Winery Blog = Sales Pitch?

From Tom Wark's interview of Tyler "Dr. Vino" Colman over at Fermentation comes this provocative quote

Winery blogs are a bit of a different animal since they are fundamentally sales pitches. Josh at Pinotblogger has done a great job of informing readers about the winery life without sounding like propaganda, in part because he doesn't have anything to sell yet since he's telling the story about starting a winery, something all wine consumers fantasize about at one point or another.

Hey, winery bloggers! Is it a sales pitch to talk about your winery (at least if you have wine to sell)?  Are you propagandists?  I think Dr. Vino is being a bit harsh on some great writers!

Comments

[rick gregory]

Silly point (his, not yours). Two fallacies at least:

1) that people who are selling something are bad sources of information. You see this put out there to justify why you shouldn't listen to merchants but should instead listen to critics. In both cases the point ignores that a) the listener/reader knows that the person is selling and can allow for that and b) that the person selling might be incredibly knowledgeable and their specific wines and the vineyards that they come from.

2)The more basic fallacy is simply the sentiment that selling is bad, that it's propaganda. It's not.

3) Oh and a third point - many winery posts are marketing, not sales. They're not the same thing of course.

Winery blogs are one more source of information for people interested in the wine. If they're authentic, esp if they're written by the winemaker, owner, etc., they can provide a direct connection between the people who make the wine and those who drink it. I fail to see anything bad in that.

Of course, being an independent wine blogger, perhaps he was making a... sales pitch for independent bloggers.

:)

[tom farella]

I do think that it's a challenge to keep a winery blog "pure" (devoid of direct marketing). I've seen comments on Vinography about how readers prefer blogs to winery websites because they feel more informative and less full of hype. The in-direct marketing is fair, I think, because they inform the reader about philosophy and technique, etc. For me, there's a little alarm that goes off in my head before any direct plug for our brand hits the keyboard.

[el jefe]

Rick said it very well. I try to be a source of info. I try to project the experience of visiting Twisted Oak on our blog. I try to express my honest opinions on things. I even throw out a rant or poem. I try to keep it real.

Josh at Pinotblogger does a wonderful job of expressing the excitement of starting a winery. I wish I had done the same when we were starting Twisted Oak - in fact, it is one of my few real regrets that I didn't think of it myself. I think it will be interesting to see how Josh handles it when he is deep in the thick of his 6th or 7th year and really has to focus on selling his wine. I am there, and I am finding it incredibly tough to blog when I have so many other demands on my time. It's an incredible challenge.