WineZag was conceived three years ago this week. Happy Birthday to it! In a related side fact, my two amazing sons are now 21 and 18 years respectively.  With identical veracity, I anticipate the blog’s birthdays as keenly as the boys’ red letter days. Plowing into WineZag’s fourth year of wine content creation, the connections between parenting and wine blogging unfurled themselves in an endless stream of affinities.

How can something as virtual as a blog offer any similarities to the iron clad parent/child relationship?  If you consider 76 million Tamagotchis (that three buttoned, key-chained, screen of a virtual pet that took Japan by storm in 1996) were sold in less than four years, then dancing between virtual and real worlds is anything but unprecedented. Still, it took three years to make this uncanny connection between parenting and blogging.

There are definitely a few important differences between raising children and authoring WineZag.  For one, the blog doesn’t require $500K in college tuitions.  Blogs don’t graduate from diapers to cars either. Also, no health insurance…just the occasional back-up. Finally, at some point in their teens or early twenties, children move on to take care of their own needs independently.  The distinctions between parenting and blogging end here though, replaced by the unavoidable and requisite devotion required to do either one well.

25 Points of Comparability in Wine Blogging and Parenting

• You think and worry about them every day, multiple times
• Progress is keenly monitored for each.  Web analytics, height, weight, report cards, peer group influence, etc.
• You care about who they associate with- links, follows, friends
• Each is injected with your values and vision as they develop their own personalities; they become a vivid reflection of you
• Both require your feeding; words, wisdom, or food.
• You translate your personal learning and experiences for both
• You share travel with them, always taking them with you and seeing things anew through their eyes
• Their schedules, no matter how much they conflict with your own, take precedence
• No matter how tired you are, there is a reserve of energy and focus you can draw on at any time for either
• You make mistakes with both that you don’t realize until later in life.  I wish I could be the perfect parent or blogger, but I am not.
• They talk back to you and you might not like hearing what they have to say; blogs through comments and children, well, they just speak their minds.
• Both provide intense pleasure and are sources of personal accomplishment
• They will or won’t develop authority over time based on how well you did your job
• Both will eventually have Facebook and Twitter identities; another level of worry about who they hang out with
• They require curfews-if you are staying up too late at night with either of them, it will eventually get in the way of your day job
• You are embarrassingly proud of any recognition or awards given by peers or authoritative bodies in their worlds
• Just when you think you’ve got them on the right track, new challenges and hurdles arise
• Both are marathons, not sprints
• Eventually you realize both are thankless jobs, yet you never question either
• It takes a good nine months from the time you start thinking and planning the process until they are live and require your care
• Once you take the plunge, there is no turning back
• The bond that connects you with each is unexplainable to anyone that has not experienced it for themselves
• You can dress them up to look handsome and presentable, but unless they are educated and rich in personal values they won’t get very far in life
• You feel intense guilt and failure when you ignore them for unnatural periods of time
• Eventually you reach the point where you could not imagine life without them

Thanks for everything WineZag, Alex, and Matt.  You have given back so much.  Love you all!

Are wine bloggers and their traditional media counterparts held to a double standard on sample disclosures?  While it’s old news now, if you ask the FTC, then the answer is yes.  A recent article published by the Boston Globe and then an inquiry on common practice from an academic friend who is moving into a new vs. traditional media test environment for a high profile manufacturer put the issue back on the front burner.  I also discovered this 2010 warning to wineries regarding wine blogger sampling as developing legal issue advice from the law firm of Dickenson, Peatman, & Fogarty:

“When a blogger reviews a product, he or she must conspicuously disclose whether the company provided that product for free or otherwise compensated the blogger. If the blogger fails to make the required disclosure, the FTC could penalize both the blogger and the winery with fines of up to $16,000. Interestingly, the FTC explicitly states in the Guides that the disclosure requirements do not apply to reviewers in traditional media.”

WineZag gets free samples from wineries and PR companies.  Mostly, they are not worth reviewing and are average wines at best.  But, some merit reviews and it is always clearly indicated here if they were supplied free by the winery.  I don’t disagree with the the purity of transparency and benefit of disclosure.  It’s the double standard that makes little sense.

Recently, Boston Globe correspondent Kathleen Pierce wrote about the Boston Brunchers, an ad hoc group of social media oriented food writers.  All members are actively creating content on the usual social media platforms. Pierce calls into question the practice of free meals in exchange for reviews and attempts to create a distinction for traditional media reviewers by referring to them as the “bona fide” analog to bloggers:

“Although arrangements vary from business to business, Boston Brunchers do not pay for their meals, but they do leave gratuities and that second Bloody Mary is not on the house. They blog for their supper and tweet for their sweets. While bona fide reviewers, who taste anonymously and pay for everything, see this as a conflict of interest (what bad things are you likely to say when the meal is free?)…”

While it is only my opinion, there is a handful of serious food and wine blogs offering more insight and knowledge than a significant portion of traditional media reviewers. I prefer, trust, and rely on their content more than most traditional journalists.  Calling traditional media hands “bona fide” in comparison is a reflection of the small mindedness of Ms. Pierce and an embarrassment to the Boston Globe.

How many traditional media food and wine writers are invited on press trips with the hope of influencing them? How many PR companies entertain traditional journalists?  How many wine critics are provided free samples? The answer to all is lots. The real issue should center around ethics and transparency, not media channel distinction. Writers are human beings no matter where they publish. Their susceptibility to perquisite bias is equal in all cases. The seriousness in which writers approach the protection of their professional reputations (unwavering lack of distinction and truth in reviews for both gifted and purchased wine and food) is the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not “bona fide” content; not media channel.  Audience and influence builds around authentically honest and expert content and the writers that fail to abide by that through ethical wavering will be weeded out.

Both the FTC and the Boston Globe should reexamine their positions.

Note: Shortly after this post was published, my friend Rich at The Passionate Foodie, a top Boston Food Blog. shared his thoughts on the Boston Globe piece and his personal experiences with Ms.Pierce.  It’s worth checking out.

It is hard disputing the “wine blog burnout” that Tom Wark pointed to last month when he wrote “the movement to use the blog publishing format by wine lovers [is] waning. I see fewer new wine blogs launched. The retreat will be slow, but the retreat will be with us.”  Why are wine bloggers losing interest, why aren’t there more entries, and how does this trend compare to other vertical blogospheres?

Photo by Hardy Wallace

Following three days in Los Angeles organizing and hosting the sold out Design Bloggers Conference, I have a little more perspective on all of this.  You read that right; not the Wine Bloggers Conference, but rather an event attracting one very good looking crowd of 350 savvy interior design bloggers.  Since it’s my conference, and just because I can and want to, I take the liberty of integrating as much wine content as possible.  Wine and design are like fitting puzzle pieces; both about good living and taste. We poured 350 glasses of Gimonnet and Geoffroy Champagne at 10am each morning. Celebrated wine blogger Hardy Wallace was along to give a talk on how he used video and blogging to change the course of his life.  And, a cool group of sharp design and wine peeps joined me for dinner replete with the orange juices of Radikon Jako and Gravner Anfora, white acid from Donkey & Goat Untended chardonnay, and the funky old world nuances of Clos Rougeard. They were a glorious few days.

Unlike wine blogging, design blogging is on the rise.  It’s a curious fact.  More than 40% of our conference attendees have been blogging for one year or less and 2/3rds for less than two years.  The design blogosphere is intensifying.

Design blogging is not any newer than wine blogging. But, there are emblematic differences between the two.  To name one, when a blogger shares a wine image readers can not access nor appreciate the wine in the same way the author did tasting it. The same dynamic applies to shared text about a wine’s characteristics. Design bloggers share photography and imagery every day, often more than words, passing experiences and sensory touch-points around the web in photographic form. The photos are connection points, eliciting sensory reaction similar to the author’s.  You can download colors and textures that turn you on, but it’s impossible to live-stream the aromatics of Clos Rougeard, Gimonnet, or Donkey & Goat.  Here is an image including both wine and design to demonstrate the sensory and emotional joy you can have with design while pictures of the wine remain a distant and inaccessible mystery.

While chroniclers of the wine blogger retreat blame traffic traction problems, the audience picture reported by design bloggers attending the Design Bloggers Conference suggests very similar traffic levels to wine bloggers. So why are wine bloggers waning while design bloggers multiply?  Maybe it’s something other than weak traffic after all.

Wine bloggers are hanging it up because they fail to connect with their audience.  They overlook and underestimate authentic and humanistic ways to express visceral joy.  It’s a two way street; bloggers create the right content and the community gives back through engagement. So many wine bloggers fail to give themselves up to their audience.  They review wines with words, report on regional statistics, imply numerical scores, and summarize forays into wine country.  I hate that my own content leans that way sometimes.  The failure to connect the human element and wine experience is leaving a gaping hole in a large part of the blogosphere, draining engagement from the already dry tanks of retreating bloggers.

I knew this to be true when I spent time a few weeks ago with Steve Heimoff and learned that it was all about the human feedback and engagement that kept him focused and creating content every day for four years, only missing three days of posting.  I cemented the conclusion while I listened to Hardy Wallace share his DirtySouthWine story with the design bloggers in Los Angeles; from laid off-tech executive to Murphy Goode contest winner to living the dream, now working for Cathy Corison, making wine in California.  He talked about how he went beyond the wine and focused on the humanity attached to the wine experience.  He stayed authentic all the way through, making fun of himself and anything else that made wine feel affected or too serious.  For all that, Hardy was rewarded with an intense level of engagement that propelled him to create the video and textual content that helped him persevere through a risky time in his life.

It is never about the numbers nor audience size for the best of the web 2.0 wine writers.  It’s about engagement, authenticity, humility, and the humanization of wine.  Design Bloggers might have an advantage through imagery, but wine bloggers ought to take note and figure out their own individual paths to connection by humanizing themselves and wine.

Recommendation: For all you winos, here is a look at my favorite design blog called Quintessence, Living Well With Style and Substance.  The author is an impeccable writer with outstanding graphic design talent. Best yet, she wrote about wine just about every Wednesday last year.  Her treatment of wine is refreshing while being a valuable and good read.  Check her out.

A guy from Brooklyn meets a guy from the Bronx inside an Oakland Whole Foods to talk about wine blogging and journalism.  This is not a set up line to a cheap joke.  It’s a real vignette that was the basis of yesterday’s post about the real Steve Heimoff.  We did gab about the New York Yankees, since I’m a fan and Steve grew up across the street from the old Yankee stadium.  But the South Bronx and Brooklyn reminiscence was nothing more than an ice breaker to a sincere exchange about the convergence of new wine media and traditional journalism.  Mostly, it illuminated how Steve Heimoff managed through a career in both without compromising his own set of well defined values.  I didn’t record the conversation, but serious note taking produced this recap with just a modicum of paraphrasing:

WZ: How many years were you writing for a living before you launched your blog?

SH: I started at the Wine Spectator in 1989.  Jim Gordon hired me.  I was set on writing about wine so I followed up with  Jim every day.  I told him he would either have to hire me or kill me if he wanted me to leave him alone.

WZ: Why did you leave the Wine Spectator?

SH: Jim Gordon was a great guy.  But he not only hired me, he also fired me.  I wanted to write for other publications at the same time on a freelance basis, but Marvin Shanken wouldn’t allow it.  Yet, there was a travel editor on staff that was freelancing.  Marvin insisted she had been writing before joining the Spectator, and her reputation had been established before he hired her.  I wasn’t going to stand for that, nobody was going to own me. Not ever. Eventually it got to the point that Jim became the messenger of my termination.

WZ: What did you do before the Wine Spectator?

SH: I worked at a career center for a local college.  I remember a Gallup poll that suggested 70% of Americans disliked their job.  I always told the students that it was not all about the money and to find work at something you love to do.  Stay focused on job satisfaction, not only money.

WZ: Did you practice journalism anywhere before you joined the Wine Spectator?

SH: Yes.  I first got my stuff published in the East Bay Express.  I took those clips down to the Oakland Tribune and landed a job there as a stringer.  I would excitedly show up at 8:30 each morning to meet my editor, Pat, and pick through the possible stories for the one I would write that day.  Everything from local murders to women wrestlers to reunited families.  It was old time journalism with daily deadlines…sometimes I would phone in the story, you know, stop the presses…here’s the story.  It was all very exciting and I was really loving life.

WZ: Do you write anywhere else now besides Wine Enthusiast or SteveHeimoff.com?

SH: No, isn’t that enough?

WZ: Why do you write?

SH: I love to write.  Writing is like sex. I remember being 4 years old and picking up a pen to make circles on paper like cursive letters.  Writing is never a burden.  Deadlines are deadlines, but it’s never ever a burden.

WZ: Do you plan an editorial calendar for your blog or keep a notebook of ideas

SH: No, and it creates beautiful stress (smiling).  Often I sit down at the keyboard not knowing what to write about.  I have a bunch of links and alerts so I just hit the internet.

WZ: Is there a more organized editorial plan at the Wine Enthusiast that allows you to operate more loosely with your blog?

SH: Yes.  One gets good at managing resources.  Over the years the magazine has gotten more proactive about planning stories.  It used to be where we would just say, ‘let’s do 2500 words on Napa Cab this month.’ It wasn’t very efficient, and sometimes you would submit close to deadline and hear ‘that’s not what we are looking for.’ Now we work out advance schedules in much greater detail.  While it’s a templated schedule and I can plan in advance, when Mondavi dies, I have a major story to write at the last minute and all bets are off.

WZ: How does creating content for a traditional wine magazine help or hurt your ability to manage SteveHeimoff.com content creation efforts?

SH: The magazine job puts me in front of every kind of California wine business and I do get ideas.  I think it helps.

It’s fun.  What else could be as much fun as this?  It’s the whole social media thing.  It opened up a whole new dimension of life and level of involvement that I would not have otherwise had.  When you are a print guy, assignments are ‘top down.’  The work does not even get published until months after you write it.  To have stuff that is instantly online and then get instant feedback?…..Oh my god, I love that.  Maybe like other writers I am a private person and it gets me into the world.

WZ: Does the magazine leverage the benefit it gets from you blogging at SteveHeimoff.com?

SH: I think there is a benefit (pause), I know there is a benefit.  I don’t know how it is leveraged.  I link frequently to the magazine.  I hope I drive traffic there.  I am also more visible in the California wine community, where most of the magazine’s advertising comes from.  But I don’t think about that, and I don’t know how Adam Strum (Wine Enthusiast Head Honcho) thinks about it either.  The magazine is making efforts now to get our social content fed into its site and social networks.  But I don’t understand yet what we are actually going to do or how it will technically work, to be honest.  I have to call my web developer even when I want to add a new category on my blog.

WZ: What do you think gets in the way of some traditional media operators that have not embraced social media and blogging yet in useful ways?

SH: I think what I know about online and offline wine media now…everybody gets.  Traditional publishers’’ struggle with ROI problems.  They need to spend more for the content but don’t have a clear path to monetize it.

I do it just for the love and pleasure.  Is it just an act of faith?  That it will pay off? If you make me think about it, then I guess I can say it has made my personal brand more layered.

But I am not sure I can measure the benefits in any specific way. I am not analytically oriented; you can see that.  I have gotten some speaking engagements.  You can say the industry likes what I do on the blog .  When I started blogging I had no idea who I was writing for….no plan nor template.  I never knew.  Now look.

WZ: It seems like your blog gets a lot of engagement from the trade, but your audience levels prove you are being read my so many more consumers.  Do you understand where your readers come from and who they really are?

SH: I really don’t.  I am not sure who these people are or really how many of them there are….I don’t know how many people subscribe to the blog nor am I really sure what RSS means.  When they comment and share anecdotes, I like it…it feels good.  It’s nice to be liked.

WZ: Is it harder to make a living in journalism and traditional media in 2012 than it was in 1995?

SH: It is.  Wine magazines are shutting down…. getting rid of staff.  Nobody is starting wine magazines.  I was very lucky in 1989.  I forced my way in…who else wanted yo be a wine writer back then besides me?…nobody!  Now, everybody wants in.  Some of my once journalist friends that can’t find work have gone over to the dark side, doing PR and advertising in the wine industry.  They manage to make a decent living, but I could never do that.  You’ll never find me on the dark side.  I am at the stage of life where I don’t feel I need to do anything I don’t want to do.

WZ: Is there anything that you wish wine writers would focus on more?

SH: (pause) I am not going to tell anyone what they should be doing more or less of.  I don’t want to rekindle the wine blogger wars of 2008.  It was nasty.  I’ll say this…nothing goes uncovered anymore.  Everything is out in the open.

Writers shouldn’t take themselves so seriously.  If you are going to lampoon others, you have to be comfortable lampooning yourself.  Wine critics take themselves way too seriously.  They talk sourly about wines but never about themselves.  It’s healthy to be transparent.  Some of the most enjoyable things I ever created on my blog were humorous videos, especially the one that spoofs blind tasting.   You should search it out. I want to do more video.n (Here is the link to Steve’s early vintage wine tasting video)

WZ: If you could move to any other regional wine beat in the world where would that be?

SH: Champagne, but it’s too cold, not like California weather.  If Hawaii had a great wine industry….then there.  But honestly, I like it here in California. I have been at it since 1989.  My life in another region would be too short at this point.  I always think about two different kinds of wine writers; those that talk broadly about a wide range of wines like Jancis Robinsn for example, and single regional focused people like myself.  I would choose to stay in California.  I love what I do.

WZ: Anything else you want to share about your perspectives on wine blogging or journalism?

SH: One of the reasons I like blogging is that it keeps me feeling younger.  I like engaging with young people.  They are a very honest, smart, and direct group.  They keep me on my toes and remind me to never compromise my authenticity.

I am writing about what I want to write about. I love my blog’s integrity.  I have defended that in every possible way.   The very best and ultimate compliment I ever get is “good read.”  I get it often and it’s worth its weight in gold.  It makes me cry sometimes…. it’s such a source of great joy for me.  In a life that can sometimes be hard and cruel, blogging is a warm safety net that I can get very emotional about.

-End-

Note:  Steve has written two books including the 2005 release of A Wine Journey Along the Russian River and New Classic Winemakers of California: Conversations with Steve Heimoff published in 2007.  His books are as personal to him as his blog, and he claims to have constructed his first book on the Russian River as a work that is not only relevant today, but will serve as a historical record for decades to come.

While California wines were losing my attention, Steve Heimoff grabbed it.  That may sound like an oddity since Steve is known for his sustained and successful career as California Editor at the Wine Enthusiast and, before that, the Wine Spectator.  Actually, it wasn’t strange in my world; I study journalists with a knack for integrating new digital media strategies alongside their hardened routines with the level of intense scrutiny you might give to fantasy sports team picks (I would have drafted Steve Long ago). Surprisingly to me, Steve didn’t, nor does he now, not even in the least bit, think about grand strategy.  He is driven to write by visceral experience and emotional reward, a refreshing and wholly palatable outlook on regular digital media content creation. This week I was fortunate to have spent three hours in Oakland with Steve, over a latte I wish hadn’t ended, to better understand what makes him tick.

Steve was furiously posting 5x a week at SteveHeimoff.com (admittedly only missing three daily deadlines since 2008, two from hangovers) for an entire year by the time I launched WineZag in May of 2009.  It is one of the few blogs I try to read every day.  He has something relevant to offer in as authentic and consistent a voice as any.  It has become a key read and go-to destination for the California wine trade to tee up their points of view in response to Steve’s volleys.  I asked him how many posts he’s published and he told me to do the math; the fact is he does not keep track.  Audience size and numbers do not drive Steve.  He writes because for him “it’s like sex.”  Enough said?

With one of the most popular blogs in the entire wine blogosphere, Steve only has the vaguest idea of who his readers are, where they come from, what his most popular search terms are, or how many real subscribers he has. He’s not even certain what an RSS feed is.  I don’t mention any of this to malign him, nor to point out any inadequacies.  It’s just contextually interesting how focused so many wine bloggers are on facilitating measurable outcomes from their blogging, and how little Steve cares about anything other than engagement around two things he is most passionate about; wine and journalism.  Steve curiously and good spiritedly chided a very high profile blogger, who I won’t mention here, that told him his ultimate goal was to build an asset so Rupert Murdoch could buy it for $1M.  The curious part, for Steve, was that it is something he never thought about, could not fathom, nor understood anything about the aspects nor prospects of structuring such a deal.

A couple weeks ago I published a round-up post on Tom Wark’s, Steve Heimoff’s, and Alder Yarrow’s recent thoughts on the wine blogosphere called Wine Blog Confessions.  Tom left a comment underscoring the vast variety of reasons people start their blogs, and that when he started Fermentation he “simply wanted a venue to express ideas and thoughts about my industry and try to start conversations.  This turned out to be good for my business as a wine publicist and marketer. Interestingly, I had no idea that would be one of the outcomes of me mouthing off in a blog. Who knew?”

Fascinatingly, Steve struggles to talk demonstratively about the benefits SteveHeimoff.com offers his personal brand or other aspects of his career. His brain just isn’t wired that way, so I will speak for him.  His value to the Wine Enthusiast has increased exponentially from his blogging.  I am not sure if Adam Strum gets it or not, but as a magazine Publisher myself, I would want the post blogging-era Steve on my masthead over the pre-blog Heimoff.  It will sell more copies and advertising while raising the value of my media property. On a personal note, I never paid attention to Steve before I found his blog.  Now, I read the Wine Enthusiast to understand more about his perspectives and dual approach to covering California wine and its community.

Having watched Steve work the rigors of daily blogging alongside a non-trivial traditional journalism job for the last three years, I just assumed he figured out ways to save time and create efficiencies between the blog and magazine content creation.  No such thing.  Steve does not plan his blog topics in advance the way structured calendars are organized at the Wine Enthusiast.  Surrendering all research and planning advantages that other working journalists will leverage across multiple related assignments,  Steve just hopes he is “lucky and the gods deliver the topic the day before.  Otherwise I have until 8am, filled with the anxiety associated with the need to push the publish button.”

So why does somebody like Steve Heimoff, cemented as a welcomed and authoritative wine critic in the California wine community submit himself to the hard work of blogging?  According to Steve, “because I love it.  I am writing about what I want to write about.  In a life that can sometimes be hard and cruel, it is a warm safety net.  It isn’t about search engines and traffic, it is just the opposite for me.  It’s something that I can get emotional about, it is simply a source of great joy.”  Hardly sounds like the cunning independent journalist that took to the internet to capture his share of mind, propel his personal brand, or for any other business reason you might think of.

While I was disappointed I didn’t find the agenda driven and tactical journalist I thought I might, I was buoyed by the depth of human decency I discovered instead.  This was not the Steve Heimoff I expected to meet. Was this the barking Democrat, instigative blogger, and opinionated writer I followed for so long?  I always knew him from his writing as a man to speak his mind and then stand by it, never to be pushed around.  His positions are firm, sometimes curious, but always firmly defended when attacked.  His voice always reflects confidence and strength.  But in the end, he is just a grown boy from the boroughs of New York City like me; a place you learn to work with emotion, value human engagement, and defend your turf with whatever force is required.  Next, I will share a brief Q&A from more of my conversation with Steve on blogging and journalism.