Yesterday, nominations opened up for the 2011 Wine Blog Awards.
These awards were created in 2007 by Tom Wark to identify excellence in wine blogging. And since last year, the awards have been administered by the North American Wine Bloggers Conference.
I read a ton of wine blogs, so I’m super excited about these awards. I’ve been reading several — like the blogs of Tom Wark (Fermentation), Joe Roberts (1WineDude), Steve Heimoff, Alder Yarrow (Vinography),and Tyler Colman (Dr. Vino) — for years now. Others, like Colorado Wine Press, The Gray Report, Wine Diarist, the New York Cork Report, and many, many more are relatively new to me — but they’re now part of my daily reading. (Apologies, in advance, to the many friends I’ve left off!)
This year, there are eight categories: Best Overall Wine Blog; Best Writing on a Wine Blog; Best New Wine Blog; Best Winery Blog; Best Single Subject Wine Blog; Best Wine Reviewer; Best Industry/Business Wine Blog; Best Graphics, Photography, Presentation on a Wine Blog.
Wine blogs are nominated by the general public (seriously — you can nominate any wine blog), and the finalists for each award are selected by a panel of judges. The winners are selected based on a combination of the judges’ opinions and a public vote. And they’ll be announced in July at this year’s North American Wine Bloggers Conference.
I’m incredibly honored to have already been nominated in the “Best New Wine Blog” category (thanks, Tom Wark!!!).
Mind showing me some love? Blogs only need only be nominated once to be eligible, but I suspect that “likes” and comments within initial comments are helpful.
Here’s my case: Terroirist launched on November 9, and since then, we’ve had 252 unique posts. That’s 1.8 posts per day. More than 6,000 people now visit the website each month, and it has been featured Fox5 News in Washington DC and mentioned by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and many other highly regarded publications.
When I launched Terroirist, my goal was to fundamentally change what people have come to expect when visiting wine blogs. Rather than offering recommendations, cataloguing tasting notes, writing about politics, industry news, or viticultural techniques, I sought to offer a comprehensive look at the wine world, on a daily basis. It’s still very much a work in progress. But it’s a fun ride — and we’ll certainly get to where we want to go.
Thanks for your support! And now, for a somewhat relevant song: