Dr Vino's wine blog

After a panel at the recent Society of Wine Educators Conference, someone from the audience asked me if she should start a blog, specifically whether social media had eroded blogs to the point of being useless. Given the fast pace of change in the interwebs, are blogs redundant in an age of status updates?

Blogging isn’t dead. Far from it, in fact. It’s easy to see the appeal since it is free, instantaneous, open to all and has a global reach. The trouble is that it takes time and doesn’t generate much (if any) money. As much as I like Twitter, the comment threads generated beneath blog posts are easier to follow than the fast-moving, often disparate responses on Twitter. Facebook has a similar comment structure to blogs but it is more functionally limited than blogging, since there aren’t a lot of long Facebook status updates. Facebook and tweets are good components to blogs, even if quick reactions to blog posts do tend to come in more via Facebook and Twitter and have eroded somewhat comments on blogs. But on the whole, it’s about a conversation and Facebook and Twitter have made people more willing to engage in the conversation. This is the way more of us talk about wine today and in the future: discussion has become much more lateral, rather than the top-down, scores-handed-down-like-manna-from-Heaven model that prevailed for at least a couple of decades.

The lack of revenues remains the biggest stumbling block for blogging. But good blogging has been shown to enhance reputations and, unlike Facebook or Twitter, the blogger can own the platform. So my advice to the woman from the audience remains: if you blog, blog for love, not money, to keep it fun and free of conflicts of interest. There’s always space for someone who has an original angle, a distinctive voice, who is willing to join the larger conversation of wine online, on Facebook and especially Twitter.

What advice would you give someone wanting to start a wine blog today?

Lettie Teague posted on her blog at WSJ.com that her Fourth included an “explosively good pinot noir.”

One thing she neglected to mention is that her friend and travel partner Scott Manlin is a co-owner of the winery. Teague has featured Manlin in both her Food & Wine columns over the years and recently had a gratuitous mention of him in a WSJ column. So it is odd that in the context of her review, the Journal would not compel her to disclose their friendship and Manlin’s ownership of the winery (of course, not mentioning her friend’s wine in print at all would certainly be another option). Point of irony in this non-disclosure: the pinot in question is called “Nevertell.”

Can you successfully sue a synthetic cork producer for a wine’s inability to age? Robert Parker suggests yes. In the context of a discussion about how 2001 California wines are tasting ten years on, he posted on his web site’s discussion board that synthetic cork producers would have “serious liability issues” if the closure is the cause of the “failure” of a ten-year old wine.

Is there a legal precedent here? I don’t know the case history. But it seems to me that unless the product poses a health risk, there would be little negligence on the part of the wine producer or the closure manufacturer. And why would producers of synthetic closures have more liability than cork producers? An off bottle is an off bottle whether it is excessively oxidized or plagued by cork taint (TCA). All this is assuming perfect storage, which is usually the top cause of a wine’s not aging well.

Parker is heading down a slippery slope if he going to start haphazardly assigning blame on wine “failures” after 10 years. At what point might the critic be liable if the optimal drinking window (e.g. “anticipated maturity: 2017-2051”) results only “failure”? Or for lavishing points on a wine made in a style that does not ultimately prove age-worthy? Interestingly, Parker seems to have inoculated himself on this score since in his recent review of the 2001s, he significantly boosted the scores of several wines made in what might be called a “Parkerized” style.

Which of these two fictitious wine reviews is more likely to make you want to buy the wine?

Aromas leap from the glass, redolent of a barnyard packed with cattle after a summer rain, interwoven with a hint of desiccated blackberries. The mouthfeel is about as smooth as sandpaper, the new oak accosts your palate as if you met it alone in a dark alley. The finish endures so long that as much as you try to remember your grandmother’s apple pie, you can think of nothing other than a humus saturated barnyard for hours.

While someone else might describe the wine this way:

Got so much luv 4 this wine…funky…full throttle…awsum finish…this wine rox! will blow yer mind!

According to Panos Ipeirotis of NYU, the first one might actually be more convincing. Why? Drawing on his research on crowd-sourced hotel reviews, he writes on his blog: “A well-written review tends to inspire confidence about the product, even if the review is negative. Typically, such reviews are perceived as objective and thorough.” Thus companies like Zappos that depend heavily on user reviews are paying a lot of money to automagically correct the grammar of customer comments. It does raise some ethical and copyright concerns but hopefully, just the grammar, not the content are being modified by the program (known as Mechanical Turk).

An interesting phenomenon to be sure. While I could see grammar and readability in tasting notes–either user-generated or from critics–making a difference on sales, wine writing (for better or generally for worse) has its own Mechanical Turk for smoothing out all those pesky words: the score. Just imagine if that second review above had a “98 points” after it. I’m sure that would b gr8 4 sales…LOL GTG.

James Suckling, a critic for two decades at Wine Spectator, left the publication last year to start his own website of video reviews. Suckling wanders top vineyards of the world, bestowing scores on wines saying “I’m 90 points on that,” “I’m 94 points on that” all the way up to 100. Points are awarded in the presence of winemakers who made the wines (or winery owners). Suckling does not always interview those winemakers. Videos also include tastings with American retailers in a 90-point challenge wherein retailers select five wines under $30 for him to taste with them and hope he will rate the wines at least 90 points. No retailer has yet to fail.

In one video, Suckling fires back at critics who say that he pulls wine scores out of thin air by detailing exactly how he pulls them out of thin air. He explains on his iPad that things like color get 15 points.

Suckling has yet to detail on his iPad or elsewhere is a statement of ethics. Veteran wine writer, Tom Maresca, has called him out for it on his blog, offering a point-by-point critique of a recent Suckling column in Decanter magazine. The main point of Maresca’s critique is that Suckling uses the magazine to highlight producers participating in his for-profit tasting event in Tuscany, Divino. (Franco Zilliani posts on the exorbitant fees wineries must pay to pour.) Maresca concludes: “That isn’t journalism: it’s advertising.”

Jancis Robinson floated a novel idea on her website last week: what if critics, who descend on Bordeaux shortly to taste 2010 barrel samples, withheld their scores until the Bordeaux trade had finished their pre-sale campaign (known as en primeur)? The logic is that high scores for what is already an extremely hyped vintage would only drive prices higher.

Predictably, Robert Parker of the Wine Advocate and Tom Matthews of Wine Spectator poured cold water on the idea, as republished on Jancis’ site. Given that this is a classic prisoner’s dilemma, if Jancis admirably remains silent while other critics publish, it only hurts her since she loses influence. The embargo would only work if all critics agree to remain silent, which is not tenable in the real world, where there’s an incentive for each critic to publish first, getting his or her views circulating, and driving the discussion. Suckling often did that when he was at Wine Spectator getting in to tastings before the crowds of the en primeurs tastings and publishing his report more or less immediately (Parker’s report usually comes out after en primeurs, at the end of April).

Although it’s unworkable, would an embargo from critics serve to bring en primeur prices down? Perhaps, especially in less anticipated vintages such as 2008, which was also being pre-sold during an economic meltdown. Although still an important part of the Bordeaux sales machine, critics’ scores may not as important as brands themselves as this Liv-Ex analysis shows.

Wine Library TV has kicked the Jets bucket!

After 1,000 episodes of Wine Library TV (I had a good time with him on episode #771), Gary Vaynerchuk has decided to hang up his signature Jets bucket. Well, sort of. Many of his fans had wondered if one day Gary might leave the wine world entirely to jump to other, more lucrative pursuits such as public speaking, social media evangelism and promoting books from his 10-book deal with HarperCollins. Instead, Read more…

There’s a new order at the Wine Advocate. Last month, Robert Parker announced editorial changes at the publication he founded in 1978. The moves notably included promoting Antonio Galloni to a greater role, as Galloni took over reviewing California wines from Parker himself as well as adding coverage of Burgundy (ex-Beaujolais) to his beat that already included Champagne and all of Italy.

To get to know Galloni better, I recently emailed him a few questions on a wide range of topics. He took a break from tasting in Burgundy, where he is now, to respond. His unedited replies follow below. Read more…