Wine Publications and the Internet

[Rebel Rose]

In addition to a few winery blogs, there’s a whole universe of excellent wine blogs on the internet. And wine blogs are becoming quite sophisticated in terms of news, discussion, and wine reviews.

Print media are turning more and more to internet chat forums and individual blogs for information and ideas for topics. I have noticed a trend in some industry publications like Wine Business Monthly to publish bullets of timely information online and to focus more on indepth coverage of issues in the printed publication—I think of it as sort of a retroactive trend back to real and thoughtful journalism. I check WBM's internet site regularly in order to stay up on industry news, and I thought their last print issue, with its lengthy and technically intensive discussion of alternative closures, was very informative. I think we’ll see more successful publications exercising their strengths in each medium, instead of trying to be one publication in two media.

A growing internet wine scene also means that wine reviewing is no longer the exclusive domain of a few wine critics. Although I think of a “critic” as someone with the knowledge and experience to judge a wine in several important contexts, critics also have their own tastes in wine, and are often very far removed from popular interests. The internet provides us with a place for discussion, a source of industry news, and a wealth of consumer reviews on a wide range of wines.

Would you position the wine industry as being more or less aware of internet potential than other food industries? Are there things the top wine publications could be doing to maximize or make better use of their internet presence?