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September 8 2008
What would you do if somebody dropped $500 in your lap and made you spend the money?
Most of us would head to the wine shop (or online) and spend the money on some vinous goodness.
Today, I am wishing I had my money back.
Earlier this Summer I signed up for the Court of Master Sommelier Introductory Course & Exam held in Indianapolis, IN today and tomorrow.
The cost—just $500 dollars and two days off work. It seemed doable at the time.
However, as I got closer to the time, with an out of town trip scheduled at the end of this week (and the promise of a 1994 Duckhorn Cabernet) to visit friends, work obligations seemed too pressing to break away.
A couple of things I hate about this circumstance:
• I hate the notion that I deem my work more important than my personal life
• I hate the fact that I completely just kissed $500 away for a non-refundable class
• I hate the fact that I won’t be able to nail the certification and give myself a credential
But, mostly, I hate losing $500 bucks that I will never see again.
Instead, I wish I would have called an audible a couple of weeks back, received at least a partial refund and then spent that money on some wine.
The class syllabus would have had me going through a good foundation of wine basics (and, frankly, a lot of stuff that my California-centric knowledge base could use):
• Viticulture
• AOC rules
• Bordeaux
• Loire Valley
• Alsace
• Rhone Valley
• Burgundy
• Languedoc-Roussillon
• Southwest France
• Champagne (including sparkling wine production techniques)
• Spain
• Portugal
• Italy
• Germany
… and every other major wine producing area in the world.
Alas, I am left with my Oxford Companion to Wine as my solace, my wallet a touch emptier.
Don’t tell my wife (who in holding up her matrimonial duties is mildly annoyed that I have wasted $500), but I think I’m going to go buy a ½ case of vino from Alsace, Austria, the Rhone Valley and Italy (Piedmont) as the salve to my wallet hurt – I have a California knowledge base, and what could be more American than spending money as a reward for losing money? I think a sage calls this, “throwing good money after bad.”
I pose the question to you – if you have been given $500 bucks for wine, from what area would you buy?
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September 6 2008
The good news is that if you’re a wine lover and a college football fan, as I am, you have twice the reason to love this time of year.
Today, the first weekend in September, is the best time of the year. Period.
The perfect day for me? Good wine and a Notre Dame victory. Go Irish!
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September 3 2008
It has only been the last week that I realized that the world of wine has crossed the chasm and is in the midst of a radical transformation.
Put another way, the convergence of wine and technology has crossed the 50-yard line and is moving the chains, first down, after first down.
Before, I simply liked to view the shift in the world of wine, as it relates to technology, as a splinter effort that had not yet coalesced into the greater industry.
That is no longer true.
I am wont to be hyperbolic, but this is not one of those times. The reason for this epiphany is, yes, “RockawayGate” or whatever else you want to call it. Personally, I simply call it an unfortunate signpost in the rearview mirror. Yet, that story in and of itself is not that interesting. What is interesting is everything that happened around it—Twitter, Podcasts, YouTube, an incredible mobilization of opinion on a couple of sites and the kudzu-like spread of other blog posts watching the train wreck.
If you take this little brouhaha coupled with the Wine.com debacle earlier this year, and the Wine Spectator restaurant award snafu from a couple of weeks back, Alice Feiring’s book, and a few others items, arguably the most interesting and dramatic things to happen in the U.S. based wine world this year have all bubbled up or been blown up by bloggers.
That is influence and that is footing that is equal to or commensurate to other blogging niches—areas where demonstrable currency has already been earned.
The other fascinating thing about these events in 2008 is they make for fascinating drama with a story arc.
In 1999 Po Bronson wrote a non-fiction book called, “The Nudist on the Late Shift” that captured the zeitgeist of the dot-com era.
John Feinstein, noted author, has written dozens of non-fiction sports books, most of them capturing a story arc in the life of a season for a team or individual.
The reason that I think wine and technology has crossed the chasm is because the things that are happening right now are interesting enough to be captured in a story arc in book form.
Gary Vaynerchuk, Twitter, the stories mentioned above, the Wine Blogger Conference, Wine 2.0, wine tech companies and all of the denizens that inhabit these places and companies would make for very interesting reading as a year in the life.
Unfortunately, the cynic in me says that all of these things won’t be as interesting in 2009 when a publisher gets mobilized, yet, it would seem that drama is always just days away.
Wine and technology, as a force, has reached the tipping point. I am paging John Feinstein. Somebody needs to chronicle it.
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August 26 2008
So, this Rockaway wine blogging program has ignited some passion, er, some watercooler chatter. I guess it is politics season, might as well debate the issues … just the same, reading the posts and the comments you’d think somebody moved the cheese.
You can see a string of comments at the Winery Web Site Report, Steve Heimoff’s blog, Good Wine Under $20 and my post from last week.
Now, to be certain, it’s not all backlash, I think a lot of people dig the program, understand what we’re doing, recognize the transparency and see it for the genuine activity it is, and how legitimately groundbreaking it is for a large winery to engage in this sort of sampling program.
However, as the old management theory holds, if we all agree with each other than somebody isn’t needed. The gist of the dissension around the Rockaway wine blogging program can be summarized in a couple of bullet points:
• Wine bloggers were too easily manipulated into giving free publicity
• Wine bloggers did this with too much hyperbole it’s not that big of a deal
• Rodney Strong is lazy and didn’t do their own homework to do direct outreach to a wide net of bloggers
• Wine Bloggers are not that different from traditional media and some bloggers get samples all of the time … this isn’t a big deal
• Wine Bloggers are eager for their own fame and don’t ask the tough questions
Here are truisms as I know them:
• Wine bloggers are a smart bunch—technically savvy, professional, above-average income, sophisticated and jaded alpha-consumers. Manipulation is not likely. And, even if there is manipulation, it’s with full transparency, so, uh, not much manipulation in showing your cards.
• Rodney Strong releasing a new wine allocated wine brand and including bloggers in the sampling at the same time as traditional media is groundbreaking. New Brand from old winery. Allocated. Upon release. Price point. Yes, I get Stormhoek—$12 bucks a bottle and on end-cap display in the U.K. Yes, I get Twisted Oak, a revolutionary in their own right for being the first winery to embrace, engage, and execute successfully using social media. However, Stormhoek and Twisted Oak aren’t Rodney Strong. Not a slight, just a fact.
• Why would somebody fault Robert Larsen at Rodney Strong for leveraging his strengths and engaging some help to do a sampling program. Social media is forbidding. I’ve been doing this for a while and everyday I feel overwhelmed, confused and inundated with social media. Somebody not in it might feel the same way. Did I mention I’ve been doing this for a while? And, an ancillary point, if I’m doing a direct mail campaign, I don’t necessarily feel like I have to hand build the list myself, that’s just silly.
• Anybody who thinks wine bloggers are on par with traditional media has been sniffing their own exhaust for too long. And, there are a lot of wine bloggers like that. Get over yourself, accept that we are a pimple on the ass, and do something interesting. You’ll enjoy yourself a lot more and yield better results if you’re not so serious about it
• Wine blogging isn’t journalism proper. Sure I ask questions, but I also take a columnist approach. I have an opinion and I don’t have to be balanced. Newspapers are a dying medium and people scan the AP stories and read the columnists. That is just the way it is and blogging is no different. Being interesting is far more important than being balanced. That said, being interesting can also be being objective, which isn’t always balanced. As my blog as stated from day one, my goal is to be pragmatically idealistic. That is it.
Overall, an interesting week. There has been some good, there has been some ugly, but none of it has been bad, even if some folks act like their damn cheese has been moved.
As a side note, as I write this I’m polishing off my Rockaway, which has lasted 6 days in the refrigerator under a Vacu-Vin, over three drinking sessions. It’s a beauty on day six with no degradation in quality.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (25) | Print |
August 20 2008
Many readers of this blog may have noticed that there is an experiment underway in which Rodney Strong’s new allocated wine offering from their “winery within a winery” concept, Rockaway, is being introduced to market with some participation from select wine bloggers.
It is a bold move, coming from Robert Larsen, Public Relations Director at Rodney Strong.
One thing is certain; Robert is getting a lesson on this crazy transparency thing in blogging. Before I review the wine on Thursday, I first wanted to tell how this mini-program came to be and what the guidelines are—in typical PR the journalist almost never talks about how the “sausage was made.” Transparency is a fun quirk to blogging when done right.
In June, I got in contact with Carole Loomis, former colleague and friend at Inertia Beverage Group (RS is their client) and she mentioned that Rodney Strong had an allocated wine coming out and they might want to do some outreach to bloggers, could I get in contact with Robert Larsen to discuss?
This piece of interaction coincided right around the same time that I had some independent thought about a Wine Blogger Review Coalition. You can see posts I wrote on this here, here and here.
In talking to Robert we talked about a number of different things—the first being just simply sending off sample bottles to bloggers if I could give some insight into bloggers who were doing good work. I think most wine bloggers that have been at it a while forget or do not realize that this jet stream that we’re in is somewhat forbidding and not a little bit mystifying to others not in the loop.
I am, however, diametrically opposed to just sending samples off and cannot advocate that for a winery. If the wine is a hand sell, then so is the work with writers. Sending samples willy-nilly is not a model that really works for wineries and traditional media and it is not a model you really want to try to replicate with bloggers.
In my mind, and what I proposed to Robert is to get a small group of bloggers together, I would do the coordination, and solicit their interest in receiving a sample. If interested, I would then do programmatic coordination.
Now, mind you, getting a $75 dollar bottle of allocated Cabernet is not a tough sell, though some did decline to participate, but the proviso with each of the bloggers participating in receiving the sample is you have to write about it. However, the bloggers have full and free editorial control. Nobody is going to ask you to write anything specific. You do not have to like the wine, you do not have to say anything good, but in the give to get for the program, you have to write a post in length from 300 – 500 words and the timing would be coordinated to a set week on the calendar, this week, the week of August 18th.
Why do it this way? Well, because blogs are not limited by space constraints so it is not like you can fall on the canard of their not being enough ink and space. So, if you’re agreeing to accept a sample, it’s a small matter to write about the wine, particularly when you are free to say the wine tastes like twice filtered swamp water, if that’s if your opinion.
I think Robert and Rodney Strong were betting that the wine would deliver, and so was I.
I have been enamored by the way Cameron Hughes has handled sampling, and while they do not request posting, it is clear that their success rate in sampling to post content is stupendous. And the deliverable as a result is very nice. Check it out here. So, that is kind of what I was thinking in terms of execution with Rodney Strong, albeit on a smaller basis.
Is this the correct model? Bloggers have to write about a sample they received? Take the specific winery out of the equation. Is this a scalable model? I am not sure, but I do know that experimentation has to occur and this is as fine of an idea as any. Likewise with the experimentation, you have to have a winery willing to give it a try, and on that count regardless of what anybody writes about the Rockaway wine, good or bad, Rodney Strong has won for taking a risk.
Oh, and yeah, I will write about the actual wine tomorrow, somewhere in between 300 – 500 words.
Posted in, Free Run: Field Notes From a Wine Life. Permalink | Comments (9) | Print |
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