Tablas Creek Vineyard Blog

I'd like to thank the Academy...

So, the votes have been tallied, and the Tablas Creek blog has won "Best Winery Blog" at the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards!  Thank you to everyone who voted; the award was 70% determined by votes from the public.  The other 30% was determined by the votes of six expert judges (whose names will be revealed this week).

The world of wine blogs is rich and diverse, and growing all the time.  The fact that some of my favorites didn't make the list of finalists this year (no Dr. Vino? no Wine Anorak?) just indicates how many worthy candidates there are.  I learned a lot reading through the blogs of the other finalists, and came up with a few new favorites of my own (most notably Fredric Koeppel's Bigger Than Your Head, which I'd heard of vaguely before the awards but had never visited).

Finally, a big thank you from the whole wine blogging community should go to Tom Wark, who somehow finds time out of his busy schedule of advocating and consulting to write the blog Fermentation and host, conduct and publicize the American Wine Blog Awards.

I'm a Wine Blog Awards finalist!

I got back from spending most of the last week on the East Coast (working in Virginia, during which I was lucky enough to enjoy a great dinner at Restaurant Eve in Alexandria and host a terrific wine dinner at the Keswick Hall Hotel in Charlottesville) with the happy surprise in my mailbox that I've been nominated as an American Wine Blog Awards finalist in the category of "Best Winery Blog".

This is an enormous honor; there are more and more great wine blogs out there providing very different windows into the world of wine.

While a panel of judges culled all the nominations to determine the finalists, votes from the public determine the ultimate winners of the awards.  If you'd like to vote on the wine blog awards, you can vote here.  If you'd like to see the complete list of finalists (with links to all their blogs) you can read more here.

Blogs that Inspire

In my "lessons learned from two years of blogging" post from the end of last year, I promised that I would write about some of the other blogs that I'd found particularly inspiring.  This has proven a difficult piece to finish, both because I keep finding new blogs that I love and because I'm always worried that I'll hit "post" and then realize I've left out someone crucial.  But, if I'm going to write it, it has to be finalized sometime.

I hope that you find a few new blogs mentioned here, but I feel relatively confident most of you will recognize most of the names.  I've included the author and his or her city, and broken up the blogs into a couple of categories.

The Gold Standard
Vinography (Alder Yarrow; San Francisco): I mentioned a few of Alder's chief recommendations in a recent post announcing that he'd posted a story on Tablas Creek.  These include (but aren't limited to) that he writes one of the most wide-ranging wine blogs, covering topics that include wine events, wine- and vineyard-related art, the intersection of wine and politics, restaurant and wine bar reviews, and (of course) wine reviews.  He's so well connected, and updates Vinography.com so regularly, that he is often the first to break noteworthy stories like the recent private sting operation set up by wine.com.  And, he's amazingly accessible and retains his enthusiasm for wine and wine country.

Dr. Vino (Tyler Coleman; New York): Tyler's interests run a little more to food and wine pairing (including the hilarious ongoing "impossible food-wine pairings" series), but he's equally comfortable exploring wine regions, reviewing books, interviewing wine personalities, or investigating the environmental impacts of winemaking and wine consumption.  This last interest even got him an op-ed piece in the New York Times.  The writing is consistently funny and engaging, and the site updated often multiple times a day.

The Professionals
An Obsession With Food (Derrick Schneider; San Francisco): I love Derrick's work for the care he puts into his writing, as well as for the thoughtfulness and length of his pieces.  It's probably not surprising that he's writing regularly now for The Art of Eating, which is unlike any other food or wine publication that I know.  Pieces, often addressing topics far outside the mainstream, can stretch across dozens of pages, and there appear to be no particular concessions to marketability.  In an interview with the Art of Eating's founder and editor Ed Behr, Salon.com compared it to the New York Review of Books, calling it "sometimes impenetrable, often spellbinding, and never, ever reductive."  Derrick's blog is not updated daily, but when the posts come they are thoroughly thought-out, well edited, and beautifully written.  And, sprinkling his wife Melissa's gorgeous photography across the site also does it no harm.  One of my favorite posts is his advice about writing, which I still refer to occasionally for new ideas.

Wine Anorak (Jamie Goode; London, UK): Jamie is trained as a scientist (his PhD is in plant biology) which allows him to write credibly on some of the scientific topics that the mainstream wine press often glosses over, such as the growing concern over the accumulation of sulfur compounds in screwcap-finished wines).  His talent is in making these technical topics non-threatening to a general audience, and at the same time mixing his more research-driven pieces with cheerful accounts of eating, drinking and living in London.

It's worth also giving a shout out to the no-longer-active blog Amuse Bouche, written by Jon Bonne, who gave up writing the blog when he was hired as Wine Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.  I am thrilled to have Jon in charge at the Chronicle, but miss his informal missives from Seattle and New York on food, restaurants and the world of wine.

The Enthusiast
Good Wine Under $20 (Dr. Debs; Los Angeles): Dr. Debs is a university history professor who started blogging on wine as an experiment for a project.  She focuses on wines that provide value, and despite her blog's name is flexible enough to realize that wines can provide value even if they're over $20 (see her profile of Tablas Creek as an example).  Her blog (just begun in 2006) has become amazingly popular amazingly fast, and I think this is a reflection that her enthusiasm for wine, and her conviction that it's possible for anyone to find good wines they can afford, feels absolutely genuine.  In addition to her regular reviews of high QPR (quality to price ratio) wines, she writes an ongoing "winery watch" series focusing in detail on wineries of interest.

The Advocate
Fermentation (Tom Wark; Sonoma, CA): Tom is a public relations consultant and the head of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association, whose profile has been growing higher and higher as retailers organize to try to protect (or establish, depending on your point of view) their rights to sell wine to consumers around the country.  Tom's investigative pieces reflect a distinctive voice: often outraged and full of righteous indignation, which (given the hypocrisy inherent in most wholesalers' and states' arguments against interstate wine commerce) is most welcome.  He also has taken a lead role in the promotion of wine blogging, hosting and coordinating the annual Wine Blog Awards and writing a series of "bloggerviews", or in-depth interviews with important bloggers across the world of food and wine.

These are just a handful of the wine blogs that are on my daily blog roll; there are new ones appearing all the time.  I highly recommend the Winery Web Site Report both to keep tabs on new developments in the world of online wine and as a clearinghouse for ideas about the values and challenges of wine blogging.

Finally, I maintain a "Wine Blogs" tag for posts on the Tablas Creek blog that include recommendations into the wide and growing world of wine blogs.

Any other recommendations as to great wine blogs?  Please share!

Tablas Creek on "Vinography: A Wine Blog"

In my recent post on lessons from two years of blogging I promised that I'd write about some of the blogs that I have found compelling, for various reasons.  I'm still working on this post, but when I do, one that will certainly be on it is Vinography: A Wine Blog.  Blogger Alder Yarrow, based in San Francisco, writes one of the most wide-ranging wine blogs, covering topics that include wine events, wine- and vineyard-related art, restaurant and wine bar reviews, and (of course) wine reviews.  And Alder is so well connected, and Vinography so regularly updated, that he has the opportunity to break stories before the mainstream wine press.  His January 4th expose of the wine.com sting on other retailers' interstate shipping gathered 96 comments so far and scooped articles in the Wine Spectator and Decanter. 

Occasionally, he'll do an in-depth profile of a particular producer, and we were fortunate enough to be the subject of a feature article yesterday.

Alder asked if I would send examples of some of the more obscure bottlings we make to supplement the Tablas Creek wines he has tasted at past tastings including the Rhone Rangers, Family Winemakers and Hospice du Rhone.  These wines (often made in quantities under 250 cases) are rarely reviewed, so it's a great chance to get an outside viewpoint.  I thought his introductory comments were typically (and particularly) thoughtful.  You can read the whole post.

Tablas Creek and Beaucastel Dinner in New York

It's a good week for Tablas Creek accounts in the blogosphere!  On Tuesday, January 8th Brad Coelho, author of the wine blog unidentifiedappellation.blogspot.com, organized and hosted a Tablas Creek and Beaucastel dinner at Zoe Townhouse in Uptown Manhattan. 

The question to be addressed, in Brad's words, was:

"I didn’t know whether I’d witness a brother-sister relationship in the wines or something more akin to that of distant cousins. Nevertheless, I figured that juxtaposing wines from different areas that came from the same clones, same producer and same ideology would be an intriguing match-up. The tasting did not disappoint."

Brad has a great account of the dinner, along with full tasting notes of current and library wines from both Tablas Creek and Beaucastel, on his blog.

Tablas Creek wine dinner at Simon Pearce recapped on oenoLogic

One advantage for Tablas Creek is that my parents still spend part of the year in Vermont.  This means that, unlike a lot of California wineries, we get a chance to have a home base outside California in which to build good supporters through regular patronage.

Vermont (at least Southern Vermont, where I grew up and where my parents still spend 5 months a year) is not densely set with culinary gems.  We routinely had to drive 45 minutes to get terrific restaurant meals (which, I guess, puts us in with most of the residents of Los Angeles.  The difference: we were going 45 miles).  One of these great restaurants is Simon Pearce, in Quechee, VT.  They have an unusual combination of factory outlet store (their specialty is high-end rustic blown glass) and top restaurant.  My dad has set up dinners there each of the past three years.  This year's dinner was yesterday.

There is a great account of the dinner, with comments on the wines, by Thor Iverson on his blog oenoLogic.  Thor is a Boston-based wine writer and educator, and has a longer track record with Tablas Creek than most writers.  You can still find online an old column of his in the Boston Phoenix from the late 1990s where he discusses one of our our first efforts, as well several notes on the old wineloverspage.com bulletin boards.  Plus, he's been tasting and commenting on various Tablas Creek wines on oenoLogic for a while now.

I was particularly interested in the description of the 2000 Clos Blanc, which is a wine that has gone through many phases in its seven years of life.  I recently took the Tablas Creek tasting room staff through a vertical tasting of our wines back to 1996, and it was our impression that it's now going through it's awkward Roussanne middle age, although it's still an impressively rich wine.

In any case, if you missed Thor's great (and speedy) recap, check it out.

Learning how to Blog: a few year-end reflections on two years of blogging

Although I started this blog about two years ago, it's really only in the past year that I've felt I've found my voice.  The major benefit of blogging, for me, is that I get a chance to clarify my own thoughts on issues I'm mulling over, and hear from other people interested enough (and generous enough with their time) to comment.  I come away from my first two years of experience profoundly grateful that so many people I respect have taken the time to read my thoughts.

I'm sure that blogging came more naturally to some other people than it did to me.  I'm not a writer by trade, so I'm learning as I go along.  I don't spend as much time writing as I'd like, given my responsibilities managing Tablas Creek, not to mention juggling a four-month-old and a toddler.  But, the largest hurdle has been that writing for a blog is not like writing copy for a Web site, and not like writing for a brochure or a newsletter.  I've had to learn how to write again.

Now that the Tablas Creek blog is two years old, I find myself starting to get asked, more and more, how to do it.  There isn't any one answer.  But, it occurs to me that it might be helpful for others considering a similar undertaking to put down some of my conclusions about what makes a blog work.

1. Have a voice.  This seems obvious, but it's actually been the most difficult thing for me.  I'm accustomed, in my experience as a business and technical writer, to writing impersonally: the information is the key, and the person writing the information is supposed to be invisible.  In a blog environment, you connect to the person writing the articles, and if you're not making it clear who you are in what you write, you're likely to miss engaging with your audience.
2. Write in first person.  See the above point.  If you're writing in passive voice, or in abstract terms, you're not going to be able to inject your personality into the writing.
3. Write about what you're worried about.  In a blog environment, the core of writing something interesting is picking a topic that can arouse emotions.  In general, the pieces that I've found most fulfilling to write (and which have received the most comments, a sure sign that they've engaged their readers) are the things that are keeping me up at night, like my frustrations over organic labeling requirements or my reaction to a writer calling all Tablas Creek's wines "conspicuously expensive".
4. Answer the questions you get asked all the time.  I see lots of people, in the trade and outside it, at the winery and at events we do around the country.  There are questions that I hear again and again, and these indicate either that some larger debate is going on (and so people are hearing conflicting answers) or that an issue is so inherently confusing that it's hard for people to know what to think.  I tend to have opinions on controversial topics, so debates like these have been the genesis of some of my better pieces.  A couple of examples would be the debate between cork and screwcap, or the question of the future of AVAs under the TTB's proposed new rules.
5. Write for other writers.  Many observers on the world of wine have been surprised that blogs, for all their proliferation, still haven't touched that many consumers directly.  Sure, I know that we have consumers following the Tablas blog (thank you!) but the more significant audience has been other writers.  Writers, whether other bloggers or more traditional writers with columns in magazines or newspapers, are the audience most likely to care that you're formulating coherent thoughts on controversial subjects.  The ability to build credibility with other writers (and develop an ongoing relationship with them) has been a wonderful and unexpected benefit of blogging.
6. Read and comment on other wine blogs.  There are lots of reasons to get involved in the wine blogging community.  First, there's lots of great information and even more interesting ideas out there.  Second, being committed enough to follow what other writers are writing gives them incentive to do the same with you.  And finally, each time you comment, a blog links back to your own blog, which helps you enormously in establishing your own search engine rankings.
7. Lead with a hook.  I remember a political science class in college where we were asked to write, rather than a standard research essay, a newspaper editorial.  You think differently when you're writing editorial copy.  You're more concise.  You take a position.  And you begin with your strongest, most thought-provoking conclusion (rather than burying it at the end after you've presented lots of supporting evidence).  Blogging, with its first-person perspective, its assumption of a mobile readership, and its title- and summary-driven aggregators, has a lot in common with editorial writing.

So, thank you to all the bloggers out there who've helped light the way.  I'll be mentioning some of the blogs that I have found the most inspiring (for various reasons) in a piece early in 2008 [Ed note 3/9/08: This post is now live; click here].  And most of all, thank you to all the readers who've stuck with me through these first two years.

Tablas Creek on Ted Allen's List of Favorite California Wineries

The world of blogs is amazing. I have a Google alert set up to let me know when a blog entry about Tablas Creek is posted (if you haven't checked out this service, it's well worth doing; click the link above).  I got an alert yesterday that a blog aggregator (a sort of robot blog that searches for content on other Web sites and blogs on a particular topic and posts it automatically) had included a mention of Tablas Creek in a story about Ted Allen's favorite California wineries.  I tracked it back (through another aggregator) to the original story in Out Traveler magazine (also pictured to the right). 

There are real ethical issues with blog aggregators (which often slurp content and republish it with limited or no attribution) but that's a story for another time.  In this case, I was just happy that it gave me a chance to be alerted to a story that I hadn't heard about.

For those of you who don't know Ted Allen, he's the food and wine expert best known from Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy series, and he's also the host of the PBS wine education series Uncorked (which featured Tablas Creek last year).  To be picked as one of his five top California wineries is a pretty nice bit of recognition.

Recommended Wine Blog: The Best of Wines

I recently got a note from one of our wine club members, Steve Stumpf, about a wine blog he'd started recently.  I visited the site, not expecting too much, and loved it.  The writing is funny and irreverant, the topics mercurial and interesting, and the presentation full of cultural references and clever, appropriate images.  I recommend it highly: http://www.thebestofwines.com.

Tablas Creek on "Good Wine Under $20"

Anyone interested should take a look at the beautiful writeup on Tablas Creek on the blog Good Wine Under $20.  The blog focuses on wines (mostly) under $20, but is flexible enough to address any wine that offers quality for its price. 

Dr. Debs (who writes the blog) considers even our most expensive wines (our Esprit de Beaucastel and Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc) "Excellent QPR" (quality to price ration) and calls Tablas Creek a "very special--even magical--vineyard". [...read more]