Josh Hermsmeyer, the guy behind the must read Pinotblogger site, has issued a challenge to all wine bloggers and will reward the winner with a prize of up to $1,000 depending upon how many respond to his call. In a nutshell, he is asking us to answer two questions:

• Why are you passionate about wine/what motivates you to blog about it?
• Is it appropriate for a wine reviewer to prescribe the ways in which a wine should be made or is their job chiefly to review what’s in the bottle?

Times being what they are, I will attempt to answer these somewhat provocative questions and perhaps give you some more insight into what makes amateur wine writers tick. Or at least how I come at this craft.

So the first question is pretty straightforward. I blog and podcast about wine because I can and like to do so. Like a lot of wine bloggers, I was the guy everyone asked for wine tips so I found it easier to just write them down and record reviews. Now I just point people here for my picks as opposed to trying to remember them at will. My podcasting got me into blogging due to the same software being used (Wordpress). It was easy to blog so I did so soon after I started to podcast in late 2004. I got into podcasting after something clicked with me in September of 2004 when I first discovered the genre. At the time there was something like 25 podcasts but no one was doing anything about wine so Winecast was born. Over the years the podcast has ebbed and flowed but I still will be posting shows and continuing until I don’t find it enjoyable. So I guess I do this because I love wine and like sharing what little I know about it. I had much the same answer a couple years back but with a slightly different spin.

The second question is a bit more complicated. I think Josh is asking this in response to Robert Parker’s recent statements about wine bloggers (or shall I say “blobbers”?). Mr. Parker has long been accused of influencing winemaking styles in order to garner higher scores which many times leads to more demand and higher prices. The biggest beneficiaries of his ratings has been the classified growths of Bordeaux but some Cali cult wines and Aussie Shiraz has benefited, too. And I don’t blame any producers for making such changes in order to get the scores. It helps sell their wine but is also something that I hope we will get away from in the next decade as Mr. Parker retires and drinks down his cellar.

Wine writers of any level should tell the story of the wine they are reviewing and not dictate what that story should be. Sometimes this is a terroir story, sometimes it’s not. For a review to communicate the essence of the wine, as much context as possible is required. I’ve not delivered on this ideal as much as I would have liked in the past but hope to help invent the new language of wine reviews going forward. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ll keep trying new things to communicate how a wine moves me. Wine is a living being that is in constant change. Those of us who write about it should respect this and attempt to bring all the nuances displayed in the glass into our writing.

Unless it’s plonk, of course

“There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear…”                             — Stephen Stills, “For What It’s Worth”

I’ve been away from the blog for much of this month but have been keeping up with my reading and, oh course, tweeting. A few weeks ago Tyler Colman, who blogs as Dr Vino, posted some legitimate questions about policies at The Wine Advocate. What transpired was a discussion of wine writer ethics that at one point featured Robert Parker labeling wine blogs, “…the source of much of the misinformation,distortion,and egegious falsehoods spread with reckless abandon…”

Needless to say, I was not pleased with this comment and wrote a 3,000 word response that concluded with some advice for Mr. Parker, open letter-style. But I never published that post because I thought it would not really do anything positive except, perhaps, make me feel a bit better. Fellow bloggers Joel Vincent and Joe Roberts covered this ground a bit more diplomatically than I did, but with much the same tone.

So I was somewhat surprised to see this issue rehashed this week in the Wall Street Journal. Another discussion broke out on the subject on eBob which was somewhat capped off by a mea culpa of sorts by Mr. Parker. In my book, case closed, but I’m sure there will be some additional chatter in the blogosphere because it creates more traffic and comments.

But I think all this raises a more fundimental question; what is the future of wine writing?

Jeff Lefevere over at Good Grape made a good point about bell curves the other day and it’s clear that dominance of The Wine Advocate and other wine review newsletters is on the downward slope of the curve. Local newspapers are cutting back on wine writers even in big metros such as Los Angeles and New York. As I’ve written here before, I don’t think there is a great future for wine glossies such as the Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast unless they transform their business models quickly and figure out how to make money online.

So the future is wine blogs, right? Perhaps, but there are some, such as Alice Feiring, who doubt it as she recently blogged:

And who knows if wine writing will exist in any form. If what only exists is the blog world, God help us. I’m not saying that some of my colleagues don’t give great blog, but finding the knowledgeble folk who don’t have something to ’sell’ is tough. And then finding some voices who have done homework is even tougher.

Whatever the format, there will be a void in wine writing in the next decade that will be filled by new voices. With the rise of Millennials as major wine consumers, this format will no doubt be digital and presented online in several contexts (text, video, audio, mobile). The question at hand is if the serious wine consumer of the future will pay for this information or will expect this to be freely available and ad supported.

My gut tells me it will be a bit of both but I seriously doubt there will be a solo critic success story like Robert Parker. It’s not because the talent doesn’t exist but that the circumstances are vastly different than they were 30 years ago when Mr. Parker got his start. Back then you didn’t have to be independently wealthy in order to sample the top wines of the world. You could buy them and share them with friends at weekend tastings where everyone chipped in for the wines. This is how the wines for The Wine Advocate were financed along with Mr. Parker’s rather generous personal wine budget (how he talked his wife into this early on would make a great story, but I digress).

Today it is nearly impossible for the independent wine blogger to buy the sufficient amount of wine to provide the breadth of coverage required to attract enough readers to make a wine blog financially viable. Yes, we do receive samples but this alone doesn’t provide enough tasting opportunities; the reviewer still needs to travel and purchase more wines at retail. Both not easy given the current economic climate but even in better times one would have to spend at least $100,000 a year in order to review enough wines to make a serious go of it.

But I do think that several wine bloggers working together at a single blog is the future of wine writing. Each could cover a wine region or variety in depth and in aggregate this content would attract enough of an audience to sell sponsorships, drive affiliate programs and other monetization opportunities. Think Engadget but for wine.

I think we will see such a blog launch yet in 2009 and there will be several existing wine bloggers who will be convinced to write for this site as they continue to maintain their own blogs. The “Robert Parker of the future” will be a blogger but I doubt he or she will go it alone. But together, even a small team could create enough content and traffic to build the next wine publishing empire.

The time is now; the question is who will step up and try to do this first?

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Parker Brouhaha (elevage.blogspot.com)
• Conflicts of interest and all that… (wineanorak.com)
• Bloggers to Parker: Drop dead (steveheimoff.com)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I’ve been thinking these past weeks about how to post a number of reviews I have in my Evernote tasting log. After experimenting with different formats I think I have arrived at a good starting point that will be refined as I go through your feedback and by just posting reviews. Since wineries have sampled more than they ever have over the past few months, many of these reviews will be disclosed as such and this got me thinking about a more formal disclosure about how I taste and review wines.

When I started 4 and a half years ago I bought all my wines at retail. I still buy a fair amount today and these wines are not labeled after the retail price I paid. Since I live in a State that likes to tax and control the sale of alcohol to the extreme, your retail price will most likely be lower. All samples provided for review are labeled after the winery suggested retail price with the “/sample” tag. For the rare case of wines tasted in tasting rooms, wine events or trade tastings I will be using a new tag, “/tasting”, to denote that I have tasted under these conditions. I usually do not post these reviews as I will be tasting a number of wines in the, “sniff, taste, spit,” routine. Wines I especially like will be tasted twice before I make notes. Most of the notes posted here with this tag will be in more controlled winery tasting room or barrel cellar conditions.

I think these disclosures are important to the reader as it shows how long I have spent with each wine before writing down my impressions. For all samples and wines bought at retail this is typically over the course of 2-3 days, in controlled conditions with and without food. After tasting, the bottles are topped with inert gas to prevent oxidation. Notes written at tastings are 2-3 minute snapshots of wines which tends to favor the most concentrated and aromatic wines which is why I typically don’t post those reviews. Usually I pick up bottles of the wines I like at tastings to taste later at home. Unless I make it clear in the review none of the wines are tasted blind. As samples accumulate from the same varietal, I will do more blind tastings and indicate this in my notes.

There are a smattering of scales used on reviews here over the years. I used a 20 point scale (1-10 with half point increments) for a while before converting to the 100-point scale (using Robert Parker’s method). Over the past several months I have exclusively used a 5-star scale I proposed for bloggers some time ago and plan to continue to use this scale going forward. I really don’t like putting a numerical rating on wines but it does provide the reader with some context even if highly subjective. I will also start posting all reviews on Snooth and linking back to each review here to help readers find these wines.

Finally, I have no formal wine education other than reading books and tasting wines on a nearly daily basis since 1982. While Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule might suggest I have reached some sort of expert status in evaluating wine I, like other tasters, still have a lot to learn. My intention is to continue to taste as many wines as I can exploring new varieties and regions and share what I like here. It’s really as simple as that.

Let me know if you have any questions and check out my code of ethics and samples policy posted elsewhere on the site.

By way of Josh Hermsmeyer, I found Tina Caputo’s fantastic self-produced short film, “Robert Parker’s Bitch.” The basic premise is that wines today are big, bold, and over-oaked designed, ‘…to taste and spit,” and not savored with food. The question on the table is if Robert Parker and Jim Laube largely determine today’s wine styles or are winemakers trying to reflect the terroir of their region?

While both sides are presented via interviews with winemakers, industry commentators and winery owners, it’s clear what side of the argument the filmmaker is on. But it’s great to see such a controversial issue presented with such transparency.

Bravo, Tina!

This morning I learned Grape Radio co-host Brian Clark was involved in a serious car accident over the weekend. His co-host, Jay Selman, called earlier this afternoon to let me know Brian is stable and improving after operations to repair internal injuries.

I’ve known Brian since before Grape Radio started in January 2005 and have shared some wine with him in person a few times over the years. What he and his co-hosts have created is the gold standard in wine podcasts. So join me in clicking over to the Grape Radio site and listening to a podcast while wishing Brian a full and speedy recovery.

And when you are ready to share some wine, Brian, I’m buying. Get well soon, man.

Back when the iPhone App Store launched last July I did a search for wine applications. At the time there were just a handful of choices, most of them for taking notes which I wrote up as a first look post. A search today turns up about 30 wine apps with an array of choices for wine loving iPhone and iPod Touch users to take on the road.

One of these is the Wine Enthusiast Guide from Mobile Age who provided the app for me to review. It sells in the iTunes App Store for $4.99, at the high end of the wine apps available there. Like last year, I do not have an iPhone, but since my kids each have an iPod Touch I was able to install and spend about an hour checking out this application. I have some experience using earlier versions of the Wine Enthusiast Guide as developed for Palm OS by LandWare and will do some comparisons between the versions in my review.

When you first startup the iPhone version you are taken right to the wine guide. The database is licensed from Wine Enthusiast magazine and seems to be fairly up-to-date with over 65,000 total reviews (25,000 of which are less than 5 years old). Users can search on winery name to find producers making this screen handy in a wine store or restaurant. Like the Palm version, I found the “search” function to be the most useful, entering price, rating, style, varietal and appellation to find matching wines from the database. One of the issues with such a large database is that search results often return wines no longer available in the marketplace. So it would be nice to have a date range option here similar to how this problem is dealt with on online wine review databases. Once you have found a wine, you can view the Wine Enthusiast review and add this wine to your personal “wish list” for purchase later.

Other features include a handy wine vintage chart and a reference guide complete with wine terms and a “wine 101″ section. Missing from the iPhone version is the wine notes and cellar management functions that were in the Palm version. This was a feature I used most when I had a Palm Treo and wish was a part of the feature set here. I understand there is only so much screen real estate available on the iPhone but these missing features would be a nod to more advanced wine lovers and would make this a complete package worth the asking price. Perhaps they are working on a follow-up notes and cellar management application.

Overall I found the Wine Enthusiast Guide for iPhone to be a handy tool for mainline wine consumers to use as a reference on the go. I would not recommend this app for more advanced users as they don’t have the tasting notes or cellar management features that would be of interest to this audience. But if you are looking for a mobile wine review tool on your iPhone and don’t subscribe to Wine Advocate or Wine Spectator online editions, the Wine Enthusiast Guide is a solid choice.

Overall Rating:
Value Rating:

Disclosure: Mobile Age provided a review copy for me to try.

It’s funny how things work out sometimes. What started over 4 years back as one man’s hobby to post audio wine tasting notes has grown into one of the four, “Best Wine Business/Industry” blogs for this years American Wine Blog Awards.

I’m honored — and very surprised — to the in the company of some of my favorite wine blogs including Mike Duffy’s Winery Website Report, Steve Bachmann’s The Wine Collector and the folks at Inertia Beverage Group. A big ‘thanks’ goes out to Michael Wangbickler who nominated this blog and to the judges for selecting it as a finalist.

The timing is interesting since I’ve decided to focus my posts here on the podcast (which will return to regular weekly form shortly), wine reviews and random musings about wine and Web 2.0 (a.k.a. “Wine 2.0“). So this will be the first and only time I expect to be nominated in this category. But it doesn’t mean I will not continue to blog about wine business subjects. They will be posted over on my company blog.

So if you liked my business posts here last year, head on over to FERMENTATION to cast your vote. You have until March 4th.

Cheers!

Image via Wikipedia

Since the movie “Sideways” in 2004, filmmakers have been trying to create movies that would evoke a similar response with audiences. “Sideways” became an independent film sensation that also intensified demand for Pinot Noir, and the opposite for Merlot, in the U.S. market. Most reviews, including my own, were positive for the film particularly in how wine was depicted. 

Time passed and other projects were put into production with the first “wine film” being Ridley Scott’s “A Good Year” in 2006. Since early reviews were terrible for the film, I passed watching it until it was on HBO. And I was somewhat surprised to find not the disaster expected but a flawed film with some decent performances. But it failed as a wine film since the filmmakers didn’t understand what “Sideways” got right.

They made wine a central character in the story.

Wine in “Sideways” was something that affected and transformed the central characters of the story. It took on a significance of being something more than just a prop, as wine had been in every film before “Sideways.” And wine continued in this subordinate role in “A Good Year” that couldn’t save a predicable retelling of “Under the Tuscan Sun” from a male perspective but set in Provence.

I thought the same thing while watching “Bottle Shock” last weekend. Like “A Good Year,” I waited until I could watch it as a part of my Netflix subscription and it was not as bad as I expected. But it wasn’t that good either despite the filmmakers attempts to make wine central to the story.

Very loosely inspired by George Taber’s “Judgement of Paris” the film tells the story of the Jim and Bo Barrett who’s Chardonnay beat the best white Burgundies in the 1976 blind tasting organized by Steven Spurrier. I can see why Taber and Spurrier have said bad things about “Bottle Shock” since they both come off as eccentrics if not buffoons (Taber especially). But it’s the film’s suspension of belief and compression of the story that really sink its chances of becoming another “Sideways.”

Adapting “Judgement of Paris” would prove to be a difficult challenge since the book is only interesting in the middle telling the stories of the people behind the winning wines. Both Warren Winiarski and Mike Grgich figure prominently in the book documenting the back story of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet and Chateau Montelena Chardonnay but are nowhere to be found in “Bottle Shock.” Since the movie is about Chateau Montelena and Steven Spurrier, Winiarski’s lack of screen time is understandable but Grgich made the winning wine and is only evoked by a guy with a barret in the background of a couple scenes. This probably had more to do with the bad blood between Jim Barrett and Mike Grgich than the choices of the screenwriters, but these sorts of deviations from the facts ultimately prove too much and the result is a mildly entertaining tale that will bother wine lovers to no end with its loose ends (we are supposed to believe a bottle of 1947 Cheval Blanc is available at a dive bar in Calistoga? the temporary discoloring of the Montelena Chardonnay happened to the 1972 vintage and not the ‘73 as depicted in the film).

But documentaries don’t have these sorts of issues since the viewer doesn’t have to read between the lines. And I’m happy to report that the new wine documentary “Merlove” is worth a look for anyone into wine. A full review and interview with filmmaker Rudy McClain on my next podcast posted this weekend.

I’m writing this post drinking a glass of Chateau Cheval Blanc. Last night I had Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Dominus Estate. No, I haven’t won the lottery or joined Bob Parker’s tasting staff, I have been experimenting with the Crushpad Fusebox.

Of course my wines aren’t the real thing but blends based upon these famous wines. I’m not sure if any one of these actually tastes that close to the real thing but that doesn’t really matter since the wines are very good examples of what can be made from Bordeaux varieties in California. Of the three wines I’ve blended so far, I’ve only had Dominus for real and the home blended version is pretty close to the mark, if a bit less concentrated.

Crushpad sent me this Fusebox back in 2007, no doubt hoping I would blog about it before now. It never really occurred to me to open the 7 half bottles in the pack by myself as the Fusebox is a natural center point of a wine party. Their idea is to gather friends together and have a blending party using 5 of the 6 Bordeaux varieties to create your own custom wine.

They have provided everything you need to do this properly with a graduated cylinder and 4 pipettes to create your blends. Easy to follow instructions, blend recipe cards and tasting aids are also included. In all, Fusebox is a complete wine blending course in a fun package that just might induce you to try your hand at winemaking.

I’m having so much fun I wish they sold a recharge kit with just the 6 half bottles you really need to create your blends. But their “mystery bottle” is a stroke of genius as it encourages you to blend up the entire kit in order to compare and figure out which blend they have put in that bottle.

The Fusebox is available at their website for $120. For what you get, that seems to be a fair price and it would make a great gift for any wine geek. Excuse me while I mix up some Niebaum-Coppola Rubicon…

Disclosure: Crushpad send me this Fusebox as a sample.

More about Le Beast at my company blog.