GWU$20 Named Best Wine Blog by Saveur

Yesterday, I received news that Good Wine Under $20 had been voted Best Wine Blog of 2010 by the readers of Sauveur Magazine and its online site.

This was the first year Saveur ran the contest, and it is an honor to be chosen in this category. I'm a regular reader of Saveur, which makes this all the more sweet.

Here's a list of all the winners. If you haven't checked them out, you should do so. My congratulations to all those who were nominated.

BEST BAKING AND DESSERTS BLOG
David Lebovitz

BEST WINE BLOG
Good Wine Under $20

BEST FOOD PHOTOGRAPHY
Smitten Kitchen

BEST REGIONAL CUISINE
Homesick Texan

BEST SPECIAL INTEREST BLOG
La Tartine Gourmande

BEST CULINARY TRAVEL
Cafe Fernando

BEST INDIVIDUAL POST
Smitten Kitchen

MOST INNOVATIVE VIDEO CONTENT
Food Wishes

BEST KITCHEN TOOLS AND HARDWARE COVERAGE
Apartment Therapy: The Kitchn

Voting Begins for the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards

It's time to vote for your picks in the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards.

Every year, all over the country, hundreds of devoted oenophiles put down their wine glasses long enough to turn on their computers and share their thoughts about wine. It's a labor of love. We all have full time jobs, but we blog because we think that bringing more voices into the national conversation about wine is a good thing.

Tom Wark, from the blog Fermentation, organized the awards to bring attention to this large and growing phenomenon and to recognize dedication necessary to blog consistently and well over the course of a calendar year.

This year, votes are being cast in the following categories: Best Writing, Best Graphics and Presentation, Best Single Subject Blog, Best Business/Industry Blog, Best Winery Blog, Best Wine Reviews on a Blog, and Best Overall Wine Blog. Many excellent, deserving blogs are on the list of finalists, and I encourage you to take a look at them all before making your final decision.

Voting is open now through March 4 at 11:59 PM. Thanks once again to Tom for having a thick enough skin to organize and man these awards.

And a big thanks to those of you who nominated GWU$20. I really appreciate your support and readership over in this corner of the wine blogosphere.

American Wine Blog Awards--Nominations Close Sunday

Tom Wark announced the call for nominations for the 2009 American Wine Blog Awards. Nominations close on Sunday, February 8, 2009.

Nominations are being taken in several categories:

Best Wine Blog Writing
Best Single Subject Wine Blog
Best Winery Blog
Best Reviews on a Wine Blog
Best Graphics and Presentation
Best Business/Industry Wine Blog
and
Best Overall Wine Blog

After readers make their nominations, a committee of judges will select finalists in each category. Then the readers get to vote among the finalists.

Please read the guidelines for each category before you make your nominations.

Thanks to Tom for his hard work on these--again.

2008 American Wine Blog Award Winners Announced

Fermentation's Tom Wark has announced the winners in the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards. More than 2000 people voted in this year's competition over the course of last week.

Now that the voting has finished, I am truly pleased and touched to have received awards in both the Best Wine Review Blog and the Best Single Subject Wine Blog categories.

There were many worthy blogs that were nominated by appreciative readers, and the list of finalists was impressive in every category. Congratulations to all of those who were nominated. You can check out the full list of those winners here.

When I made the decision to continue with this blog, it was because it was clear to me that there were a lot of people out there who drank affordable wine every day and who felt that their needs for wine information were not being met by traditional media. Their needs weren't being met in large part because folks seemed to think that if you didn't spend much money on wine, you weren't really interested in it. I think that's totally false.

If you are new to the blog, you will discover that I write about everyday wine culture, and promote the people I think contribute to it in this country and around the world. This includes winemakers, bloggers, the mainstream press, merchants, consumers--you name it. Good Wine Under $20 is not a narrow topic--it's a world that many, many wine consumers occupy.

Thank you to the many everyday wine aficionados who have indicated that they appreciated this approach since GWU$20 opened its doors to visitors. There's a lot of good wine out there to discover--I look forward to sharing that world with you.

Get Out the Vote for the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards

Voting opened today for the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards. Tom Wark developed these awards last year to recognize the quality of wine writing and the depth of coverage that is available every day--for free--on blogs all over the internet.

The Awards work through a process of open nominations, the selection of finalists from those nominations by a panel of five judges, and then voting in which 70% of the decision will be determined by open voting (not Chicago style, folks! one person, one vote) and 30% by the judges. Voting will continue until March 29 at 12:01 AM.

Wonderful blogs are on the list for your consideration--and I do mean consideration. Please take the time to look at all the blogs nominated in each category before you cast your vote. Browse around through some older posts while you're there. And my sincere congratulations to all those many bloggers who were nominated by readers in the initial stages of the process, as well as to those who were named as finalists. After all, most bloggers blog because they hope to reach an audience. Nominations are the best proof that we have succeeded.

Yesterday, I thought a great deal about a colleague of mine who truly believes the following: "a rising tide lifts all boats." Tom wanted a rising tide of recognition to lift all wine bloggers and to give credibility to the work that they were doing to promote wine knowledge. Every wine blog reader and writer is contributing to this rising tide, and that's a good thing.

Book club, and wine blog awards, and new sites--oh, my!

There's a lot going on in the world of wine blogs, so I thought I'd catch everybody up on the news.

First, a reminder: next Tuesday, February 26, will be the first meeting of the Wine Book Club. Our fearless leader, David McDuff of McDuff's Food and Wine Trail, will be leading our online efforts to post reviews and generate discussions about Vino Italiano! by Joseph Bastianich and David Lynch. If you've read all or part of the book we hope that you will post your reactions on Tuesday by leaving comments on David's blog, on the Wine Book Club sites on Shelfari or Facebook, or posting on your own blog if you have one. Stumped about what to write? David has posted a fantastic set of questions to get you started. The questions had me thinking about what I'd read in the book in new ways, and I'm looking forward to bringing all those thoughts together next week--and to hearing what other people thought about the book, too.

Second, Tom Wark has the put out the call for nominations for the 2008 American Wine Blog Awards. This is the AWBA's second year, and there are is a new category (Best Business Wine Blog), and a slightly modified voting method (70% popular vote, 30% panel of judges). Tom does a terrific job running these awards, and they provide a great opportunity to shine a spotlight on the wine blogosphere. When you reach Tom's site you will see a set of easy buttons in the right sidebar directing you to nominations in the various categories, which include Best Wine Blog, Best Wine Blog Writing, Best Graphics, Best Business Wine Blog, Best Winery Blog, Best Wine Review Blog, and Best Single Subject Wine Blog. Everybody gets three nominations per category, so think through your favorite wine reads and if you don't see one of them mentioned in the comments/nomination area you can make them a nominee simply by mentioning the blog's name.

Third, fellow blogger John G. from Quaffability has a new blog: the Web Tasting Room. It's a great new format: a combination of video blog, on-camera tasting, discussion with a winemaker, and wine store that is linked directly to the wineries involved. I really liked seeing someone taste the wine and talk to the winemaker about it at the same time. It was like being a fly on the wall in a tasting room. Kudos to John G. for coming up with something new. Head on over, check it out, and you'll probably end up signing up for the feed like I did.

I think that's everything. Have fun cruising around the blogosphere, and see you back here tomorrow.

The 5 Best Wine Blogs

In the Fall 2007 25th Anniversary Special Edition of Wine & Spirits magazine, the blogosphere's own Tyler Colman selected the "5 Best Wine Blogs" that you're probably not reading.

What a surprise and an honor to be included on his list! My copy of the magazine seems to be coming by pony express to the remote Sonoma Coast, so in case you are wondering who else is on the list here are some links. You will, however, want to read all about Tyler's reasoning behind his selections and to do that you need to go out and buy the magazine if you're not already a subscriber. He also included an amusing yet extremely accurate rundown of why (and why not) to blog.

So here are the 5 Best Wine Blogs, in alpha order:

Brooklyn Guy's Food and Wine Blog
Good Wine Under $20
PinotBlogger
Tasting Room
Wine Terroirs

Congratulations to all of those highlighted in the article! Click on over, sign up for their blog feeds (if you're not signed up already!), and get to know some new wine writers in order to gain fresh perspectives on the world of wine.

Coming on the heels of the wine and technology conference in Napa, and Tom Wark's survey results at Fermentation, the coverage of the blogosphere by one of this country's best known and respected wine publications confirms the important place occupied by the internet in the wine market as well as the important role that bloggers can play in supporting and sustaining wine culture in this country and beyond. That Wine & Spirits chose one of the blogosphere's best and brightest to write the piece is equally important, in my mind. It shows that they recognize the blogosphere as its own area of expertise, with its own set of practices and customs. Who better to write about blogs than a blogger?

Many thanks to all my subscribers, my regular readers, and my new visitors for surfing over here to check out GWU$20. Thanks to all of you, I'm having a fantastic time drinking wine and writing about it, and I look forward to many more years of the same. Tonight, I'll be raising a glass to all the wine bloggers and our wine blog readers. Salut.

Voting Begins for the American Wine Blog Awards

Tom Wark at Fermentation has announced the finalists for the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards, the first awards dedicated to wine bloggers (as distinct from food and drink bloggers). There are lots of familiar names in the categories, but also some that you might not know yet so take some time to do a fair evaluation of all the finalists before voting. Click on the logo to the left to be taken to the survey. You can only vote once, thank God--none of that crazy vote once a day nuttiness--so take your time and think about it. Not sure when the voting stops, but if I find out I'll let you know. Update: voting ends Friday, February 16.

All these dedicated writers deserve major kudos for their efforts to enlighten, educate, and entertain readers like you and me on subjects as varied as appellations and wine shipping laws. But I'd like to give some special recognition to friends of Good Wine Under $20, bloggers who regularly stop by here to leave comments or who have supported my newbie efforts, and who rose to the top of the judges' lists. So in your travels through cyberspace, be sure to check out the blogs of:

Mary Baker at Dover Canyon Winery (finalist in Best Winery Blog)
Jerry Hall at WineWaves (finalist in both Best Wine Blog Graphics and Best Wine Reviewing)
Joel at Vivi's Wine Journal (finalist in Best Wine Blog Graphics)
John G. at Quaffability (finalist in Best Wine Reviewing)
Craig Camp at WineCamp Blog (finalist in Best Wine Writing)
Tyler Colman at Dr. Vino (finalist in Best Wine Blog Writing and Best Overall Wine Blog)

This is a great chance for those of us who read and learn from bloggers to make a point about the power of the medium and the quality of what is produced by the very best among us. Thanks once again to Tom Wark for conceiving of the awards, and handling the process so impeccably and promptly.

Last Day for American Wine Blog Award Nominations

It's been days and Blogger won't let me fiddle with my sidebar to post a reminder for the American Wine Blog Awards. Over 500 nominations for awards in seven categories have been made, and there's still time for you to nominate your faves if you haven't already. Just click on the logo and be swept away to the nomination area (very simple--you leave a comment) on Tom Wark's blog, Fermentation.

Nominations close on January 18, so click over now and participate in this first-ever award solely for wine bloggers.

For Your Consideration: Nominations for the 2007 American Wine Blog Awards

Living in LA, it's impossible to pick up anything without seeing the words "For Your Consideration" as Tinsel-town gets ready for the Oscars. Tom Wark at Fermentation has seen to it that wine bloggers and readers aren't left out of all the fun! He's instituted the first ever American Wine Blog Awards.

Clicking on the buttons below will take you directly to the nomination page for that category on Tom's site. Please take note of the conditions (in most cases, blogs must have posted at least 52 posts in 2006 to be eligible), and the category descriptions. You may nominate up to three blogs in any category, and a selection committee will go through them and determine finalists in each category. Sadly, Tom's own excellent blog is out of the running since he's taken himself out of the competition.

Categories are:














Nominations close on January 18, 2007. So give it a think, click over and leave your nominations, and chill some champagne in anticipation of the results. And of course, thank you for your consideration!

And kudos to Tom for doing such an amazing job organizing, promoting, and running the awards.