January 27 2008
Readers of this site will know that I am a book guy. I like books. My wife likes books. Our bookcases runneth over and, between the two of us, I think we single handedly pull up the mean that says the average American reads four books a year.
Given my book fandom, I think 2008 is going to be a good year. I say that because the majority of the books that I read are wine or non-fiction business books and it looks like ’08, in terms of wine books – published and in progress- might be a banner year.
And, as a brief aside, really, what could be a more fitting way to kick off ’08 than with a little schmaltz? Chicken Soup for the Wine Lovers Soul was published in November and who can’t use a dose of feel-good dripping sentimentality every now and again?
Seriously, though, some folks near and dear to wine bloggers hearts are planning on writing a book, or publishing a book. And, this is after we all convene for the wine klatch and Dr. Debs Wine Book Club.
Consider:
Tyler Colman from Dr. Vino is releasing not one, but two books this year. His first is intriguingly called, “Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink.”
Alice Feiring, known by many from her long career in journalism and to others based on her blog In Vino Veritas, is publishing the provocatively named “The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization.”
Lenn from Lenndevours is going to pen the perfect book on Long Island wine ...
Tim Elliott from Winecast is going to write and self-publish a book for wine beginners to expand beyond the basics—a field guide to explore the 2nd level of wine enthusiasm.
And, finally, Ryan and Gabrielle from Catavino are kicking around the idea of doing a wine blogging magazine/book project with contributions from around the wine blogosphere.
Undoubtedly, there are also several other blogging derived book projects going on that are not mentioned here. I recall from last year that Josh from Pinotblogger.com was approached about potentially writing a book, as well.
All of this publishing talk is a great thing in my mind! Around wine bloggers there is always a subtle undercurrent of desirability for additional respect amongst wine consumers, established media and the industry. I think all of us keep waiting for that turning point, the epochal period, where the wine blogosphere gets hot, red hot, and goes upstream towards mainstream with more vigor in people reading like other niches have seen—food, politics, gossip, etc. One thing is certain however, regardless of whether the wine blogosphere heats up this year or ‘09, or never—publishing books and having books published after using wine blogging as a platform is an incredible way to increase legitimacy for everybody. So, these hardy, intrepid souls deserve our attention and support—a rising tide raises all ships.
Good luck to all who are publishing this year and assuredly I will be reading your books—though, your books will be AFTER I get my schmaltzy fix from the Chicken Soup series.
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January 25 2008
Some quick hitting random thoughts on a few wine related news items from the last two weeks before they turn into dust at the news and wine blog idea graveyard … and a reminder, as well.
First, the Reminder …
There is a small quantity left of the Good Grape Wine Blogger Pack at Domaine547.com. The jist is, I made wine recommendations, wrote up a newsletter and Jill from Domaine 547 sells the vino. The theme that I chose to select wines from is, “Alsace by way of Willamette” --Alsatian varieties from Oregon. With the wines that I chose, you get three delicious wines from two boutique producers. Amity Vineyards offers up a Riesling and Brooks Wines has two wines with a white blend and a Riesling. The wines are tasty and affordable and I have no skin in the game, no dog in the fight. I just get the thrill of playing wine club Sommelier. You can buy the three pack for an easy $52 at this link.
Consumer Wine Shipments Gain a Temperature Assist from New Packaging Technology
Gaining exactly zero mindshare in the wine blogosphere, a wine logistics and consumer shipping company, New Vine Logistics, announced last week that they partnered with a packaging company to create a line of packaging, called WineAssure, that ensures that consumer wine shipments do not exceed 70 degrees on the high side, nor refrigerator temperatures on the low side.
Frankly, this is very welcome news and the packaging should help alleviate the threat of wine shipments receiving heat damage in the warm summer months.
The rubber meets the road, however, with adoption, and I will be curious to see how quickly wineries adopt the packaging. Many wineries shut off shipping in the summer months and I am guessing the wineries desire to turn shipping on in the summer will be based on pure economics. Assuredly, the design and exclusive packaging development was not cheap, and I hope that New Vine is not expecting the wineries to bear the brunt of that design cost in a pass-along situation, therefore reducing the ability for consumers to win. Time will tell, but don’t think for a second that the wine industry still doesn’t get in its own way on the path to trying to be successful.
Sacre Bleu Available at Target
One of my favorite wine brands, Sacre Bleu, is now available at Target stores in Florida. Usually, when you are dropped into a top wine market, it is a temporary way station to a larger rollout. Let us hope that happens for an underdog wine brand from Minneapolis, MN. A nicer guy you will never meet, Galen Struwe deserves success with his fledgingly brand. First, Galen comes from outside the wine industry and it is a long, uphill battle to figure out the Byzantine wine industry without the benefit of experience and, while people are genuinely helpful, there is sometimes a sense of a weary resignation amongst wine folks along the lines, “Yeah, let me know how that goes for you.” The wine, kind of a negociant/import model from France, is good and third, the way that Sacre Bleu is marrying music with wine and the Millenials is something of a case study in successful marketing. Think of Sacre Bleu as a Stormhoek for young music lovers instead of semi-young card-carrying wine blogger geeks (yes, I carry the card, too). When the wine is available in a store near you be sure to confound your friends by saying in your best French accent, “I’m picking up some Sacre Bleu from Target Boutique.” Congrats to Sacre Bleu and keep an eye on them as a rising story with loads of opportunity for wide success.
Transparency alert: Sacre Bleu has an ad on my site. I have received no compensation from them though I am, occasionally, a sucker for a winery or objet d’art (see also Crushpad Wines) that I take a personal liking to.
Michael Chiarello Sticks his Hand in the Celebrity Chef Till
Anybody besides me read the press release or see the mention on Napa Valley wine blog The Cork Board and scratch their head and say, “What took so long?”
Michael Chiarello, the celebrity chef with the show “Easy Entertaining with Michael Chiarello” on the Food Network, a cooking show where, despite the name, he never seems to entertain anybody he knows, has announced plans to open a new restaurant in Yountville at the in-progress development called V Marketplace.
The founding Chef of Tra Vigne, Chiarello is going to go back into the kitchen with his new restaurant.
The thing that I could never figure out with Chiarello is that, despite his mail order lifestyle company Napa Style, why didn’t the guy have restaurants going already?
If you look at the Food Network and see Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, Wolfgang Puck, Morimoto and even Rachael Ray and Tyler Florence cashing in with restaurants and endorsements all over the place, why was Chiarello slow on the draw?
Sheesh, Emeril, Flay and Batali are printing money. I don’t care how many re-used wine barrel end tables Chiarello sells, there’s got to be more margin turning three tables a night selling $42 steaks ala carte in Vegas.
I’m guessing Chiarello is going to be transplanting, as he says, “my personal blend of Napa Valley’s famous hospitality” to a Vegas hotel pretty darn soon. Why else would you put the chef toque back on?
Good luck to him, his show always has him turning out some nice looking food, and, perhaps, he knows, smarter than I do, that timing is right to take a swing at the plate to hit a major food and wine concept with “Napa style.”
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January 19 2008
Now, a full two weeks after Alder, while adding his own inimitable perspective, created a wide distribution platform for Rich Cartiere’s reporting from the Wine Market Report, you would have to say that Wine.com has seen significant damage to its reputation online and offline.
That is what journalism does; it tells objective stories before those with opinions weigh in with the essential truth and let the chips fall where they may.
Simply, very few wine stories that are not lifestyle and consumer-oriented have had as much historical life, save for the completely boring and pedantic “New World vs. Old World” debate that pops up a couple of times a year with a new set of players.
As the wine.com story heads into the home stretch, as the fire gives way to burning embers, I think it is safe to say it will show up on year-end 2008 wine industry “notable stories” lists.
Classicwines.com announcing that they were removing all advertising from Wine.com from their site was simply a symbolic deathblow from the wine blogosphere court of public opinion. Persona non grata, if you will. Or, to be more colloquial, Wine.com has been Fredoed (see also here).
In the meantime, though, given we have 11.5 more months of ’08 yet to unfold, let’s give a little credit where credit is due before we pull the car past the accident site. Credit goes to Richard Cartiere for breaking the story from a reporting perspective and the Specialty Wine Retailers Association for hosting the Wine Market Report newsletter where the story first appeared. Credit also goes, significantly, to Alder Yarrow, for giving this story a voice with opinion that took the lid off the situation.
Cartiere, especially, should credit for breaking this and that has been a little bit lost in the shuffle. I’m not sure where he got the tip, but it was bold of him to go with it. However, he is a journalist, experienced in investigation. Having the story come from an exclusive newsletter like the Wine Market Report and subsequently using the trickle down effect to Vinography.com seems like it was smart in execution. If it had not started in the Wine Market Report, I am not sure if it would have picked up as much steam as it did when Vinography effectively “broke” the story wide open.
The interesting thing about the story starting in the Wine Market Report, because it’s subscription-only to an influential group of winery insiders, is the fact that it saw the light of day at all to a larger audience. Historically, Cartiere has not made the newsletter available for *any* public consumption outside of his email or fax subscriber list. I know he does not make it available for outside intercourse because I have tried.
In the summer of last year, I read a copy of the Wine Market Report that featured a very damning review of “The House of Mondavi” by Julia Flynn Siler. I subsequently had occasion to exchange a couple of emails with Cartiere. I asked him if I could post the newsletter because I wanted to do a counterpoint review to the book review that he did. He very politely and professionally said, within the context of a longer narrative about his reporting background:
My approach to wine business news is the same I had at The AP, etc:--investigate, verify, verify, report all the news fit for discussion. I do not receive any gifts or accept travel or accommodations from wineries, etc. I accept only a limited bit of ads (rarely if ever are they from wineries) and otherwise support the newsletter through annual subscriptions (roughly 1,000 executive types currently). That is one of many measures I have in place to ensure that editorial is never to be influenced by the wine industry itself.
This model is the same as has been used for decades by newspapers in the United States. My slight twist is that the newsletter is not posted online and is available only via fax or email and it focuses exclusively on the wine business.
As such, I must deny as I always do, any request to publish the newsletter on a web site. Copyright restrictions give you the opportunity to quote from it to a limited degree as long as it is with clear and consistent attribution.
So, again, as the story dies down, let’s give credit to the folks that brought this story to light—Cartiere for writing it and agreeing to expose his newsletter to everybody against his own strictly enforced policy, the Specialty Wine Retailers Association web site for hosting the newsletter, and to Alder Yarrow, of course, for giving an opinion that, once combined with careful reporting, gave the story legs to expose the scurrilous truth.
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January 9 2008
Alder at Vinography.com wrote a post on some scurrilous activity by Wine.com last week. I followed on with a similar post. Alder’s post has generated a firestorm of comments one of which is so fantastic that I’m reproducing in full (and I hope the folks at Winemonger.com don’t mind) because it’s a monologue that would make both the screenwriter AND Jack Nicholson from “A Few Good Men” fawn in admiration.
In fact, if you watch the “A Few Good Men” snippet on YouTube (linked above) you should smile at yourself over the parallels ...
To Wine.com:
As a fellow online retailer who abides by the rules and pays dearly for it every day, we do understand your frustration with those who take illegal shortcuts. We also cannot side with those who call for civil disobedience in this matter. It is an uncomfortable fact of life that our social contract comes with a set of rules that are put down as laws, which at times do grow to be outdated, senseless, archaic and only remain in place to benefit the selfish interests of a few. Freeing the grapes, promoting free trade, and freeing bottles of wine from their legally imposed incarceration are all noble quests, but they hardly constitute a good case for civil disobedience. Furthermore, breaking these laws does, as has been pointed out, only play into the hands of those that profit from them (and pay millions to keep them in place).
However, this argument against those retailers who choose to break the rules has to be kept strictly separate from the path you have chosen. Going vigilante and taking action against those retailers by setting up a sting operation is not only a well-deserved act of PR self-mutilation, it is also just a despicable thing to do. Let’s take Alder’s freeway example a step further. Your action is like tossing nails out onto the freeway and then speeding away ahead of them. All of us online retailers who rely on markets to stay open will get to feel the repercussions of your selfish action.
You state that fairness was the goal. Where then is the fair open letter to all online wine retailers asking them to abide by the rules so we can strip this market from its medieval chastity belt together? You could have even gone so far as to invite everyone to get on board by a certain date and announced your plan to be the monitor of this club of white hat retailers, and then this group of dandy lads could then have jointly approached the authorities and asked to be recognized as those who abide by the rules voluntarily. By process of elimination the trade enforcement authorities (not you but those other guys who actually work for the government) would have then known where to look. You could have been the leader of this noble band of brothers and come out of your quest for a level playing field smelling like a rose (or at least like a carnation). Instead, you chose the way of the sneaky tattle-tailer that everyone couldn’t stand at school and you pissed on yourself.
We adhere to the rules and ship only where we can legally ship to. We are probably one of the smaller online retailers by virtue of importing the wines we sell ourselves rather than buying them from wholesalers who bought from other importers. We, as you, do also work with wholesalers at times, only they are our customers and not our vendors. Meaning we too have an interest in getting along with them. BUT, we will not side with those who have no love for wine and no interest in allowing the free trade of it. Fortunately there are a lot of good distributors out there with their wine hearts beating loudly for those amazing wines that some producers make for the world to enjoy.
So apparently you were the Washington customer that we recently had to refuse to sell wine to. We do want to help you get the wine you requested, and here is a way around the law that is perfectly legal. Instead of shipping your wines to yourself in Washington, send it to your aunt in California or any of the other 26 states we can legally ship to. Then have your dear auntie bring those bottles along the next time she visits you.
In fact, we have put together a special flight of wines for you. It’s called the “Sting Op 007” and is comprised of some of our best Gruner Veltliners, Rieslings, red wines and award winning dessert wines. And if you act now, you will enjoy a special 15% discount, PLUS we will give 10% of the proceeds for all the Sting Op 007 cases ordered by anyone to the SWRA. Just enter ISUCK as a discount code at checkout. Enjoy.
Cheers from Stephan and Emily at Winemonger.com
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
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November 14 2007
Note to self: Do not, under any circumstance, go back to the large Indianapolis wine shop that I hate to go to, even though they have the largest and best Int’l wine selection in the city, without a definite shopping game plan to get in and out without engaging the staff.
Why?
Because if their scurrilous retail price gouging isn’t enough to tip you over the edge, than their brow beating retail sales people are …
Alain, the same guy that over charged me on Saturday for to many discarded Opus One and Grange wooden boxes (they charge $6 bucks per box—can you believe it – for something they get for free for buying the wine it comes in --and I bought three and was charged for six) is the same guy that got mad (very annoyed) at the notion of “Silver Burgundy.”
Hey, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m no Francophile, and the mistake was mine, I should have never mentioned “Silver Burgundy” but Alain got down right mad when I suggested that I was looking for a “Silver Burgundy—something from the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais. I have to bring a bottle to a tasting tonight.”
Go ahead, you can have a laugh at my expense; it was truly a Clark Griswold moment. I didn’t read Brooklynguy’s post close enough. So, Alain, the Frenchman, probably by way of his parents eating baguettes in Detroit, floor salesperson, says, “Who said Silver Burgundy? Was it Joe from National?”
He was mad that somebody was spreading bad information and apparently had it on good account that somebody at National (a distributor) was the idiot. I quickly retreated and then over-explained that “No, no, it’s an online tasting, a Wednesday once a month, everybody gets wine around a theme and …oh, forget it.”
He quickly looked like he still had some residual anger left over from being mad at the stooge that was telling me to buy a “Silver Burgundy” (Sorry Brooklynguy, while I didn’t cite you by name, I let the fictitiousness of you as an organizer take the fall) and confused at the online stuff all at the same time.
I quickly grabbed a bottle, to just simply disengage from the verbal intercourse and I picked a bad bottle in the process.
How do I know it’s bad? Because I may not trust my French wine knowledge, but I do trust my palate and this is one lifeless, thin, tart, mouth drying Burgundy devoid of fruit. It’s the kind of stuff that you would think would be turned into a cleaning solvent or a fuel by-product by the French when they destroy wine, except, well, this stuff made its way over to the states.
The Matthiew di Brully 2005 Mercurey “La Perriere” is not simply just unexceptional--It’s completely and utterly bad. How else do I know it’s bad? I don’t think it’s distributed in very many places. A search of the Internet—Wine-Searcher, WineZap, etc turns up zero, zilch, nada on this wine—no review, no nothing. The only thing I could find on this wine was a Cork’d review from “iowines” and a rating of 92 out of 100. Hmm … 92 out of 100. “iowines” is based in Des Moines, Iowa … hmmm … let’s look at this wine, why yes, of course, it’s imported by Wine Adventures in Des Moines, Iowa. What an incredible coincidence.
Despite the miss on the WBW wine, I do take it in stride because I did learn a couple of very valuable things--#1) Alain is very concerned about the correctness of understanding French wine and “Silver Burgundy” is not correct in his world view and #2) stretching out of my comfort zone is always a good thing because I will go back and find a wine from Côte Chalonnaise or Mâconnais and celebrate Wine Blogging Wednesday properly and more privately on some random Tuesday in the near future. It will be a “make good” and the point in time I will also secretly apologize to Broonklyguy for letting him take the brunt of the verbal diarreah from Alain when it was my own ineptness in the first place ... ah, well. What is next month’s theme?
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