New Winery Blog: Whitehall Lane Winery

I got a nice note from Kim Leonardini Phinney at Whitehall Lane Winery (WLW) to let me know that they have a winery blog: WLW Whines

This introductory post is an excellent example of putting a human face on a winery.  The fact that Whitehall is family-owned is an important part of their identity (and I now know why Kim signs her e-mails with her full name).  It's great to see how everyone plays a part in the winery, thanks to Kim's post (with pictures of everyone).

And maybe blogging will help WLW get their dartboard back!

One quibble with the current design: When looking at an individual post, there's no way to move to the previous/next posting without returning to the archives.  This "prairie dog" design (up-down-up-down...) makes reading from the beginning a true labor of love.  Fortunately, there are only four posts so far.

Two other minor quibbles - I hope that Kim will rename the link to the blog from the home page of their site (it's presently called "WLW Whines", but visitors who are looking for their blog may not know that's its name), and fix it so that "Subscribe using Bloglines" works from their home page (WLW has company here: most wineries with blogs don't properly support auto-discovery of their blog from the home page of their Web site).

In pointing these things out, I don't mean to single out WLW.  The fact is, most bloggers don't use their own blogs in the same way that visitors do.  And that's the whole point of The Winery Web Site Report:  you have to identify and think like your site visitors.  Making them successful will make you successful.

I've subscribed to WLW Whines (thank you, Bloglines), and added it to our comprehensive list of winery blogs as well.  As always, if your winery is blogging and I don't know about it, please tell me!

Comments

[Winesmith]

Thanks much for keep up the list of winery blogs. I'm just now discovering it and will add a link to it from my own blog. It is amazing that so few wineries have blogs, but looks like it's beginning to turn a corner...especially if people take notice of the Stormhoek blog promo.