The Winery Web Site Report

Big News for Typepad (Winery) Bloggers!!

Wil Wheaton points out that you can now build pages (not just blog posts) using TypePad as your content management system.  You can read all about this great new feature.

Since a number of winery bloggers (and others) got started with TypePad based on my recommendation, I wanted to make sure everyone knows about it.  What does it mean? You can now build a complete Web site using TypePad, both blog posts and static "pages" like a regular Web site.

Clearly, Moveable Type (the company that provides the  TypePad service) is responding to the competitive pressure of WordPress, which has had this (excellent) feature for some time.  They have just addressed the only reason that I've ever considered switching from TypePad to WordPress.

Lazy Sunday: Blow Up Your Home Page

Of course, your winery Web site has a home page.  But nowadays, it's not necessarily the first page your vistor will see.

Companies may have a website, but they don't have a home page in terms of the way people experience them.

See the rest of what Seth Godin has to say about home pages while you drink your Sunday morning coffee.

(this has been a public service announcement for those winery marketers who aren't subscribed to the RSS feed for Seth's blog)

Do Winery Web Sites Have Terroir?

Tim Elliott of Winecast has been nice enough to invite me on Unfiltered (his new podcast with co-host Jeff Lefevere), presumably to talk about winery Web sites.

As a thought starter, he posed this question:  What winery Web site best illustrates a sense of place?

Terroir for Web sites?  Hmmmm...

Realizing that my readers are a valuable source of smarts, I'll ask you all the same question.  Add your URLs to sites with a sense of place in the comments!  And thanks for your support.

Cork'd

Lenn writes that wine social networking site Cork'd has been acquired by the folks (Gary Vaynerchuk) at Wine Library TV.  In other news, Cork'd is selected as one of the 10 best-designed Web sites in the world:

...a neat, cleanly-designed interface, featuring an intelligent colour scheme and fantastic simple logo.

Easy to use and fun to browse. This site strikes the balance just right.

Anyone out there have experiences to share about Cork'd?  What do you think of their site design?

(see my previous post on Cork'd from almost a year ago).

Are Boutique Wines like Indie Music?

Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog  (NY Times - free subscription required) is an in-depth look at the new world of music promotion via blogs, MySpace, and direct interaction with fans.  It's essentially the direct-to-consumer model that some wineries are using applied to the music business.

Like the wine business, where thousands of new vintages are produced each year, indpendent musicians face the problem of standing out amidst a sea of songs.  In some ways, it's easier for musicians: they can give away free samples, and shipping costs next-to-nothing.

Still, if you are a small winery attempting to get traction in the marketplace, there are lessons to be learned here.  The most important: success depends on interacting with your fans.  You can't just make wine (or music).

Lazy Sunday: Tastings Does Video

I routinely enjoy the Wall St. Journal wine column, Tastings, by spouses John Brechter and Dorothy Gaiter.  Now they are doing video as well.  A nice 5-minute journey into "inexpensive" (not cheap!) Bordeaux to go with your Sunday morning cup of coffee.

Your winery could easily do something similar to introduce your vintages each year: What does it taste like, what does the bottle look like, and what foods might go well with it.  The nice thing is that a small investment can be leveraged in many ways - on your Web site, on your blog, in your e-mail newsletter, posted on YouTube, and sent to the media.  I'll bet someone like Mary Baker at Dover Canyon does this soon (having seen pictures of their great porch and views - what a great setting for a video).

Web-based video is something for Web-savvy wineries to look at more closely.  It doesn't have to be fancy, just authentic and informative.

Six Myths About Blogging

Here are Six Blogging Myths That Are Holding You Back, from the fine folks at Flyte:

1. My customers don't read blogs
2. Blogging is for teenagers to share the minutiae of their lives and what they think of the remaining American Idol contestants
3. Blogging is just a fad
4. Blogging takes up too much time
5. Blogging is fraught with dangers, like people leaving negative comments
6. My customers don't read blogs

(yes, 1 and 6 are the same).  Flyte, of course, has a blog.  They also have some great articles and a regular newsletter that is worth subscribing to.

A newsletter and a blog.  What could they be thinking?

Whose Blog Is This, Anyway?

Recently, I mentioned that it's important (if you're serious about your winery blog, at least) to see how it looks in the major tools for reading blogs, just to make sure that people who subscribe to your blog are seeing what you want them to see.

Here's an example of how one winery blog looks on a Google customized home page (click for a larger image):

As you can see, this winery blog is named "Blog," which is true, but not very informative.  To fix this, the winery will need to change the title in their RSS feed (usually just by making sure their blog is properly named in whatever tool they are using, such as Blogger or Typepad).

If you don't have a personalized Google home page, they are *very* handy, easy to set up, and best of all, free.  If you use Google on a regular basis, it's worth doing.  One nice feature is that anything with an RSS feed (like a blog) can be added to your page (and you can have multiple tabbed pages, as the image above shows).

New Winery Blog: Wind River Cellars

Wind River Cellars (WRC) has a blog.  Here's an quote from the opening post, which I sympathized with:

My wife must be crazy to let me have a blog at windrivercellars.com. Anyone that knows me or has been to the winery knows that I'm full of crap most of the time and rarely serious. This blog will certainly reflect that.

What's surprising to me is that this blog has been around since May, 2006 and this is the first time I've heard of it, since I keep my ear out for new winery blogs to add to The List.  And this is a blog with regular posts, several each month.  So please, if you know of a winery blog not on The List, please let me know!

WRC is a 35000-case winery in the Columbia River Gorge of Washington, founded by Joel and Kris Goodwillie in 1997.  Joel is the winemaker, and 85% of their production is sold through their tasting room:

I've had a lot of great visitors this past week. I had firemen, soldiers, police officers, insurance agents, Human Resource specialists and an airline pilot. At one point it almost felt like the Village People were in the tasting room.

Joel's writing is matter-of-fact and easy to read.  It's really like listening someone talk about their week at work.  Subscribed!

(and thanks to Huveos con Vino for the pointer to the WRC blog)

PS - Joel, if you read this post, please add a comment about your experiences as a winery blogger.  Thanks!

Talk Dirty To Me

In our never-ending search for winery blogs, I've turned up Terroir: Dirty Talk on Wine from Nickel & Nickel (which includes Far Niente and Dolce).

Dirk Hampson, the Director of Winemaking, has been writing since October of last year, averaging about 1 post per week.  The posts tend to be longer, which is makes them more interesting and informative.  Here's a cool post on the intricacies of ordering stainless-steel tanks (including  a picture of Dirk himself).

Unfortunately, the  blog doesn't appear to have an RSS feed, which means you can't subscribe to it using an RSS reader, which means you have to check back regularly to see if Dirk Hampson has posted anything new.  This partially defeats the value of writing a blog. 

This sort of  glitch usually happens when a blog is not built using standard tools, and the result is that standard features are missing.  For example, once you choose a post to read, there is no navigation to take you to the next/previous post in chronological order, something that is standard for blogs based on Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, and Moveable Type.

This is disappointing, because like many new blog visitors, I would really like to start with Dirk's very first post, and read forward.  The navigation design makes that difficult.

As always, we've added Dtrty Talk About Wine to our comprehensive list of winery blogs.