I guess it was only a matter of time. In the last three years we’ve gone from Vinography being the only active wine blog on the Internet to, according to my count, well over three hundred wine blogs in English and probably close to that many in other languages, I’m guessing, though I only know about forty or fifty of them. This development has mirrored the general explosion in blogs of all kinds — search for blog statistics on Google and you’ll get all sorts of jaw dropping, mind bending figures about how many blogs are out there and how many were created while you read that last sentence.

The mainstream media has gradually started to acknowledge and to anoint blogs with some recognition, but most of the awards given to bloggers have been from home grown community efforts. Even the Webbys, which are the most visible of blog and web site awards, are essentially run by the community rather than major media outlets.

For the time being it seems that the efforts to recognize the efforts and talents of the blogging community will be coming only as a result of the efforts and talents of fellow bloggers. This is how we ended up with the Food Blogging awards. And now it seems, the wine blogging world is getting its own set of awards, courtesy of fellow blogger Tom Wark (of the blog, Fermentation). Sometime in 2007 we will see the launch of the American Wine Blogging Awards.

These grassroots award programs can be quite scary, especially if not well organized and thought through by their creators, but I have little doubt that Tom (and hopefully a small army of helpers) will carry it off well.

So you know what this means, don’t you? Time for you to catch up on your wine blog reading. Take a gander over at that left hand column and start clicking!!