May 15 2008
Published on May 1st and just delivered to my doorstep via Amazon.com, The Wine Trials by Robin Goldstein enlivened (inflamed?) the wine blogosphere before anybody cracked the cover.
The striker to the matchbook? Eric Asimov, a seasoned journalist for the New York Times, wrote a post based on reading a Newsweek article about the book.
You would not expect a journalist to comment on another piece of print media, especially without having read the book, but I guess this is the blogosphere and we are all guilty of seeking inspiration outside of traditional journalistic boundaries, but what ensued in the comments section of the post when nobody had read the book was truly sociologically interesting.
After a 65 comment explosion, Asimov wrote a follow-up after receiving a pre-release galley copy of the book and that post incited 31 comments.
Sequentially, the original post can be found here and the follow-up here.
Interestingly, the book is only, initially, available on Amazon.com. And, yes, you guessed it. Amazon is currently backordered on the book.
Somebody is interested …
Piqued by all of this, I did what anybody would do with all of that content on Asimov’s blog—I cut and paste into a Word document with .5 margins and 10 pt Trebuchet font.
36 pages and 17,000 words later I am more confused than before I started. And, with no small amount of irony, the 17,000 words has to exceed the actual content in the book, which is 2/3’s wine listings.
Here is the net-net version with this book: the author did a blind tasting of many wines with large number of tasters (some 500 +) and the result was that numerous inexpensive wines (under $15) bested wines that are more expensive ($50 +) based on the panel of judges.
Pragmatically speaking, you do not have a book if people preferred more expensive wines to the less expensive wines so there is some room for question because the study, presumably, was set-up with an end conclusion in mind and not a hypothesis, but just the same it’s a fascinating book that makes for good arm chair reading over the course of a couple of hours. With 58 introductory pages and the balance of the book being wine listings of the 100 wines under $15 that bested the $50 - $150 wines, it’s a light read.
The majority of the blog comments about Asimov’ posts on the book were centered on the division of small expensive wines and large grocery store wines. This is an old ideological argument and more analogies were employed to explain the difference in art versus culture. Variants cropped up about wine appreciation versus simpleton quaffers, etc.
Ugh, wake me when this tired old song is over with. We get it. Get over it. Yes, there is a cultural difference between NASCAR fans and those that attend the symphony. By God, both of these groups of people enjoy wine, too.
Nested within all of this debate is the essential truth by Asimov.
He states:
I am not saying wine is the equivalent of art. I do say that wine can be appreciated on many different levels, but that nobody should ever feel obliged to appreciate wine on any level. In the end, the book seems to divide wine consumers into the casual buyers who are pushed this way and that by forces they don’t understand, and the wealthy conspicuous status seekers who also are not quite aware of capitalism and marketing. Unacknowledged are the serious wine lovers who are knowledgeable, experimental and passionate, and who, yes, are in control of their own destinies. The book may speak to the first two groups, but not to the third.
As a member of the third group, the “serious wine lover” I can say unequivocally that I occasionally drink inexpensive wine and, natch, this book is an interesting take and a welcome addition to the pantheon of wine studies and a nice guidebook to the maze of choices at your grocery store for a through the week glass.
For additional reading at the source research study that led to the book, see this white paper.
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April 29 2008
With two proud wine writers taking a recent beating from the eRobert Parker board, I think it’s high time they call the mob mentality jackals off ...
In honor of Jancis Robinson’s recent “parasitical” wine comments and the receipt of my copy of Alice Feiring’s new book, hot off the press:
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March 15 2008
Groundhog Day with Wine Topics
If you are a wine lover, and you are online, than chances are good that your view and review of the world of wine includes more than just the simple appreciation of the grape. Simply, it is hard not to look behind the curtain and see wine as the industry that it is, a venture to make money.
To that end, one of best things you can do, if you are a consumer of wine-related information, if you do not do it already, is sign-up for the daily Wine Business Monthly news summary.
You can find it here:
Wine Business Montly Daily News Summary
I bring this up because over the course of the last couple of days it has helped me keep track of a number of stories that pretty fairly encapsulate all of the re-occuring story themes we see not only in the blogosphere, but also some mainstream wine press.
I’m making no comment about how the standard topics get recycled, just merely stating that if you want to stay on top of these, then signing up for the Wine Business Monthly daily email is a pretty good bet. See how many of the below stories you recognize by generic description.
Stories like:
Entry-level wine consumers are frequently overwhelmed
Distributors protect their turf
Gary Vaynerchuk is a HOT commodity
Wine is a green product
Global warming affects the world of wine
The new, new thing about understanding your palate
And, finally, what is not listed above about the industry of wine is found in an article in which the author punctures the remaining 10 things about wine that we talk about when we are not talking about the above—it is funny, in a good way.
After 40 years in wine – here’s all I know
The Next Topic Du Jour
I do have a small prediction about a subject that I think will get significantly more airtime over the course of the next couple of years—bottle shock.
There seem to be two separate strains of the same term, too. One has to do with the “dumb” stage that wine goes into shortly after bottling and the second is a “dumb” stage that a wine goes into if it is shipped – i.e. to a consumer in a FedEx box.
Slight problem in that one is a winemaking term and the same term is applied with a need for consumer understanding.
I have been doing some informal polling over the last year—talking to wine people, distributors and retailers about their definition of “Bottle Shock” and whether it is valid. Two interesting things emerge #1) Common belief is it is very valid #2) Nobody has the same opinion on what it is, how long it lasts, or what to do about it.
I had lunch with a distributor a couple of months back and he was talking about getting a container into the states and not being able to sample for a few weeks as the wine settled down. He indicated that just simple domestic shipping is a problem, too—especially for wines with some delicacy like a Pinot.
If you Google “Bottle Shock” you will see, about 99% of the returns are for the movie of the same name and then 1% is related to the actual term.
My two cents here, with Amazon.com entering the wine game and consumer direct shipping taking off on a rocket sled, the wine industry will need to do some education around what “Bottle Shock” is and how to address it.
Do you think consumers will be able to let their wine mellow in a cool, still place for two weeks to let the wine settle down?
I dunno either …
Mother, Mother
My wife is on a kick for our household to tighten things up. She is closing in on the leaky checkbook (mostly my doing and mostly wine purchasing) and she has a desire to help me not have five bottles of wine going in the fridge at any given period with the inevitable waste. A lot of money goes down the drain because of my predilection to want to taste wine as opposed to drinking wine. I open many bottles, and if a bottle is just “okay” I’d prefer to open up something different the next night … it is a bit wasteful, I know, but since my wife doesn’t drink a whole lot, it is a lot more responsible than trying to tackle the whole bottle myself. A generous one glass is about what I am good for on a nightly basis, and a one to one ½-bottle week is just too damn boring.
We have thought about getting some ice cube trays to freeze wine for use in reduction sauces and other cooking, but instead we are honing in on the red wine vinegar idea.
I will not go into a ton of detail about it, because a quick search of the internet will yield all you need to know about it, but I have been promised that the next gifting opportunity for me will be some sort of vinegar crock and a vinegar Mother.
Check out Gang of Pour for a primer, if you are interested.
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February 29 2008
Ever wonder what Gary Vaynerchuk does when he is not in the offices at WineLibrary?
Apparently, he gives keynote speeches to internet marketing audiences, and probably for enough dough to pay my mortgage for the next year.
Good for him because the people that truly get wealthy are the folks that figure out how to make money in both pockets, like the winery that watches their land ownership appreciate at a level that far exceeds what they make from operating a winery.
I was sucked into the vortex of this internet marketing market, which is not completely different from the wild-eyed evangelical capitalist program that Amway runs, if I can say that in a non-offensive way, by reading the blog business site problogger.net. Problogger.net had a link to an article by a guy named Yaro Starak, who then had a cross-promotion with a guy named Rich Schefren, who sells marketing programs to internet denizens with dollar signs in their eyes. Schefren had linked up with our own Gary Vaynerchuk in a “Maven” program. I wrote about this in a post found here.
Weird how these internet pathways occur. Or, really, weird how small our world is.
I was initially skeptical of this market, but I have come to view it now as a part of the huge self-help industry and, well, ‘live and let live,’ I say. A million and one books are printed every year about “getting rich” and lord knows that “The Secret” has sold a million copies by itself, so who am I to be a ‘Debbie Downer’ for this market?
Check out the brief video of Gary in action here. The real news is what many in the wine internet space have been wondering for months—when is Gary going to blow up and go mainstream? In his talk, he alludes to being represented by Creative Artists, one of THE premiere talent agencies in the country.
Godspeed to Gary. I do not think he will forget where he came from, and, more importantly, I think he is smart enough to say “no” more often than he says, “yes.” Translated in exact terms, that means no reality television.
Perspective on Bordeaux
Like a lot of people, I think I have been inured into believing that 2005 Bordeaux was out of reach for my pocket book, yet, despite the eight 100 point scores that Wine Spectator recently bestowed upon wines ranging in price from $4,975 for Chateau Petrus to $260 for Chateau L’Evangile, there is hope in the form of perspective.
In another quote from the March 31st edition of Wine Spectator:
“The superexpensive wines represent only about 2 million bottles of the 900 million produced in Bordeaux in 2005,” insists Mathieu Chadronnier of CVBG, one of the region’s biggest fine wine merchants. “It’s not that much of the production when you look at it properly.”
Jill from Domaine547.com has several ‘05’s for sale including a well-reviewed wine from WS and Parker for $30.
Elsewhere, I bought a couple of bottles of the St. Emillion from Cameron Hughes for $20 a piece.
That is good advice, especially as the ‘05s make their way to store shelves in the states. I am guilty of wistfully looking at folks that lived in other eras and had access to terrific wines that are legendary and wish I had their generational luck. Turns out, I now have my own luck and with reviews across the board being stellar, there is really no reason not to buy some of the 2005’s and lay them down for the long haul.
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February 25 2008
On the cusp of the 2nd Annual American Wine Blog Awards, one of the interesting things happening is the fact that, in my humble opinion, online wine content has reached a critical tipping point.
It feels like a saturation point, but I think that is underestimating the movement because the cup will continue to overflow for the foreseeable future.
Simply, there are A LOT of wine blogs, many of whom are providing excellent content, and in fact, there are almost too many for a reader pool to keep up with on a sane level. There has been an explosion and this looks to continue unabated for some time to come.
The only alternative is for all of this content to niche itself out to a stratified consumer base.
I think in the short-term, what this means is that wine blogs will have to focus, focus, focus on what their niche is, sometimes a daunting task for me, and a lot of other people that like to blog around what takes their whim.
With that in mind, I like to stop occasionally and do a digest post, or a couple of digest posts, to comment, provide a pointer and generally look at things happening in this little pocket of the wine universe.
Social Network for Wine Industry and Wine-Technology Affinity Group
A couple of months back there was a palpable migration of wine bloggers and wine aficionados to Facebook.com. Many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people that are in and around the wine industry and wine blogging and wine blog reading made their way to Facebook.com, yours truly included.
Facebook is a fun tool and I made some new connections, but there is a missing ingredient with the site. It is great to have 100 friends, but it seemed more social than business oriented. Scrabulous and movie quizzes are fun, but as a tableau for making connections that can pay off as a benefit to your wine blogging site or your wine business it just seems a little too fun-oriented. If Myspace.com is like a keg party, Facebook.com is a young twenty-something micro-brew and cheese party. That is not bad by any means; it is what it is, despite the open technology hooks that allow developers to create programs that add value.
So, it was with interest that I saw and joined a social network that just started called, the OpenWine Consortium. Found here.
The OWC is positioned very inclusively for everybody, but with a focus around the new guard in the wine industry and those that appreciate wine:
OpenWine Consortium is a global, non-profit wine industry association featuring the newest generation of emerging companies, wineries, publishers, services and a motivated community dedicated to changing the world of wine.
Joel Vincent from winelifetoday.com has taken the lead on organization and I encourage anybody with a passing interest in wine blogging, online wine commerce or just general wine enthusiasm to sign-up and engage today.
With Superpokes out of the way (inside joke for Facebook users), this could be a powerful tool in taking wine and technology to the next level.
Online Wine Video Continues to Explode
The online wine technology niche has seen several entrants over the course of the last couple of years—folks like Wine Spies, Radcru.com, Americanwinery.com and Appellationamerica.com come to mind. Leveraging a mail list or general consumer visits, these companies present wines for sale. There are some tweaks to the business model on how they are executed, some do it on a commission basis, and others take in inventory. It is a variation on the wine.com’s of the world and a little bit closer to the high-end enthusiast.
If you couple this with the explosion of video blogging and podcasting, what has not emerged is an entrant that provides video-based contextual information on the winery itself, from the winery participants.
That is, until now. Jon G. from the very popular wine review site Quaffability has launched a new site called, Web Tasting Room.
It’s an interesting concept and still early in the process, but the business model for engaging consumers with an inside out view of the winery, via video blogging, from the winery itself is new, fresh and seemingly the right thing at the right time.
Elsewhere, tackling video from a retail perspective, joining WineLibrary TV as the gold standard, is Just Grapes (found here), a Chicago retailer. It looks as if they are re-purposing their existing retail activities by videotaping and putting it online. In this case, currency will be integral as it looks like their last video update is from the holidays, but keep an eye on them as an example of retail adopting new marketing techniques in engaging us, consumers.
My sense tells me that the wine blogosphere –writing and video-- is pre-disposed to a very organic path to providing information. The Just Grapes of the world are swimming upstream against a perception that their video/web marketing efforts are too slick. One of the things that make Wine Library TV a winner is its vitality and authenticity. Does Gary sell wine based on his video blogging? Absolutely, but he is smart about not mixing art and commerce in a heavy-handed way.
That notion of keeping art and commerce separate makes the Fleming’s Steakhouse wine site, VineVoyages, a very interesting proposition. Like the Web Tasting Room, the Fleming’s site focuses on the producers in a very polished way with the intent to create mindshare for the steak house, as opposed to direct sales. Keep an eye on this site.
Separate from these relatively new entrants, an ongoing thread of conversation in the online wine world has been a level of anticipation for The Winemakers, a PBS reality show that is one part Survivor, one part Top Chef and two heaping portions of The Apprentice.
While the show has not premiered, you can go to YouTube and get a preview dose of the participants and the show scheduled to air in the late spring and Early Summer of this year. Check it out here and here.
Finally, if you noted that Al Gore recently lauded the wine industry for its green ways, then you may want to check out another Al Gore project—Current TV – a sort of millennial generation public access network where all of the content is user generated. Current TV is on many cable networks, but you can check out the web site and search for “wine” to get a bunch of content of varying degrees of professionalism.
One of my favorite videos on the Current site is this guy that plays sweet music using water filled wine glasses. Long a staple of the late night television, I find this completely fascinating. In terms of party tricks, forget slinging an acoustic guitar or sidling up to the piano. I would love to learn how to do this.
One thing is certain for the rest of 2008 and the coming years for the wine industry and wine consumers, while industry vets are focusing on price pressures, imports, and wine industry mechanics, the marketing game is completely changing. I hope the existing industry is paying close enough attention, because many new entrants certainly are.
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