The fact that you’re here, reading this, means I don’t have much convincing to do when it comes to turning you on to good online wine writing. The rest of the world, well, they might need a little nudging. Despite the fact that pretty much every major working wine journalist in the English language that isn’t on the doorstep of retirement has a blog, many people still dismiss wine blogs as irrelevant fluff.

Of course, you and I know a few things about that. Namely that the volume of online wine writing by people like me eclipses all of the print wine writing published each year by at least an order of magnitude, as does the number of wines reviewed, wine photos published, etc. etc. Volume does not make up for quality, of course, but just as Drake’s Equation suggests the likelihood of intelligent life somewhere other than here, so too must there be quality wine writing of the purely digital sort. And a lot of it. You just need to know where to look.

And for those who don’t spend all their time reading wine blogs (because, really, only some of us are silly enough to do that) there are now the Born Digital Wine Awards. Their stated goal: “give value to the new wave of online wine journalism.” Of course, there have been a raft of different “awards” for wine blogs and food blogs, but this effort immediately set itself apart from all previous efforts by rounding up a seriously world-class set of judges (including Jancis Robinson, Elin McCoy, Hervé Lalau, among others) and offering cash prizes to the winners.

The shortlists of finalists for the 2010 awards were announced earlier in the week, and I’m thrilled to say that Vinography was selected in two categories: Best Editorial, and Best Investigative Piece, for my ramblings on The Philosophy of Wabi Sabi and Wine, and The Coming Carnage in the California Wine Industry, respectively.

But if you’re reading this, you probably already read those stories. So what you should do now is go check out the other finalists, and see what they wrote. I hope you discover something you like, because, after all, that’s what this is all about.

I’ve got great company as a finalist, from a number of friends and colleagues, from Jamie Goode, to Randall Grahm, to Joe Roberts. I hope you’ll join me in rooting for all of us as the winners are announced in the next couple of weeks.