In another decade, the year 2009 will likely be recognized as the beginning of the era when wineries not only began understanding the usefulness of bloggers writing about their wines, but also began hiring that talent directly to drive the internal Social Media message.

What began a few years ago with a few pioneers writing about wine online has now mushroomed into a diverse community with a growing audience base worldwide. Seemingly, many wine bloggers write in their spare time as a hobby simply because they love wine and want to share their thoughts, while others aspire to create something professionally rewarding. The crux has always been that it is virtually impossible to make a career out of wine blogging independently - there simply weren’t enough dollars available from ad campaigns for even the most successful blog to make more than a couple hundred dollars a months. That isn’t to say that writing a widely read blog won’t get you noticed…

The Game Changer

In early 2009, Murphy-Goode Winery developed a contest that would result in one person becoming their social media expert for a six month period. The contest attracted nearly 2000 applicants, most of them already proficient in the arena. Eventually the list was pared down to ten, I met several of the finalists at the Wine Blogger’s Conference in July which served as the coming out party for Hardy Wallace, the eventual winner.

The conference also introduced me to several other finalists, including Rick Bakas, Frank Gutierrez and Eric Hwang. Rick had just accepted a position at Napa Valley’s St. Supery Winery as Director of Social Media Marketing. Earlier this week, Eric announced he has accepted a position at Vintage Wine Estates as Social Marketing Manager, in Windsor, CA. It is becoming increasingly apparent the contest brought a whole bunch of different personalities into the consciousness of the wine community and created lots of publicity for anyone who was connected to it.  I was impressed by all of these guys, mainly their level of maturity, how accomplished they were in other fields and yet the common passion to risk it all for a shot at the fairy tale life in the wine business. All of us are now friended up on Facebook so that we can follow each other. I bring up the recent successes of my fellow bloggers as an introduction to a major change for me as well. 

After working for the better part of two decades in all facets of wine retail at some of the best names in the industry, I suddenly found myself with virtually unlimited time, and creative freedom last October to layout where my career path was going to go. I wasn’t anxious to jump into something else just for the sake of working so I began writing this blog as a way to stay relevant in the wine world but primarily to serve as a capability portfolio for the right position. Eleven months later, with the blog ranked #1 on Google for “domestc wine review” I am happy to announce here that the patience and dedication has paid off -  I have accepted an offer to join Martinelli Winery as their first Director of Commerce and Social Media. Martinelli Winery is internationally regarded as one of the pre-eminent producers of Estate Grown wines in America, Helen Turley has been consulting winemaker since 1993. My responsibilities will focus on directing all outbound commerce and member communications through traditional and emerging media. Needless to say I am thrilled by the opportunity to work with one of the most sought after wineries in the world.

This blog will continue to provide independent reviews on domestic wines and will also remain free of advertisement. In order to avoid any perception of conflict of interest, I will not independently review any wines produced by Martinelli Winery at this blog.