But when I saw the above video that Taster B sent me the link to, I think I finally got it. GV and I have some things in common. Take care of the people that take care of you, take care of the family, take care of the other people around you. Also, I’m a big promoter of “Drink it because you like it, not because I told you to like it.”

So yeah, I had this same post rattling around in my head for a few months too. You had the hutzpa to post. Good for you.

I agree that more wine content should be accessible - I’m just not sure it needs to be so shouty!

On a different but related subject… I often find many wine blogs are written with wine aficionados and other wine bloggers in mind, not the novice who might not be well educated about wine. I love reading them, but I’m a wine geek. I fell that the common wine drinker would find them less interesting. In the few posts I’ve made to my blog, I’m always holding myself back from going overboard with wine technical terms and some highly specific wine-talk. I want to remain focused on my audience, primarily the person who has interest in wine simply as a beverage and who might find it interesting to follow my experiences in the world of winemaking. It is a balancing act.

Oz & James’ Big Wine Adventure has also reached the same audience, but in smaller numbers and by substituting the word “football” for “cars”. Between Oz’s charm and short temper, and James’ bad boy mentality, the duo is hard not to love and consequently, learn from.

And despite the fact that I have difficulty watching Gary’s show, I too appreciate everything he’s done. He’s put his heart and passion out there, making wine accessible to all walks of life, and I am immensely grateful for it.

I agree with your point that we in wine ‘business’ are not his audience. About a year ago, a well respected UK wine writer (Oz Clarke) did a TV show in partnership with another presenter best known for TV shows about cars.

The show, Oz & James’ Big Wine Adventure, was a big hit and loads of my friends and family asked me what I thought about it. I thought it was misleading, contrived and frustrating. I was in the (very tiny) minority.

People loved it because it was delivering information about wine at the level they were prepared to accept it, and therefore hopefully take further steps to enjoying it.

I don’t say Gary is any of these things, but his style and content chimes with an audience we don’t reach or even connect with most of the time, and that can only be a good thing.

I just don’t have to want to hear the ‘thunder’ myself.

To my mind Gary isn’t a wine blogger in the old fashioned view of it - he’s letting people know it’s OK to like what you like, but hey, why not try something new - “people, the waters warm here in wine-land, come in and try it out. We’re not scary, honest. We’re like you, we like wine and want to tell you about it!”

He’s doing it for the wider wine drinking public. He really loves what he’s doing.

OK, it can’t hurt his wine business either - but we have to admire him for that too. He’s worked out that the public like passion and honesty, and tapped into it. And he knows wine CAN be very, very dull, not to mention scary. And it’s hard to always communicate how great, or bad, a wine can taste unless you have the person there with you, drinking what you are drinking. So he works hard to make it less so scary and more accessible. In spades!

What he’s done, and doing, is amazing and deserves applause - he’s found a niche and made it his own. His style won’t rock everyones boat, but he will get more people drinking and feeling less inhibited about talking more about wine - and saying what they like and what they don’t. And maybe encourage more of them to post comments on all of our blogs.

And I think he’s beginning to scare the traditional wine guys too - maybe not all of them, yet! But they’ll soon cotton on. Making wine accessible, and communicating your passion, as it best works for you, is the way to go. Passion is good and people like it - consumers can tell the difference between genuine passion and marketing waffle.

I discoverd Gary’s podcasts late, after a friend recommended them, just at about the time we started to think about doing ours (and yes, I’m way behind on getting more of them out there!) Boy was I scared! Yikes, I’m going to try to compete with that, me thinks. But it isn’t a competition - everyone has a view, everyone has a right to Blog, be they wine retailers, wanna-be wine journalists, consumer rights champions or just any old wine lover that loves the juice and wants to tell people why.

Gary is doing what I’d love to be able to do - tell people about his passion, about the wines he loves, and the ones he doesn’t. Enthuse, encourage debate - make wine accessible to more and more people. And he’s humble too - just see his twitter post about this Blog post. He’s genuinely happy people see what he’s trying to do, and get something from it.

So he sells the stuff too. Woo! We all have to pay the mortgage etc., Maybe he should carry some sort of wine blogging community warning ‘beware, I am a wine retailer - but I’m not trying to sell you something EVERY TIME I open my mouth’! In fact, I don’t think I I’ve heard him ’sell’ very often at all - he’s far too switched on for that. He worked out long ago that as a retailer you don’t need to shout ‘buy, buy, buy’. Just enthuse, show the passion, and be honest - sometimes we wine merchants make mistakes and don’t get right. So shoot us. Well, maybe not

Go on Gary, keep going for it, and keep scaring the suits

Hope to see you at the next Wine 2.0 mixer next month… perhaps we can enjoy a glass of Tempranillo with Gary?