A Question About Wine Blogging
I started Louisville Juice six months ago after doing a political/cultural blog for about five years. The thing that strikes me most about the difference is that political blogs interact with each other constantly. They link to each other, argue with each other, give credit to each other. The result of that is to build traffic for everyone and create a more vivid conversation.
Wineblogs, on the other hand, seem to prefer isolation. I read about 30 wine blogs a day and there is virtually no traffic between them. No one ever links to Joe’s Wineblog and writes, “I read this over at Joe’s and I think Joe is a genius/moron/seer of visions.” It just doesn’t happen.
In six months I’ve had only a few links from other blogs. It could be, of course, that my blog stinks and isn’t worth linking to. I’d accept that except that I get comments from other bloggers and have received complimentary emails from other bloggers and have even had ideas copied without credit by other bloggers. But never links.
I’ve even had experiences of open hostility toward linking. When I first started LouJu, I linked to a posting on another blog, took a properly credited excerpt from the posting, and commented positively on it. This is regular stuff on political blogs, but I got a snotty email from the blogger telling me not to steal his stuff. I recently did the same thing with one of the more successful wineblogs and, as is customary in the world of political blogging, tried to drop him an email telling him I’d linked to and found inspiration in one of his posts. His site had no email address, and the “send a message” form wouldn’t accept a direct link to my posting, rejecting links as “hostile code.”
All of which leads me to believe that winebloggers do not, in general, value interconnectedness with other wine blogs. My question is: Why not?
Why in the world do wine bloggers seem so committed to not using one of the most powerful tools in their toolbox?
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:07 am
Great post and way overdue!
Here’s my response: http://www.winewhoreblog.com/2009/12/are-wine-bloggers-socially-handicapped.html
Cheers!
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
See your next post for the answer. It’s not about the community, it’s what’s in the bottle. People ask what wine publications I use. I don’t. Parker’s opinion does not help me choose the right wine for a client. Once you reach the point where you can evaluate a wine other takes on it don’t matter. Reviews merely help identify wines you might want to try. After that there’s nothing to discuss. It’s just wine, not public policy.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Wally, I see your point but aren’t there other ways or reasons for wine bloggers to interact?
Cheers!
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I think it is similar to the majority of the blogosphere. Bloggers have become more competitive and give a lot less link love. There is a big debate on whether this is wrong or right. Perhaps the political policy blogosphere is the exception?
Still it is definitely worth asking the question.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Randy,
I could answer but then we’d be interacting- ruining Tom’s post about us not doing that.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Wally, you will not be surprised to know that I disagree. People discuss wine all the time. You discuss wine all the time. It may be less important than public policy, but within the subculture of wine it arouses similar — if perhaps not so vehement — passions.
Here’s my theory about why winebloggers don’t link the way political bloggers do. Political blogging is about conversation, argument, at its best even persuasion.
Wineblogging — and I mean this in the nicest possible way — is a lot more self-absorbed. Most wine blogs are about one person’s opinion about an essentially subjective thing: wine. While we’re fairly used to being challenged on matters of politics we’re not real thrilled to be challenged on matters of personal taste. Conversely, we’re not really comfortable taking someone else’s taste to task, either.
Finally, the wine world is so fragmented that winebloggers have almost nothing in common. There are tens of thousands of wine brands, most of which don’t have real national distribution, so we each exist in an essentially different universe. There are few great meta-topics that sweep through the community — no speech by the President or bill introduced into Congress or Senator apprehended in an airport bathroom to put us all on the same subject for a few days.
This breeds a culture that isn’t as interactive as political blogging, and the result of that is a lack of connection that diminishes the value of all wine blogs — even the big, successful ones.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Let’s see how many wine bloggers participate in this:
http://www.winewhoreblog.com/2009/12/official-announcement-wine-whore.html