In response to the discussions [on Rogov's forum] about blogging and the wine industry, I just found out that Lift9 (a social media marketing agency – I have no affiliation with them nor this study) just did a study on social media and wine. It can be found at http://www.lift9.com/socialmedia_blog/2010/01/28/the-impact-of-social-media-on-wine/ and the slideshare presentation at http://www.slideshare.net/warrenss/lift9-wine-and-social-media.

I’m just reading it now (Hope to have more on it on my blog sometime next week) but it analyzed the California wine industry and found:

There’s a Twitter meme called #winewednesday (I’ve used it occasionally to raise awareness of wine from Israel). They claim (I’ve seen more so I wonder if this is California only 126 Wineries have Twitter Accounts. There are virtual wine tasting events (where people from disperse geographic areas taste wine and discuss the wine via social media channels, including different websites. Many forum members share their tasting notes on corked, a social wine sharing site.

Something else that I seem to get from the study (and does reflect a lot of what I see) is that you have a few people talking a lot.  In america, New York and California are huge consumers and content contributors.

Another thing that is ESSENTIAL when talking about media and reviews is that the Top 20 wine bloggers have more readers than Wine Spectator. Incidentally, something that I’ve discovered myself is that, for example, the daughter of the founders of Wine Enthusiast Magazine (heavily involved in it herself) links to my blog (among many many others) on her blog.

As far as I know, in Israel, Yarden, Tishbi and Recanati have taken small stabs on Twitter but they have been very inactive and non-conversational. Dalton’s tried a bit to blog and some individual winemakers have some Hebrew blogs but Hebrew sites don’t spread Israeli wine outside of our small country.

In the meantime, follow me on twitter and fan Israeli wine on Facebook.