Free Weekly Staff

Go ahead, Google Blog.
That was mere gibberish a decade ago.
Maybe a handful of Wall Streeters and Silicone Valley hipsters noticed the private launch of a baby business called Google in September 1998. Open Diary, hailed as the first online blogging community went live a month later.
But in the ensuing decade, blogs became kudzu — dense, chaotic, sometimes a nuisance, sometimes a shady terrarium where the unexpected blossoms.
Local blogs take you into a community’s nitty-gritty, way past the safety ropes of sites that end in .gov or .org. Fayetteville’s virtual neighborhood indicates a fecund online ecology, spirited and intimate, a hothouse environment for a college town.
Here are a few of the Free Weekly’s favorites. In making this decision, three factors were key: daily updates, local content and quality of content. It doesn’t matter if that content is sharp political rhetoric, the latest band announcement or simply a day in the life of a mom, it just has to be about Fayetteville and interesting.

1. The Iconclast http://jonah-tebbetts.blogspot.com/
The Iconoclast is Fayetteville’s anonymous gadfly — like a virtual Socrates.
City officials read it. Local journalists read it. Even Little Rock’s Arkansas Times peers northward occasionally to take note of The Iconoclast on their own blog.
The Iconoclast’s writers channel their blogs through the long-dead persona of Jonah Tebbetts, a judge who built the historic Headquarters House in 1853 where the Battle of Fayetteville was fought in the front yard at the “bloody corner” of College Avenue and Dickson. The essays often call public officials out on their decisions, and the only people not named are the actual writers of the blog.
Read this one alongside your daily paper to help you read between the lines.
May you never be offered a hemlock-laced drink by the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Tebbetts.

2. Fayetteville Flyer http://www.fayettevilleflyer.com/
The Fayetteville Flyer, or just “The Flyer” to those in the know, came out of the gate with a flashy site that takes old school ‘zine ambitions to digital heights. Tongue-in-cheek but informative, the Flyer is usually just behind the professionals in putting news out the public online. On the entertainment news front, they’ve even broken a story or two. It’s worth bookmarking.

3. Sufferin’ Succotash http://alannahmassey.blogspot.com/
Alannah told the Free Weekly that she’s not quite ready for attention on her public blog yet. Thanks, but she’d prefer not to comment for this article. She’s likes to think of her digital audience mostly as friends she actually knows in real life. We understand. The problem is, if it’s a public blog, the public is reading it — especially if they can link to it from The Iconoclast. Blogs like Sufferin’ Succotash give a vicarious thrill to the reader just because they are so intimate and genuine. Alannah is stressed, and her writing about her stress, and her addiction to Bravo programs, makes for a good read. Feeling down? Go take a look at the trials of Sufferin’ Succotash and feel a little better.

4. Life Plus Kids http://www.lifepluskids.com/
This is the digital Promise Land for those with children. If it’s a kid-friendly event and its going on in Northwest Arkansas, Terri Chadick, mother of two children, will let you know on her blog. She said she formed it out of frustration, hoping to create a clearinghouse of information about things for kids to see in do in the area. If you find yourself with a kid and nothing to do, this should be your “go to” site.

5. Fayetteville and NW Arkansas Live Journal http://community.livejournal.com/fayetteville_ar/
Sometimes a week can pass before this site is updated, but it’s so random and representative of different people, we thought it worth inclusion. People post about anything here — a lost cat, a lost wedding ring, the June 22 Firefly Festival, a Mac for sale, bead classes being offered, or a request for how to get rid of ants in a pet-friendly way. And that’s just on page one. Got a question about the community, chances are you can get your choice of answers from other users’ response. You can often follow the poster back to their own live journal site as a bonus stalking treat.

Honorable Mentions:
Aubunique
http://aubreyshepherd.blogspot.com/
Great nature photography and local political commentary together at last. Aubunique is quite unique and prolific.

Fayetteville Free Weekly
http://www.freeweekly.com/
Shameless plug.

The Five-forty
http://www.thefiveforty.com/
Were did you go? We miss you. Line by line deconstruction of the Free Weekly’s Tony Macklin movie reviews were a bittersweet treat. You stopped updating for awhile, then promised to be back, then disappeared again. We have trust issues now.

The Northwest Arkansas Crime Report
http://nwacrimereport.blogspot.com/
It’s not the kind of crime that makes you want to move away. It’s the kind of crime that makes you wonder about your neighbors’ intelligence and sanity.

S’moore Girl
http://smooregrrl.blogspot.com/
An intimate blog with some great photography. Sarah’s documentarian eye and insight shine throughout. You have to go to the first post to uncover the meaning behind the name.

Street Jazz
http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/streetjazz/
Light on images, but heavy on good writing and local political insight. Richard Drake’s blog keeps Northwest Arkansas informed.

Val’s Bien
http://valsbien.blogspot.com/
Valerie’s musings about her life, her cat Tigger and “Superman” Mayor Dan Coody’s announcement he is running again are worth a look.

Five Questions with the Fayetteville Flyer
1. Who writes the Fayetteville Flyer?
We’d prefer not to use our real names for the time being. It’s not that we are necessarily afraid of being identified. We’d just rather the Fayetteville Flyer have a voice of its own rather than it being about what each of us think individually. However, if you really wanted to know who we are, it wouldn’t take long to track us down. Trust me, it’s already happened a couple of times! As for our “team”, there’s a core of three writers who consistently post stories and about a half dozen others who submit entries from time to time. We’re all local residents who love Fayetteville.
2. Why did you start the blog?
Fayetteville is easily one of the greatest cities in the country to call home. As a college town full of music, culture, arts, and of course sports, we believe there’s got to be some kind of alternative voice on the internet. Frankly, I am surprised that it has taken this long for someone to step up to the plate. Our original goal was, like many bloggers, to simply be heard. However, our pageviews per day have skyrocketed and now we feel like we have more of a responsibility to inform rather than just to rant. Of course, with full-time day jobs, we’re certainly limited in terms of capacity to perform original investigative journalism. Fortunately, however, that limitation seems to have become a strength lately as we’re finding that our readers appreciate brief, to-the-point stories that eventually provide links to further information. It’s only natural, though, as the vast majority of our readers probably only have about as much time to read as we do to write…during breaks at work or between classes. We’re keeping advertising out of the picture for now but we’re not ruling it out entirely. With 2007’s severe decline in print ad revenue and the giant leap that its online counterpart raked in, it’s exciting to look towards the future. It would be the greatest job in the world if we could somehow make a living out of writing for the Fayetteville Flyer. However, we feel like making the jump to hosting ads might not be as thrilling to some of our readers. We’d certainly have to do that in a way that was not only right for us but for our specific audience as well. Until then, we’re content with the way things are right now.
3. What role do you think local blogs can play in a community?
Local blogs have a lot to offer a community. At the very least, they provide local residents with a means to be heard. At a deeper level, though, they can be extremely hyperlocal and much more audience-specific than traditional print media. A typical “letters to the editor” section in a newspaper can only hold so much and it certainly doesn’t provide a very good means of conversation. An online article can be written, published, commented upon and updated or corrected in a matter of minutes. It can also be immediately read by anyone with internet access. What I find most interesting, though, is that as younger people start to rely more on websites like ours for their daily dose of locally pertinent information rather than by reading newspapers, we still rely on those sources for our information. This could obviously lead to some serious tension between the professionals and the community journalists. However, in many larger cities, the big newspapers are starting to explore ways to partner up with small community-based blogs in order to reach a specific audience. I find all of this to be incredibly fascinating and could go on forever. I’ll stop now.
4. Do you read The Onion?
Not much, really. From time to time, I’ll stumble across something hilarious they’ve done but for the most part, I’m glued to local and national news outlets. At the Fayetteville Flyer, we don’t do much satire. Partly because nobody could ever come close to covering issues in such a clever way as The Onion but also because I believe that in order to earn the trust of your readers, you can’t be mixing fake news in with the real stuff unless it’s incredibly obvious what you’re up to. That takes skill and we’re certainly not professionals by any stretch of the imagination.
5. Anything else you’d like to comment on … Favorite cheese, paper v. plastic, mayoral endorsement, etc?
As for a mayoral endorsement, we haven’t even begun to figure out who is the best person for the job. However, we are currently lining up interviews with the candidates in order to educate not only our readers about who’ll be on the ballot, but also ourselves.

Channeling Jonah
The many voices (We think seven) inside the head of 140-year-old Jonah Tebbett’s agreed to an interview. Here are the unedited sounds we captured when they spoke in unison.
The Iconclast on The Iconoclast
At the Iconoclast, we are concerned mostly with local institutional power and politics. Government, media, business, and educational institutions have paid employees to spin their message and present their images in the light most favorable to their comfortable captains.
In theory, the media might serve as a check on the others, but it hasn’t worked out that way for a number of reasons. Advertising revenues, club memberships, and the need for sources make the news and editorial departments about as critical of local institutions as sportswriters are of hometown sports teams.
We get no advertising revenue and are paid no salaries, so we get to poke fun at the powerful and point out the absence of their wardrobes. We try to take the average citizens’ point of view, to offer alternative versions of the official story, and to present interesting arguments. Sometimes we do that well and sometimes we fail, but either way it is a polysyllabic picture of our community.
People can read the blog or not, but a surprising number of people do. We seldom have more than 600 unique visitors a day, but many of them are regular readers. One day last week, we had 15 visits from City Hall computers during regular office hours, staying logged on for more than two hours total. We are always glad to see our friends from the paid media stop by to see what we’re laughing about on a particular day. Even the Chamber and the UA brass check in from time to time. We are glad, but we are disappointed that they seem to take it so personal when we take issue with their actions.
We don’t hate anyone and actually like most of the public figures we discuss here; we just want them to be more open and less pompous and to do a better job. We all share the goal of a better community hereabouts, but we don’t always share the same vision of what that might be. We try to give voice to a version that often doesn’t get heard in the mainstream media and offer it up for consideration in an interesting way. We try to be serious about local issues without taking ourselves too seriously. And we always try to have some fun while we are doing it.
The Iconoclast on local blogs
Local blogs are a rag-tag lot, and we love them all. Some are personal reflections on private lives, much like a diary, and many of those are interesting. Sufferin’ Succotash is among the most interesting of that type. Others can serve as a clearinghouse of information, and nothing beats Life Plus Kids in that category. Aubrey Shepherd (Aubunique) is the most prolific local blogger. He has a bazillion blogs on numerous subjects from the environment to neighborhoods to city government, combining great photography with commentary. The Fayetteville Flyer is in a class by itself, half-website and half-blog, an amusing electronic minotaur of sports, entertainment, and wisecracking observation. The NWA Crime Report is also a favorite here. Richard Drake does a good job with Street Jazz, melding the strength of his CAT program and the Ozark Gazette into the blogosphere. Arkansas Tonight is a good local political blog, but none of us come close to the Arkansas Times blog that is a true model of what blogs can be and do.

Patagonia’s strong winds make for good grapes
Hello Everyone,
This week we’ll discover a wine region that is completely new for many of us, something that doesn’t happen often enough. But, as with many topics in the wine world, we’ll see some aspects of this exciting new region that are familiar to us.
Try a new wine this week!
Bruce
Saurus Wines
Chile and Argentina are neighbors on the same continent, but after that the similarities end quickly. You can see the differences on restaurant menus, with more seafood and more international influences in Chile, not to mention vestiges of the original peoples’ food, and more beef and Italian dishes in Argentina.
In addition to the cultural differences, there are climatic differences that are reflected in the two countries’ wines. Most Chilean vineyards lie near the Pacific Ocean, which moderates the climate much like it does in California. Most Chilean wines are made about the same distance south of the equator as California wines are north of it.
Most Argentine vineyards lie on the dry, inland side of the Andes around Mendoza, a virtual desert, with hot, dry days and cool nights. This is more reminiscent of Washington state’s Columbia Valley than of California. One trend in recent years is to establish vineyards at higher elevations in the Andean foothills. Growers hope that pinot noir will succeed in the cooler temperatures there, a sign of today’s smaller wine world and the flow of information about what’s popular in the global marketplace.
Both Chile and Argentina have wine regions that are a little separate from most others, with unique styles. Chile’s Aconcagua Valley, beneath the glacier atop the Andes’ highest peak, is that country’s only wine region north of the capital (Santiago), and wines there reflect more of a New Zealand, or perhaps Pacific Rim style.
In Argentina, Patagonia is the new place. Located far south of Mendoza, meaning cooler weather, this area is known for strong winds. That’s actually good for grapes, keeping them dry and preventing many maladies that can plague growers in more humid regions.
Familia Schroeder is one of Patagonia’s top winemaking families. Their Saurus brand represents the area well. It’s named for a large dinosaur fossil found on the property, but represents something new in Argentina. For a higher price there’s Saurus Patagonia Select, but for very good, well-made, everyday wine at a good price, I like the regular Saurus line. Its style may very well remind you of a wine from California.
Saurus Malbec is perhaps the first one to try, since that’s really the first grape we think of when we think of Argentina. Remember, though, that Patagonia’s climate is not like Mendoza’s, and there’s a lot more to try than Malbec. Cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot noir are also grown. Saurus wines retail locally for around $15 a bottle.

Anyone who spends much time perusing the aisles of their local wine retailer has seen an increasing number of wines from Santa Barbara County. Let’s take a closer look at this beautiful and diverse region, today one of the most important in California.
Santa Barbara Wine Country’s coastal valleys run east to west rather than north to south, like most of California’s wine regions, allowing ocean breezes to flow inland. The interior foothills are warm during the day and cool at night, while temperatures closer to the ocean enjoy a milder, more temperate climate.
Santa Barbara County has four main regions:
Santa Maria Valley is the northernmost appellation. Its most important grapes are the Burgundian varietals Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. It’s bounded by the San Rafael Mountains and the Los Padres National Forest to the east, and by the Solomon Hills and the city of Santa Maria to the west. Santa Maria Valley is home to Santa Barbara’s most famous vineyard, Bien Nacido. It contains over 800 acres, of which over 300 acres are planted to Chardonnay, more than 250 to Pinot Noir, and somewhat less Pinot Blanc, Syrah, Merlot and a smattering of less-known varietals. Five generations of the Miller family have raised grapes at this historic vineyard.
Los Alamos Valley lies between Santa Maria Valley and Santa Ynez Valley. It has warm days and very cold nights. It’s less known that its neighbors, because Los Alamos Valley is not an official appellation. So, you won’t see it on a wine label. “Santa Barbara County” is used instead.
Santa Ynez Valley is a long, east-west corridor, very cool temperatures on the coast and progressively warmer inland. Because of the diverse climate, several varietals do well there, from Pinot Noir in the west to more heat-loving grapes like Cabernet and Merlot in the east. Several Rhône and Italian grape varietals are also grown, mainly in the warmer, eastern areas.
Santa Rita Hills is actually within the Santa Ynez Valley appellation, although the grapes grown there differ in style from the ones in the warmer vineyards to the east. During the mornings, the area is shrouded by a layer of clouds and fog, which burn off by midmorning. This is followed by two or three hours of sunshine, then the ocean winds pick up, cooling temperatures back. Because of this maritime influence, the Santa Rita Hills appellation has become famous for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Many of Santa Barbara County’s wines are available locally. One that I tried recently that’s great for this time of year is Palmina’s Pinot Grigio. It’s crisp, refreshing, subtle and complex and not oaky. It retails in the $15 to $20 dollar range.

Hello Everyone,
Finally back from Italy, a little tired, a little late, but here. We’ll look at a great wine region this week, far away in miles, but familiar in style.
“Here Comes the Judge…Serving and Being Served.” I’ll have a busy few weeks coming up, serving as a judge at Missouri’s “Show Me State Championship Barbecue Cookoff” in a couple of weeks, a Memphis Barbecue Network sanctioned event, and shortly thereafter I’ll attend an Arkansas State Fair Wine Competition committee meeting to discuss a new scholarship program. Who says I don’t work hard?
Try a new wine this week!
Bruce

Leeuwin Estate Wines
Western Australia is more than just a region; it’s the name of a state. The Margaret River district in the southwestern part of Western Australia, is the state’s most important wine region. It borders the ocean, with beaches and the resulting controlled environment, and has forests and farmland farther inland.
The district has its own microclimate, with oceans on three sides changing water temperature by only a few degrees between summer and winter. The daily maximum and minimum temperatures during the growing season are very similar to those of Bordeaux, France.
Leeuwin Estate, less than four miles from the ocean, is one of the founding wineries of the Margaret River district. It was established in 1972 with the help of Robert Mondavi, in a search for the best place in the area to plant wine grapes. It was, at the time, a cattle farm. Mondavi also served as a consultant for some years afterward.
They began with a nursery in 1974, and prepared the vineyards with the laborious techniques of deep plowing, “ripping” up stone substrata for drainage, and planting vines by hand for five years. This is what great wineries do.
Rainfall in the Margaret River District is affected by winds from what is known as the “Roaring 40’s” a name given to the latitudes between 40° and 50°, because of the strong prevailing westerly winds, as there is less landmass to slow them down, the winds are especially strong on the Southern Hemisphere. Leeuwin Estate plants trees to alleviate vineyard problems from these strong winds.
To reduce bird damage to grapes, especially from parrots, the growers plant a range of food alternatives, such as large plots of sunflowers.
Leeuwin Estate’s wines have long been recognized as among the best in Australia and the world. So, this week’s recommendation for a locally available Western Australia wine is, of course, from Leeuwin Estate. We very much enjoyed their “Siblings Shiraz” at the June E-Wine samplings. It retails for around $20.

Hello Everyone,
This week we’ll look at one of my favorite summertime wines, something for us seafood lovers. For many of us, it was the first wine we loved, and the grape that inspired us to further explore the wonderful world of wine. I’m leaving for Italy in a couple of days, so there won’t be an E Wine lesson next week. We’ll resume the week after next.
I had an excellent dinner at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock last week, that emphasized Arkansas products. Here’s a link to their web site www.capitalhotel.com.
Try a new wine this week!
Bruce

Riesling Revival: A refreshing warm weather wine

It’s good to see the revival of the Riesling grape, one of the fastest growing categories of the U.S. wine market. A generation ago this was one of the most popular wines in America. Robert Mondavi Winery even grew it in Napa Valley.
Some people say that all Rieslings are sweet. That’s not true in the Alsace region of France, and even some German Rieslings are dry. They’re labeled “trocken,” which is the German word for dry. Still, the crisp, appley flavors of this superb, food-friendly wine are often best when the wine is nearly dry, as opposed to “bone dry.”
What makes Riesling different is those crisp, tart fruit acids. They balance sugar and make it taste less sweet than it really is. Few wines are more refreshing in warm weather.
Riesling is originally and still probably at its best, in Germany, but its quality and newly revived popularity are causing people to establish new vineyards in other areas. It does best in cooler areas, so you’re more likely to see it in New Zealand than in Australia, and in Washington State rather than in California. Not that California Riesling can’t be really good, but it just seems a little softer in acid.  My favorite California Rieslings have been the really sweet dessert wines.
Washington State’s cold nights seem to be very good for their Rieslings. I remember when Washington wines first became popular nationally, and it was Riesling that first made their reputation. Style-wise they tend to fall between Germany and California, with more fruit than the former, yet crisper and livelier than the latter. Off-dry, balanced, crisp and appley, great with mild cheeses, Asian dishes, seafood, or just for a glass of wine during warm weather. It’s also great for crowds that include new wine drinkers.
I distribute a good Riesling from Ron Bunnell, named River Aerie for his Columbia Valley estate, that retails in the $15-$20 dollar range.

Try a new wine this week!

Bruce

A barbecue lover’s “go-to” summertime wine

As a Memphis in May-certified barbecue judge, I never get tired of talking about the South’s favorite summer pastime. As a wine lover, I’m glad it tastes great with some of my favorite wines.

To some, barbecue means “throw it on the grill,” but to competition barbecuers it means cooking over indirect heat, “low and slow.” Low cooking temperatures for extended periods of time results in tender, “fall off the bone” ribs and shoulders. Of course, varying degrees of wood creates additional flavors.

What kind of wines go with this delicacy among delicacies? Aside from “red wines,” two considerations are: We usually barbecue in the summertime, when lighter wines, or at least wines that are less tannic and oaky usually show best, and red wine lovers want some character, not something insipid, even in warm weather.

Combining these two ideals gives us a red wine from a grape variety that offers hearty, robust flavors, but a wine made in a style that emphasizes fruit over backbone. By backbone I mean oak, tannin, earthiness—things other than fruit.

One of my all time favorite wines with summer barbecues is California zinfandel. They can be made in a variety of styles, from many parts of California, but choosing one I’d say something from Paso Robles on California’s Central Coast. After all, it’s home to an annual zinfandel festival.

One zin I’ve enjoyed over the years is from a winery named Peachy Canyon. I especially like a simple, straightforward zinfandel they call “Incredible Red.” It retails for around $15, sometimes less. The style is fruit-centered, with lots of the brambleberry flavors associated with the grape, and little else in the way of oak and tannin to interfere.

If you’re headed to Little Rock, Salut! at Prospect Place, the new bistro in Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood, kicks off its dinner service with A Casual Evening of Food & Wine, at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. You can meet the winemaker, enjoy a delicious menu inspired by Argentina’s famous beef, “Pampered on the Pampas” with lots of great wines in the dining room or in the garden. Plus, you can hear my scintillating introduction of the winemaker. Go to brucecochran.com to find out more.

Try a new wine this week!
Bruce

Columbia Valley Cabs

Bargain for outdoor dining

If you’ve been drinking only California wines (and a lot of you have), and are ready to try something else, consider the great wines and great wine bargains coming out of Washington State. As prices for many California wines rise, the rapid vineyard expansion to their north is coming to our rescue.
Like California, Washington is on the Pacific Coast. But, sitting near the famous 45th degree of latitude, its wines have a slightly different style. It often strikes me as somewhat less powerful, less heavy, but fully as intense in flavor, maybe because its location gives it two extra hours of daylight during the growing season. I think of that as light rather than heat.
Some of my favorite wines are from Washington’s Columbia River Valley. It’s dry there, sitting in the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountain Range, so vineyards are irrigated from the Columbia and its tributaries. Water when you need it, but not when you don’t, it’s great for consistent quality. Columbia Valley wines tend to be flavorful yet food friendly, a great style for warm weather dining, especially outdoors.
If you look at a map, there’s a special part of the Columbia Valley, where a bend in the river has produced a fine vineyard site. It’s curious place, as it’s littered with many large, house-sized boulders that actually came from far upriver, as far away as Montana, many millennia ago.  Nobody has yet been able to say exactly how they got there, but one of the most likely theories is a huge flood from an ice dam breaking as the Ice Age was ending. One can only imagine how much water it would have taken.
The word for a glacially misplaced boulder is “erratic” as my winemaking friend in Washington, Ron Bunnell, told me when he tasted a fine cabernet sauvignon from this special vineyard with me. Of course I ordered some for the Arkansas market. Erratic Cabernet Sauvignon (as well as the Chardonnay) retails in the $10-$15 dollar range.

For questions, comments, or to subscribe or unsubscribe, you can email Bruce at: bruce@brucecochran.com