Coverage from all over: SF Gate. Decanter (DECANTER!). and Dirty South Wine.

Any good cheer that Murphy Goode built up during the contest was promptly flushed when they picked the finalists. You see, all the Internet voting that they encouraged was completely ignored and they picked the finalists (and, ultimately, the winner) based on what they saw in the candidates. Well, everyone got bitter. OWC topic here. SF Gate reports:

It seemed like such a Goode idea.

Oh no. They went for the zinger in the first line.

when the winery unveiled its top 50 finalists in late June, top vote-getter Martin Sargent of San Francisco, a former TechTV host and Internet celebrity of sorts, was not on the list.

Were I Sargent, I’d probably be bent out of shape too.

“Yeah, we screwed up,” said Caroline Shaw, senior vice president at Jackson Family Enterprises and a winery spokeswoman.

But Shaw added that the promotion “was never intended to be a contest” – which are illegal for alcoholic beverages under California law. Finalists were weighed on writing samples and other “background materials.” That went for Sargent, too.

While the whole ordeal did bring a lot of good will, cheer, and website hits to Murphy Goode, I’m be surprised if it moved the needle on sales. Further, I’m positive that some Twitter revolt will also fail to move the venerable sales needle in the opposite direction.

Regardless, Hardy is already out in California setting up shop in conditions that can be described as “rustic.” Good luck, it’ll be fun to follow along.

So to get going, we’re looking for someone (maybe you) who really knows how to use Web 2.0 and Facebook and blogs and social media and YouTube and all sorts of good stuff like that — to tell the world about our wines and the place where we live: the Sonoma County Wine Country.

Did they hire a college freshman to intern for them? Did they pick up an outsourced freelancer to blog for them from around the globe? No, that would be boring (plus, I wouldn’t be writing about it)

we’re offering you a “Really Goode Job” — a six-month job paying $10,000 a month plus accommodations!

Murphy-Goode is offering a six-month paid job to work their blogs, twitter, and Internet marketing campaign. Let’s stop right here and give credit to Murphy-Goode and the employee that came up with this. NICE MOVE. Seriously. Love the innovation, love the thinking on it. They’re getting tons of buzz, everyone is applying, and they have a great chance at landing a prominent wine blogger to come on and run their social media marketing. The blogger has an instant network of friends with him, and they have a jump start bringing in Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

So who is in the running? 269 people, as of this writing. The applicants submit video applications and us, the unwashed masses, get to vote on who we want to work for them. Pretty cool.

I humbly endorse two candidates:

Hardy from Dirty South Wine. Hardy writes one of the few wine blogs that I actually read. He knows his way around the Internets but doesn’t get too excited about all the madness. After hearing about the job offer, he up and flew from ATL to SFO to meet with Murphy-Goode at their event. Murphy-Goode would have a hard time finding a better man to handle their electronic empire.

Here is Hardy’s video.

Rick Bakas of Open Wine Consortium and RickBakas.com. Rick knows his way around all things Tweet, has been influential is getting Wine Bloggers together, and spearheaded the inaugural season of the Open Wine Consortium Fantasy Football league (which I won, nooch).

View Rick’s video here.

Don’t take my word for it, flip through the applications and vote with your heart.