have taken this route, you realize that scores and all the critical machinery around wine are at best a means to your own ends.  What matters more to you at this stage is the back story of the wine, the human factors -- which include both cultural and agricultural factors -- that made the wine what it is.

Of course I'm saying "you" when I mean "me." Where I'm calling from, to use the Raymond Carver title.  Speaking not for you but for me, I have been reflecting how different this blog is from when I started it 37 months ago.  Back then, I wrote lots of reviews -- mostly of the low-medium priced stuff I could afford.  I wrote enthusiastically and in detail about tastings I attended.  I overpraised a lot of very mediocre stuff, and not entirely because I didn't know any better; I was thrilled to have something to write about.

Part of the reason was that I hadn't yet found my editorial focus or my voice as a wine blogger.  That took time and many more experiences, of course.  With knowledge and familiarity came confidence.  The focus shifted to a more personal reportage and analysis, to which extensive travel and a deeper experience of Italy and wine afforded. As a community of commenters appeared, riffing began.  As I went through some jarring changes in my life, the blog changed -- it became a highly colored personal account of my life through the prism of wine.

But more recently another sea change has been occurring.  I'm no longer an amateur (in every sense).  Wine is serious business now.  The stakes are far higher.  The vision is clearer and, necessarily, of a narrower focus.  Now it's necessary to evaluate and regard wine in completely different terms.  Not better or worse terms, but certainly more realistic ones.  In which the tension between esteeming a wine and its commercial appeal is raised to a high level.  In which personal relationships and professional honesty are more tangled and fraught. 

To me all of this is far more interesting and engaging than mewling about oak or malolactic fermentation.  It's infinitely more interesting than reviewing wine in a critical vacuum that's devoid of social interaction or cultural referents.  

As we go on, mondosapore will compete with the company blog (Muddy Boots) for my time and attention.  I can tell you that both blogs will interact with and feed each other.  I can tell you that mondosapore will undergo changes in direction and tone.  What I can't tell you is where or how.

But it's certain that this blog, like so many others, must change to remain relevant to its community. 

 

Comments

[fredric koeppel]

Sir: keeping two blogs going is not easy, or in my case a blog and a website; that's why I ditched KoeppelOnWine.com. Both suffered from lack of attention. when you add to it your now full-time job of selling wine, that's even tougher. i wouldn't be surprised if down the road you deep-sixed mondosapore to concentrate on Muddy Boots.

[Strappo]

You have a good point. I thought of your experience while writing the post.

Still, as Susannah Gold told me the other day, "mondosapore is your brand, and you'd better not abandon it anytime soon." Or words to that effect.

Certainly with the changes in my life and my relationship to wine, this blog will undergo changes yet TBD.

[Jeff]

Nice post, Terry.

Continued good luck on the wine adventure. And, I concur that ditching Mondosapore for the company blog isn't a great strategy.

You are the brand, the personality, the equivalent to Neal Rosenthal, or Kermit Lynch. Therefore, your blog for your business should reflect your brand--regardless of how the actual business mechanics are set-up.

Jeff

[Strappo]

Well, Jeff, if I could really be the equivalent to Neal Rosenthal or Kermit Lynch, I'd be ecstatic.

But yeah, I do have to keep mondosapore and not ditch it for the company blog. It will mean posting less often, though -- I don't think there's any way around that.