Wednesday, February 25, 2009

THE 2009 AMERICAN WINE BLOG AWARDS

Tom Wark of the terrific daily wine blog Fermentation, along with this year's sponsors Mutineer Magazine, Open Wine Consortium and Riedel glassware, have announced the finalists for this year's American Wine Blog Awards. Suffice it to say, we didn't make the list (hell, I'm just happy there are folks reading this shit!) but I have to say I am a bit shocked that none of my fellow local wine bloggers were nominated (Tim Lemke of Cheap Wine Ratings, Michelle Lentz and her husband Kevin Gerl of My Wine Education, Mike Rosenberg of The Naked Vine, Jonathan Seeds of Best Drink Ever and even Mark Fisher from Dayton Daily News' Uncorked).

It's understandable though because the literal ocean of wine bloggers out there these days is vast, so I am sure that this year's judges had quite the formidable task. My congratulations to all the nominees and best wishes to all - these folks are truly the cream of the crop.
The finalists are as follows:
BEST WRITING ON A WINE BLOG
BEST GRAPHICS & PRESENTATION ON A WINE BLOG
BEST SINGLE-SUBJECT WINE BLOG
BEST WINERY BLOG
BEST BUSINESS/INDUSTRY WINE BLOG
BEST WINE REVIEWS ON A BLOG
BEST OVERALL WINE BLOG

To vote, please visit here.

The cool thing about this list is that there were a couple of blogs I hadn't seen before. Nominated in the best wine reviews category were Wicker Parker and Bigger Than Your Head both have tremendously insightful reviews without the overdependence on scoring. Wicker Parker's author is Chicagoan Mike (no last name that I can find) who gives us well-written but not long-winded prose and insight on each wine he reviews, while Bigger Than Your Head's Fredric Koeppel is a seasoned veteran wine critic having for years written printed reviews before beginning Koeppel On Wine in 2004 and Bigger Than Your Head in 2007.

I keep telling everyone that wine blogging is part of the whole social media revolution online, and with so many voices to hear, it's a good time to get into wine, or anything else for that matter.

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