Rodney Strong + Wine Bloggers = Making History

Last week, Rodney Strong Vineyards made some wine history by being the first winery to release sample bottles of an allocated, limited- production wine--their 2005 Rockaway Cabernet Sauvignon--to a group of wine bloggers at the same time that the wines were sent to the Wine Spectator and other print journalists. (image by said&done)

Coordinated by Jeff Lefevere of Good Grape, the release of these wines into the hands of bloggers marked what I think will be seen in future years as a turning point in how wines are reviewed in this country.

Those of you who haven't been following this story, and even those of you have, might be interested in hearing a little bit more about how this all came about. Earlier this summer, Jeff Lefevere contacted a group of bloggers including Tim Elliott of Winecast, Renee Wilmeth from Feed Me/Drink Me, Sonadora from Wannabe Wino, Joe Roberts the 1 Wine Dude, Kori from Wine Peeps, and master sommelier candidate Arthur Black who guest blogs on Good Grape. He wanted to know if we would be willing to participate in an experiment with Rodney Strong in which we would receive a bottle of soon-to-be-released wine in exchange for an assurance that we would blog about some aspect of Rodney Strong's Rockaway Vineyard project during the week of August 18.

We were free to blog about anything. We were of course free to report if we didn't like the wine. The only requirement was that we blogged something during that week. If you follow the links to the participating bloggers above, you will discover that our notes are consistently positive and quite similar in terms of what we tasted, but I hasten to add that we all tasted the wines independently and wrote our reviews independently.

Why did Jeff want us all to blog about this topic in the same week? It was not because it was "payment" for the review. Instead, Jeff wanted to be able to gauge the impact of a group of bloggers working simultaneously on the same wine. One of the questions that bloggers wonder about is do our individual voices make a difference, and would we be more powerful if we were working in a group?

I think it will be a while before we know what the impact of this experiment might be. I do think that this will not be the last time that winemakers will release their wines to bloggers and print journalists simultaneously--even though this was, to my knowledge, the first time such an effort has been made with a higher-end wine.

After participating in the Rockaway experiment, I remain convinced that the #1 advantage that bloggers have over print media is simply this: time is on our side. It will be months before this wine is reviewed in print. But now, just prior to the wine's release, there are half a dozen reviews of this wine on the internet for anyone who is considering joining the Rockaway mailing list.

What do you think about wine bloggers as individual voices, as opposed to wine bloggers joining together in such a project? If you followed the Rockaway project through the blogosphere, did having multiple perspectives on the same wine help you to determine whether you might be interested in it? And most importantly, is this something you would like to see more of with a wider range of wines--not just the higher end bottles? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and reactions, and I'm sure the other participants would, too.