At the close of the European Wine Bloggers Conference (EWBC) in Vienna Robert McIntosch from wineconversation.com and Ryan and Gabriella Opaz from Catavino.net introduced us to the Born Digital Wine Awards (BDWA), a kind of Pulitzer Prizes for online wine communicators.
On the BDWA website the organisers describe the awards as following: “The Born Digital Wine Awards are an attempt to give value to the new wave of online wine journalism. Each year, the best examples of electronic publishing, including videos, will be reviewed by a panel of top industry professionals from within and without the wine industry.”
Just like the Pulitzer Prizes aims to honour excellence in the journalism and art world, the BDWA is looking for excellence in online and digital wine journalism. It is a proper award in the sense that there are real prizes involved – the winner of each category will be taking home a €1,000 – and that the prizes will be awarded by some real heavy weights in the wine, journalism and publishing world. The latter in my eyes is an even bigger and more prestigious acknowledgement as it will be an honour to be recognized by Jancis Robinson, Elin McCoy, Evan Schnittman, Hervé Lalau, Patrick Schmitt and Robert Joseph.
The fact that these busy and highly recognized judges are willing to make time to review and evaluate our online wine content surely means that our message is gaining importance in the wine and online journalism world. One of the categories is content created by wineries so if you as a winery have invested in outstanding online content or marketing material do consider to enter. Entry forms and submission details can be found on the submission page of the BDWA website.
Entry categories are the following:
For a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single wine article or series (video, written text)
Outstanding examples of wine writing, giving prime consideration to literary quality and originality
Speaking about a particular region as a tourist destination with a focus on wine (written text, video, photo)
Video content that either educates, demonstrates or builds awareness for wine (video)
Outstanding examples of content created by wineries to promote their brand and reach out to key audiences
The judging will be in English – however it is important to note that content can be submitted in any language and a professional translation service is being offered.
