This was what I was wondering this winter Wednesday night: whatever happened to Wine Blogging Wednesday?

Tonight I aim to find out and see what I could do to get the ball rolling again–while enjoying the wine of a fellow Wine Blogging Wednesday participant, Jeff Stai from Twisted Oak’s El Bloggo Torcido!

So here’s the back story:

When I started wine blogging back in 2007 (yes!), I poked around the web to find out who was doing what and discovered Wine Blogging Wednesday posts.

And then I was offered a job doing social media and other wine writing (a job which unfortunately went down with the economy in 2008–before I even started–for a company that is now in bankruptcy proceedings–ouch!) But I went to the first Wine Blogger’s Conference in 2008 anyway where I figured I’d find out the secret to participating in Wine Blogging Wednesday (and more, of course!)

On the last morning of the conference, I joined a table of men who were all 5-15 years younger than me. Why? Because they all had their laptops and smartphones out–AND they had bottles of wine on the table.

I didn’t know it then, but I was sitting with the Young Turks of wine blogging and social media: the soon to be very famous Hardy Wallace of Murphy-Goode and now NPA fame, Ward Kadel, Jeff Lefevere of the multi-year multi-award winning blog The Good Grape, the humorous Joe Roberts and his amazing palate, and Lenn Thompson, the man who practically invented wine blogging, regional social media wine marketing with the New York Cork Report–and the man who started Wine Blogging Wednesday.

I quickly figured out that I was an interloper and knew absolutely nothing about wine compared to these fine, good and wise young gentleman who knew more social media tricks than I could shake a stick at. They even offered to teach me how to use twitter. They shared their wine and their jokes and their wisdom. (Click on their names above! See who they are! Read their words!)

I came home without the secret of Wine Blogging Wednesday–how to know what was coming next so I could be prepared with whatever obscure wine we’d be blogging about. But I did have an idea of who I could ask: David Rodriguez. However, it seemed like every month it was a challenge to figure out who was hosting and what the theme was.

And then Wine Blogging Wednesday seemed to fizzle out. Fewer people were participating. Was it that more people were jumping on the Twitter wagon and tweeting about wines instead of taking the time to blog about them? It is a lot easier and more fun, sure, to participate in a twitter tasting then it is to write, edit, link, illustrate and publish a blog post.

But does a twitter tasting really help the consumer out as much as a Wine Blogging Wednesday theme? Honestly, I don’t think so.

Some of the most popular blog posts here grew out of Wine Blogging Wednesday prompts–for example, Joe Robert’s theme “what red wine would you offer a white wine drinker”?

So on this wintry wine Wednesday night, I set out to find out what happened to Wine Blogging Wednesday.

To be continued…