I wake up early for today’s seminar for around 20-25 people who work for small Cru Bourgeois up to a couple of Grand Cru Classé. Cruelly, I spent yesterday inspecting their websites and it is pleasing to see that there has been a great deal of progress since the days when I started my own website and found hardly anyone bothered with the fad known as the Internet. I appraise each website, explain what facets are useful for consumers, what I like to see as a journalist (technical sheets, photos with free copyright, vintage reports without too much euphemism) and my views on social media, both pros and cons. The discussion on blogging is interesting and occasionally saddening, with several accounts of brash young guns turning up unannounced, demanding samples and verticals of this and that, when it turns out they are massaging their ego and/or blagging freebies to enjoy with their mates. So, who do you trust? It makes it hard for those starting out with a bit of talent equal to humility and courtesy.
The seminar seems to go well and I learnt as much from them as they did from me. I catch the afternoon flight back to Blighty and insert key into door, just in time to tuck Daisy under her Little Princess duvet and teach new letters of the alphabet to Lily (though Dickens and Chekov is a long way off yet.)
Don’t know if you have seen this but Simon Woods “tweeted” about it a few days ago.
http://www.michiganbythebottle.com/2010/02/website-essentials.html
Adding a European perspective, I guess it would also be helpful to have winery websites in English also. Try as hard as I can I can’t learn Portuguese, Spanish, German and Italian……..