Image by jezkerwin via FlickrSorry to our readers of Iberian wine news, because today, is a blogger show. I listen to TWIT religiously. If you are even tangentially interested in the online tech world, I highly suggest it. Each week, they talk about gadgets, websites and online issues, and occasionally, it directly applies to my life.

A few weeks ago, TWIT featured an episode on “The Death of Journalism”, asking the following guest speakers to chime in with their educated thoughts and opinions: Leo Laporte, Steve Gillmor, Mark Frauenfelder, and Molly Wood. Now, although I’ve heard this argument several times before, I usually consider it “the sky is falling” rhetoric, where we all complain about how everything is changing and nothing is good in the world. But during this episode, I actually let down my guard and heard a suprisingly compelling argument.

If big media fails, specifically newspapers, and replaced by online streams, such as blogs and distribution devices such as Twitter, will investigative journalism suffer? In the past, a newspaper could hire a reporter to spend a week on one story, digging deep and looking for the meat, bolstered by their impressive budget. While today, TWIT presented the argument that people with blogs tend to react without reflection, riff on a news story for a few lines, smear a little gossip around, and then try to call it journalism.

Generally, I agree with this argument, or at the …

I’m ticked off. I was supposed to be at the Meeting of Wine Creators in Ronda, Spain, this past weekend, but sadly, was unable to iron out the logistics to get there. It might seem like a trivial reason, but I would have needed to take a bus from the airport, and then transfer to a second bus in order to finally arrive in Ronda. I could have made it work, but for a two day conference, it seemed like a ridiculous amount of effort and wasted time traveling. Regardless, it sounded as if it was interesting, when considering the fascinating topics discussed. Top wine makers, wine writers and experts gathered in a who’s who of the wine world to discuss the issues related to the current state of the wine trade. Taken from their site:
WineCreator, the First International Meeting of Wine Creators, sprang from the unique concept of creating a debate between wine creators from all over the world and an international panel of experts on the current
situation of wine.

This meeting was prompted by the need to discuss the globalisation in terms of quality that has already reached the wine industry. The quality of wines today is quite high, not so much because of the imitation of styles and brands, but because of the generalisation of winemaking techniques and teachings.

For the first time, WineCreator, the First International Meeting of Wine Creators, will bring together the twelve most influential wine creators, chosen by a panel of experts made up of twenty of the most internationally renowned critics. The aim is to create alternatives to the models imposed through routine or through fashions in wine by taking a closer look …