December 13 2006
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As I’m coming to understand the wine industry from the inside out I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the issue of elitism and snobbery.
In a previous post, St. Vini from the Zinquisition had a dissenting opinion on my rant against Olive Garden—isolating a post he wrote on the value of wines with a national footprint on the smaller, hand-crafted stuff.
I don’t necessarily disagree with him and this got me thinking in a different direction—about the value of an Olive Garden trying to spread education on wine and where exactly wine elitism comes from.
In my previous life, closely aligned with IBM, I came to know all to well the insidious top-down fear mongering that is the management structure at the corporate behemoth. While I wasn’t an employee of IBM, I worked closely with IBM’ers on a daily basis for years and years. And, while they weren’t afraid for their jobs on a daily basis, (job security is quite good, actually) one of the typical motivating factors in their world was “looking good.” Or, perhaps I should say, not “looking dull” --because I heard that a lot. “We don’t want to look dull” was the refrain even as you were being asked to have ownership of information that was coming across four different layers in a weird game of responsibility without accountability. A majority of decision-making was based on the harmful notion of looking good for the boss, or even better, looking good for the boss’ boss. By proxy, most good sense was sucked out of a business situation based on this risk adverse quality of work life.
This is to say I kind of figured out the third dimension of the business—the gray area in between black and white where most people exist in a world that requires that things actually get done.
So, as I become acclimated to the wine industry one of the more curious aspects of my foray has been to try and decode where this mythical notion of elitism is propagated. It’s the bane of the industry—most everyone likes to pay more than just lip service by providing actual real value to creating an approachable product and an approachable brand that invites a sophisticated, but accessible clientele.
But, when I was more strictly on the consumer side it was easy to read some of the glamorized accounts of the wealth and sophistication in Napa, Sonoma and elsewhere and think that some of the wealth rub-off infected the industry creating a sort of snobbery that floated down the pike to the consumer like flotsam from a swollen, flooded river bank.
As my awareness becomes sharpened, though, I’m coming to think that I might have been off-base. As I meet producers, distributors, brokers, importers and wine technology folks, almost to a person this is a warm, friendly, inviting and CASUAL industry. Dress is casual, perhaps a touch hipper than the khaki and blue shirt uniform of Silicon Valley and more agrarian. Attitudes are bright and egos seem mostly manageable. This is a jeans crowd, and for the better.
Surely some subtle elitism that manifests itself as snobbery exists, but by and large I think the blame for this notion exists only a rung or two up from the consumer.
I’m blaming the Sommelier or Wine Director at fine restaurants as well as the high-end wine shop. And, I’m blaming the very small percentage of wine enthusiasts that are wealthy collectors and enthusiasts.
These guys are the spiritual robber barons and perpetuators of the velvet rope that cordon off the wine world for many newcomers.
I was in a conversation a week or so back where the light bulb went off. The jist of the conversation was around selling wine to restaurants the likes of which win Wine Spectator awards and the Wine Director has a slew of alphabet letters after their name from wine certifications. We were discussing the difficulty in getting on those wine lists and the comment I received back was:
“I like to work with guys that don’t have wine certifications. The guys that have certifications think they invented the damn stuff. It’s too much of a pain in the rear to sell wine that is excellent to guys that did a little studying, hang out with cooks and think their wine pairings are the end all be all.”
Interesting stuff and I agree with him, I just don’t think the chasm is going to be crossed with Olive Garden pimping White Zinfandel to folks dining on the all you can eat salad and breadsticks.
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December 12 2006
Gremlins was a movie from my youth—a flick circa 1984 where Gizmo, a cute little furry creature of unknown origin, spawned evil offspring that multiplied exponentially when the furry guy was exposed to water.
That’s kind of how I see top 100 lists … they multiply exponentially when exposed to the opportunity for ink and paper. Virtually every wine magazine has a list of their wines of the year and most upper-tier retailers do as well.
These lists almost inevitably include “value” wines. It might be the most overused word in the wine lexicon.
Value, to me, is a somewhat nebulous concept.
Scoring a beautiful bottle of wine for $50 when only 150 cases are produced is a value to me. Scarcity drives price and Indiana isn’t first on the list for wineries to secure distribution. Value is also finding a $12 bottle of wine that drinks beautifully, but is priced for everyday folks that notice when the electric bill payment leaves their checking account.
Though, there is seems to be a dichotomy when calling something a value.
I think, as I allude to above, that a value is wine that drinks at least twice its price (as in our $12 bottle example) and a wine so good that it’s a must buy at the price it’s offered for sale.
I’m curious what others think, though. Please let me know how you define value.
This value thing came to mind this past weekend as I pulled the cork on two “values.” These wines are held up as bargains and models for bang for the buck by popular critics.
The 2005 Pillar Box Cabernet /Shiraz/Merlot priced at $10 bucks with a Parker score of 91 points and described by Mr. Parker as, “an unbelievable value” and “one of the great wine bargains of the world.”
In the words of my local wine guy:
This inky dark, ultra-dense fruit bomb has a spicy dark fruit nose and a super-ripe, full-bodied palate of rich, jammy, blackberry and ripe plum fruit that finish long and smooth with only the subtlest tannins in evidence.
Somewhere between the lines of my local wine guys’ description is the unsaid statement that goes something like, “This is a Tuesday wine if you like fruit and alcohol.” I, personally, didn’t care for this wine. It is one dimensional and not at all interesting.
What I didn’t mention in my reference to the two criteria for value is it doesn’t count if you think the wine sucks, period.
The other alleged “value” wine is also an Australian offering—the 2004 Woop Woop Shiraz—an 89 point rating from Parker.
This wine, on the other hand, is a superb value in my estimation and drinks exceptionally well for the price—many spots on the Internet sell it for $7.99--this is a bottle that compares favorably to $25 dollar bottles that I’ve had. It opens up nicely with a nice bouquet, is dense and layered and has bright fruit. I like it.
Overall, my lesson here is to take the Top 100 wine lists and the value wines for what they are—exponentially proliferating pieces of ink on paper and use them as a guideline for wines that might be interesting to try. But, in general, I don’t think I’ll be following too many more “value” recommendations anytime soon. It might be more fruitful to continue down the path of education regarding producers, reputation and style.
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December 2 2006
I’ve been reading The Far Side of Eden by James Conaway and A Tale of Two Valleys by Alan Duetschman—two non-fiction Napa Valley-based books where the author takes a social reporting perspective on the state of the Valley; the new money that has poured in over the last 15 years, the outsized personalities, the ego and the old guard—a segment of folks that are clinging to the life that attracted them to the Napa area over the course of the 30 years. These differing groups, with obvious human dynamism are frequently in conflict with each other.
Despite the commonalities in subject matter, these are two different books—The Far Side of Eden is a literary tome with a well-crafted narrative and A Tale of Two Valleys is more of a long form article with some juicier bits of gossipy chatter.
Somebody should option either one of these and write a screenplay.
Forget Mondovino, the documentary that took on the globalization of wine, and forget Sideways the buddy road movie with California’s Central Coast as its backdrop and adapted from a book. And, really, forget A Good Year, the movie based on a book by Peter Mayle.
What is my recommendation for this screenplay? It should be a mockumentary ala the movies that Christopher Guest has been doing—This is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and the film currently in theatres, For Your Consideration.
These mockumentary movies are all filmed in a faux-documentary style in deadpan parody style, with hilarious results.
All of Guest’s movies mine the territory of marginally talented people fanatical about a niche of interest and on the cusp of some notoriety—the audience, comically, gets to enjoy the ensuing schandefreude.
In Waiting for Guffman, for example, a local theatre troupe in the Midwest puts together a show for their towns’ sesquicentennial and the troupe director, Corky St. Clair, indicates that a Broadway critic is going to view the show and a good review could take the actors all the way to Broadway.
Imagine the comedic territory that is unexplored for a mockumentary in the wine industry—wealthy titan of business from an unglamorous business with more money than palate and his impeccably groomed and much younger wife moves to Napa to enjoy the good life. Their attempts at society and community integration while developing a winery and their interaction with non-Anglo help and zoning officials is set against the backdrop of conspicuous consumption and a new circle of friends with lifestyle, but very little else in common. Meanwhile, a media industry hell-bent on canonizing the glamorous side of an otherwise agricultural life plays the foil as a Parker-like figure is sent up as the critic that could make the husband-wife team FAMOUS.
Pure comedy gold for whoever wants to make the next wine related movie—a parody of the excesses, foibles, and interplay between man, the classes and the land in the wine industry.
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November 28 2006
Something interesting is happening in the world of wine, albeit quietly with a sure, measured pace.
Negociants like Cameron Hughes, Don Sebastiani & Sons and consumer boutique vignerons like Crushpad are all popularizing a portion of the wine industry that used to be a very quiet corner of the business—creating labels for bulk wine or a quasi-custom crush with high quality markers.
But, there’s a next level over the horizon, and I wonder who will seize the opportunity to marry the bulk wine market with the hardcore enthusiast.
The next level is for a negociant outfit to start aggressively blending and to translate that blending ability to consumer preference so a customer might dictate the percentages of varietals that go into a bottle.
Take for example, a whiskey company: Compass Box Whiskey Company. In their own words:
Compass Box is a specialist Scotch whisky company. We are devoted to making some of Scotland’s premier whiskies through the art of blending.
We work like fine wine negociants. We choose individual casks of whiskies from different distilleries that offer complementary sets of flavours. We carefully blend these casks in small batches to make our proprietary whiskies.
These guys buy barrels, mix up their own blend and then sell it—as ultra-premium whiskey. I’m not much of a whiskey drinker, but I love this idea.
On the wine side there’s Mayo Family Winery in Glen Ellen. They have created www.theblendingcellar.com. The premise is simple enough, a consumer gets to blend his own wines using wines they have aged in French oak for a year—choosing from a couple of Cabs, Merlots, a Cab Franc and a Malbec, you can tweak until you find the right mix for your palate.
An even better bet for this is their blending kit that lets you do this at home. For $100 bucks you get all six wines, instructions and some equipment and a customer can do their own blending trials in the comfort of their own home. Once the blend is set, you place your order and your custom wine shows up shortly thereafter.
I Love this!
I think the long-term application is consumer retail. Can you imagine going into a combo wine shop & blending room? The store is using the Enomatic for sampling of all kinds of wines and then has a dozen wines on tap that can be trialed and blended and then bottled on site. The store has its own proprietary blends, ala Compass Box, which it sells, but also has “recipes” for other blends, as well.
Wine, on site sampling and participatory activity—what could be better? Let the cash registers ring!
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November 23 2006
Over the last month or so, I’ve been spending a good amount of time checking out blogs—and blogs outside of the normal sphere of blog reading that I already do with wine, food and technology.
With the re-launch of Good Grape I’ve been trying to get a read on what other pockets of the blogosphere are doing with their sites.
And, frankly, I’m trying to get a bead on why wine writing isn’t toppling other forms of wine media like we’re seeing in other mainstream affinity areas. We have no Arianna Huffington. Certainly, wine blogging triumphs are happening on a smaller scale. Though, it’s almost as if we’re granted a seat at the adult table at Thanksgiving, and not barbarians at the gate toppling the Gestapo of traditional media (as we’ve seen in other verticals).
I’m seeing an interesting mix of evolution, overall. Blogging started out as a shorter form of writing; it was a sort of diary style mode of communication. Blogging is slowly, but surely morphing into longer form pieces—not reporting, but certainly more reasoned analysis. In a lot of instances, blog writing is better than mainstream pieces.
I’ve read a couple of football related blogs that break down the nuance’s of a Cover-2 defense in a match up between team A and team B that is not only insightful content, but likely information that couldn’t be produced in a newsroom and if it could it would never see the light of day.
An undeniable trend is the fact that people expect context with their information. Straight news reporting that gives just the facts is leaving people short—folks want to understand the situational or dynamic context to a situation.
The other undeniable fact is that people want opinion. When you take somebody’s opinion counter-balanced with analysis that provides context than you’re coming close to having a 360 degree perspective on an issue that allows you to render your own opinion. They say the definition of intelligence is being able to argue both sides of an issue.
Blogging is and has been moving away from a form of personal expression and more into a communication vehicle to help people learn and understand.
Unfortunately, I think the wine blogosphere can do a lot better in the “providing opinions” department.
I’ve been reading numerous established wine bloggers give an overview of their ethical wine compass over the last couple of months replete with full tasting methodologies and, predominantly, the notion that they don’t write about wines, media, or anything that they don’t like. Simply, those opinions go unexpressed; they are repressed into the “Dale Carnegie” school of politeness.
I find this curious. And, I’m willing to offer up my opinion and say that the benign amongst us would be better stewards for the wine blogosphere if a strong dose of opinion was offered up.
Undoubtedly, the wine industry is genteel, friendly and a bastion for folks that do right for others as much as they do for themselves, but that stance in wine writing will never topple the media elite in the industry and create a truly egalitarian approach to wine, breaking down the snobbery that everybody purports to be working against.
I was browsing Slate, the online NPR-like news magazine, the other day and they’ve figured out this quasi opinion-analysis-reporting angle. Their wine writer, Michael Steinberger, is writing primarily in this first-person style and proffering positions. Headlines, too, leave little doubt about the magazine’s support of his position.
In reference to the Oxford Companion to Wine the headline reads,
“The Most Useful Wine Book Ever”
In reference to Thanksgiving the headline reads,
“The Perfect Thanksgiving Wine”
A Book Review headline reads,
“The latest edition of The Joy of Cooking falls short”
Unequivocally, I know where Slate stands—just as I know what a movie critic thinks about a movie and just as I know where a columnist is coming from … and I’m reminded that Parker attained his position in the industry by indefatigably defending the correctness of his opinion, changing the industry as he went.
Generally speaking, the wine industry is years and years behind other industry in progressiveness, resisting and clinging to a bygone way of doing business. The wine blogosphere should be leading the way, pulling the industry kicking and screaming into a new day of kicking ass and taking names, complete with opinions, complete with calling a spade a spade. Media, influencers and alpha consumers lead the way. Who will join me in this call to arms?
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