2020 was perhaps not the best time to run a conference on wine writing and travel writing. Nevertheless, that’s exactly what the Wine Media Conference (WMC) did: The WMC Virtual Summit 2020. They had a whole series of online conferences on wine and travel writing. One of the subjects was “Food and Travel Writing for Wine Media”. I was one of the three participants in that session. As a follow up to that conference I wrote a text entitled “Should Wine Writing Involve More Travel Writing?” A sub-title and auxiliary subject for the presentation and text was “how to improve your wine writing”. This article has now been translated into Russian and has just been published in the Ukrainian wine magazine Drinks+. I feel thrilled and honoured to have been published in Russian in Ukraine!
My co-presenters in the session was the two US wine writers Frank Morgan and Marcy Gordon.
In a way, I felt rather under-qualified for participating in the session. Wine writing (and even more, travel writing) is only a part of what I (or we, together with Britt) do. On the other hand, we do write a lot on BKWine Magazine, probably Sweden’s biggest wine site, available also in English, and on Forbes.com. And we have written eleven wine books. And have been doing it for soon twenty years. I also do quite a lot of editing of other people’s text (good Lord!) which by necessity involves quite a critical eye and that one has a keen mind on what is good writing. So maybe they were not totally out of their mind when they invited me to speak.
A few of the key take-homes from my analysis of the situation with wine writing and travel writing:
- Travel writing is much bigger than wine writing. So there are more opportunities there. But also more competition.
- Quality is important. You need to produce quality, no matter what you write about.
- Don’t fall into the trap of making cheap and shoddy promotional text. Or even worse, don’t sell your soul to the devil and make paid-for promotions (i.e. advertising) that masquerade as journalism.
- You have to think “SEO” when you write.
You can read more about this, and see some statistics to support it, in the just published issue of Drinks+. Here’s more information on how you can get your hands on the article that I wrote: стоит ли пытаться «подружить» вино и путешествия? on Drinks+.
An aside: Drinks+ is also launching a Wine Travel Awards competition to honour some of the best wine tourism initiatives. I am one of the judges in this exciting new initiative. Info in English on the WTA competition.
(And if your Russian is on the same level as mine, here’s an English language version of the presentation / article on wine and travel writing online from the Wine Media Conference Virtual Summit 2020.)
