We Have Launched a New Wine Blog Site - Come Visit Us!
|
 |
Sunday, 08 June 08 - 08:05 PM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
Thanks to Tim Elliott who heads our publicist Acan Media, we now have a new and much improved Israeli wine blog with a great look-and-feel for you!
Check out The Israeli Wine Blog here!
I Need Your Help
|
|
|
Wednesday, 29 August 07 - 08:26 AM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
It's time for a Blog CheckUp for IWD.
That's where I need your help, please.
Sagi Cooper, a well-known wine critic in Israel (you'll see an interview between Sagi and me on the Israeli wine scene in the near future), gave me some frank and much-appreciated feedback on our humble little blog. I won't tell you what he said until you share your thoughts about how we might improve in the following areas:
Content: regularity of posts, quality of content, topic selection, topics I am missing/overdoing
Style: font size, use of photos/graphics, use of CAPS, use of BOLD, general readability
Community: how could we increase the communal nature of our blog? should I turn on a Forum on the blog (it's easy to do)? should we invite a winemaker into the blog available to respond to questions over a defined period of time? (that's going to happen regardless!)
I look forward to your Comments, and I promise to respond personally to anyone who writes.
Where Are All the Winery Blogs?!?!
|
|
|
Thursday, 28 June 07 - 04:24 AM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
It seems Israel is not alone in having an astounding lack of winery blogs.
Today's post at The Cork Board, a nice blog about Napa, laments the fact that there are so few winery blogs even in Napa!
In a world of over-abundant wine options, a winemaker Blog is an extremely inexpensive (FREE!) and personal way to TELL YOUR STORY and rise above the sea of competing wineries.
Israeli winemakers need to realize that consumers want to know YOU, not just your wines.
And when someone finds a winery where they come to know the winemaker, they'll be more likely to love your wines. There's no doubt our taste and enjoyment of wines is based in more than the physical aromas and tastes we experience in a sip. The context in which we drink the wine, the knowledge or familiarity we have with the winery and winemaker, the expectations we bring to the sip all enhance the flavor!
Winemakers need to do a better job leveraging all of those aspects of the wine consumer's experience.
Who Cares About Blogs from Israeli Wineries?!
|
|
|
Sunday, 03 June 07 - 04:05 AM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
Dr. Debs had a nice post this past Wednesday about the value of winery blogs where she listed the Top 5 Reasons to read them.
Many wineries are realizing that a winemaker/winery blog is a great way to DIRECTLY and very inexpensively tell your story to your audience in the way you want it to be told.
Dr. Debs' Top 5 Reasons to read are:
1) Dramatically increase your winemaking knowledge
2) More fully understand that good wine is the result of a long, thoughtful process
3) Be reminded that wine is made by REAL people (I think we have so overly romanticized winemaking that we have forgotten that real people with real families and real troubles like we all have etc. are behind every bottle)
4) Never forget that good wine should never be taken for granted.
5) Develop a personal connection with the winemaker and the wine you are drinking.
I'm interested in reasons to write a blog from the winery's perspective. For small Israeli wineries eager to grow a following in the US (or even one at home in Israel for that matter), a regularly updated personal blog by the winemaker could be an indispensable marketing tool.
I can assure you that I will encourage the winemakers we ultimately work with to blog - as a way to develop a community here that feels connected to them, and to (shock!).....sell more wine!
Topics for winery/winemaker blogs can cover a broad range - from harvest to special events to staff profiles to vineyard and winery photos to winemaker descriptions about his interventions and visions for his/her wines. The topics are really endless.
Here are some links to winery blogs Debs mentions:
And one of my own favorites from a winery in Kenya (the winemakers are renowned scientist Richard Leakey and his daughter):
QUESTION: Is anyone aware of Israeli wineries publishing a blog? I'm not aware of any, but I'd love to hear from you if I overlooked any.
Squeezing the Most Juice out of this Humble Israeli Wine Blog
|
|
|
Tuesday, 06 March 07 - 10:22 AM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
One of the beauties of a blog is the way it allows people to regularly interact with each other casually and across great distances.
There are some features embedded in this site I want to call your attention to.
1) Email This - under each post is a link allowing you to email a particular entry you like to a friend, helping to introduce others to info about wine and winemakers from Israel.
2) Submit to digg - look for the link under each post. digg is a social content site driven by users. In plain English.... the site allows you to basically VOTE on ("digg") a site or post you especially like that you believe is noteworthy. Then others can vote for or against your digg. If the story gets digg-ed enough it gets promoted to the front page for millions to see.
3) Add to del.icio.us - look for the link again under each post. del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager that keeps all your bookmarks in one place and lets you check out what other people are bookmarking as favorites.
4) Leave a Comment - painless to use and self-explanatory. The beauty of Leaving a Comment is that you can help take the conversation a bit deeper into a topic of interest, raise questions that I or others can respond to, or simply share your feedback on the site or a posting. Unlike emails, others can see what you write which can have a nice ripple effect. THIS IS THE GREATEST WAY YOU CAN PARTICIPATE and take a leadership role on our site.
5) Subscribe using the RSS Feed - I won't bore you with the techie details of RSS, but it allows you to "subscribe" to this and other blogs and get new entries pushed to you. I recommend www.bloglines.com as a reader. Go check it out, then come and subscribe and get immediately updated each time I update the site. Lots more you can do with RSS, but that will get you started.
By using these tools, you help the site go deeper....and even aim the conversation a little bit in a direction you like.
Things to Come:
1) The Opening of a Forum: look for this once our site has a little more history. I'm thinking a forum hosted by a guest winemaker or wine personality over several days would be pretty wicked.
2) Flickr Photos - soon you will see a Flickr badge on the site rotating our photos through. You'll be invited to send in your own Israeli wine-related photos, as well.
3) Audio and Video of folks from the Israeli wine scene
Keepin' it Local
|
|
|
Saturday, 24 February 07 - 11:14 PM (GMT -06:00) By Richard Shaffer in Wine Blogs |
| ||
Ryan at Catavino (response at Spittoon) wrote a thoughtful entry this week that felt like confirmation of the work we're doing on our new blog focused on Israeli wine.
Ryan questioned why so many of the now hundreds of wine blogs are general in nature instead of focusing on specific regions or types of wine. In addition he is designing - nothing is there yet - www.wineblogatlas.com, a site committed to linking to blogs focused on specific wines from different regions around the globe.
Isn't part of what makes good wines great is that they translate a specific place and climate and the hand of a specific winemaker - the best are "local." Shouldn't good wine blogs strive for the same?
If you think about it, great poetry is also filled with details, not generalities (it's the difference between a great poem and a Hallmark greeting card). It seems counterintuitive, but the more specific stories are, the more universal they somehow feel.
IsraeliWineDirect is committed to delivering in-depth niche stories about Israeli wine. Period. Stories, photos, video of the wineries and winemakers and the land, and (most importantly) insight into the real people behind the wines.
Stay tuned...
... More items are available in our News Archive
