I get a lot of press releases but don’t often publish them here as I don’t usually find an angle to blog about. But a release this morning by the Center for Wine Origins and Office of Champagne caught my eye for it’s use of a YouTube video:

As a longtime wine lover, I agree with the objectives of this group in protecting their place names but I wonder if the average American consumer really would understand the group’s message. Would consumers buy less Andre or Korbel if those producers were forced to remove the word “champagne” from their labels? Are consumers of American “sherry” or “port” really looking for the real deal from Spain or Portugal?

I doubt it.

Back when American producers were using European place names to label their wine blends there was a clear point of difference between a Napa Valley “burgundy” and Pinot Noir from the French region. Now there is less difference in the bottle outside of a handful of the finest vineyards.

So is this distinction still relevant in today’s market or is it just semantics?

Tom Wark of FERMENTATION has announced the nominations for this year’s American Wine Blog Awards. My work here didn’t rate a nomination this year which didn’t surprise me as my output over the past year has been substandard for such accolades, to be quite honest. So I think that puts me in the position to be somewhat objective and comment on blogging awards in general and these in particular.

My main concern with the American Wine Blog Awards is not the name, although I’d prefer something more international, no it’s the voting process. If the Oscars used the same system as these awards, ‘Spider-Man 3′ or ‘Shrek the Third’ would likely win Best Picture as they were the most popular movies last year from their box office receipts. Both are well crafted films but they are not in the same league as ‘No Country for Old Men’ which finished 36th in 2007 ticket sales but took the top Oscar this year.

Why this discrepancy? Because only those in the film industry vote on the nominations and final awards.

So I propose that wine bloggers consider an association that creates an independent awards program modeled after the Motion Picture Academy Awards. As a placeholder, let’s call it the “Wine Bloggers Guild” but we’ll change the name if the discussion warrants. I’ve started a new thread over at Open Wine Consortium for wine bloggers and podcasters to discuss this idea and see if there is consensus for my proposal.

My intention is not to criticize the American Blog Awards, just create an analog to the Oscars to Tom’s People’s Choice Awards. I think there’s room for both. What do you think?

I wonder if you can…

But that probably doesn’t matter as the U. S. wine trade is addicted to the 100-point scoring system as the default method to differentiate and sell wine. Why? Because it makes sense to the American consumer brought up with the same system in school. Everyone, it seems, wants an A in either their term paper or glass of Chardonnay. And retailers feel compelled to sell and promote highly rated wines as they drive traffic to their store.

So that’s what makes this proposal to abolish the 100 point system so interesting to me. No, it’s not from a blogger or consumer but from a wine retailer. Isn’t this cutting off your nose to spite your face, you ask? I hope not but a reading of David Lillie’s proposal makes clear that he wants wine lovers to look beyond just the numbers and concentrate on the enjoyment a wine can bring.

He concludes his argument underscoring that precise scores are not the complete measure of a wine:

“The most important argument against the point system is contained in the dedication and hard work of thousands of producers, mostly European but with a growing number in the US, whose efforts to bring delicious naturally made wines to the consumer cannot possibly be graded with a number.”

This got me thinking about the parallels of wine and film criticism. Before I got into wine, I spend a couple years in film school and remain an avid film buff today. One of the elements that make great movies are the technical aspects along with the story and performances of the actors. When these are in the right balance, magic can happen. There are other times when the intention of the director is to just make an entertaining film. Here the technical aspects are most likely emphasized but there is still room for creativity as viewers of recent works of Michael Bay and Paul Greengrass can attest.

I’ll make my comparison to wine illustrated by a couple examples. I think Sergio Leone’s “Duck, You Sucker” is one of the best films in the Western genre. My wife, on the other hand, thinks it’s a long, boring and strange movie. The opening set piece includes some of the most interesting use of the camera in movie history. I see the homages to other Westerns; my wife sees extreme close-ups of peoples’ mouths while eating. It’s the context of the viewer and knowledge of film that makes all the difference in appreciating this work.

As blogged here recently, Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel is one of my personal favorite wines. But I couldn’t get my mother to drink it because she thinks all red wines, “…smell like dirt!” She can’t imagine how such a wine can taste good if it smells like it does to her. But she is an avid Chardonnay drinker who values Charles Shaw wines that I find lacking. Is she wrong? Of course not, it’s our context and experience with wine that is different. I’ve learned to appreciate the nuances in wine where she just wants something nice to drink with dinner.

So my rating of 92 or 4 stars will not convince my mother to try Ridge Zinfandel and she probably doesn’t care that I rated Charles Shaw Chardonnay an 80. Nor will my wife sit through another Sergio Leone movie when she’s perfectly happy watching “Top Gun” for the 50th time on cable.

The same can be said for wine and too many wine lovers use ratings as a way to select “good” wine when they should let their palate decide. Yes, there are technical aspects that some of us obsess over but the bottom line is the wine should taste good to you no matter what the critics say.

I don’t know David Lillie or his store, Chambers Street Wine in New York. But I’ll bet it’s a lot like Solo Vino where every wine is hand selected not for it’s Parker score but for it’s expression of the variety and region of origin. Scores will be with us for a long time, but it’s voices like Mr. Lillie that have me seriously thinking of not using the 100 point system in my reviews.

Hat tip to Craig at The Wine Camp Blog for Twittering the link this morning.

News broke this morning that online retail giant Amazon.com will enter the wine retail business. Since Decanter reported this story as an alliance between wine.com and Amazon, I was not sure if anything was really news since their relationship was announced some three years ago. And it appears the folks at Decanter have realized their error and have removed the story from their website. But the Financial Times pointed to a recent job posting for a “senior wine buyer” at Amazon which seems to me like Amazon is taking wine distribution seriously.

Twitter chatter broke out this afternoon as Steve over at Vinfolio posted a good analysis of Amazon’s opportunities and obstacles to success in the wine business. His conclusion was that Amazon would put pressure on, “…online retailers selling mainstream, high-volume wine brands…”

While I agree with Steve on one hand, I think he missed what we will look back on in 5 years as the most important change in U.S. wine retailing since the repeal of Prohibition:

Amazon will be the the first long tail wine retailer.

For those not acquainted with Chris Anderson’s work on the subject, a short aside. In 2004 he wrote an influential article for Wired magazine which was later turned into a best selling book, The Long Tale: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. Mr. Anderson’s premise is that businesses can exploit inefficient distribution and inventory costs and offer niche products to millions of customers. His hypothesis that 80% of the market — the Long Tail — can be significant to sales for these niche retailers who sell small amounts of goods to many customers is at the core of the Amazon business model and is used as a key case study in his piece.

I know of no other industry with a more inefficient distribution system than the U.S. wine business. In the 1980’s and ’90’s, I worked in the publishing industry and watched what Amazon did to that inefficient business, particularly in book distribution. I think they will repeat this again with wine.

But it will be quite a bit more difficult for Amazon to operate with all the entrenched special interests and government regulators who control the sale of wine, beer and spirits here in the U.S. While the book market is not nearly as regulated, with only differing tax rates as an annoyance, the wine business is far more complex with diverse shipping costs throughout the country and differing state and local taxes. Not to mention the burden of compliance record keeping and reporting and various shipping laws. In short, it’s a mess, but I think Amazon stands a fighting chance of changing the status quo which will only be good for consumers.

And I don’t think that just the high-volume brands will benefit from Amazon’s move but nearly every brand looking for distribution. The irony is that smaller wineries need more distribution help but often can’t afford it due to the costs of supporting the distributor. And vice-versa the larger brands, who do have feet on the street with distributors, get the majority of distributor attention but probably don’t need as much. This gap in the market is what I think Amazon will capitalize on and many smaller producers will find an efficient way to sell their wine online. Amazon will sell millions of customers small amounts of wine and literally make it up in volume. It’s their way as consumers can often find bestselling books cheaper at Costco or Wal-Mart while more obscure fare is often only available via Amazon.

This will be a very interesting story to follow and I truly hope that Amazon, along with Costco, will change the U.S. wine distribution business for the better.

I’m researching a post about Stormhoek and I came across this podcast with Jason Korman I had not yet heard. During this discussion Jason asserts that terroir applies to all wines wherever they are produced making terroir, “…a meaningless argument…” from a marketing standpoint.

On one hand, I agree with Jason that terroir is too often the de-facto marketing strategy for too many wineries. On the other, I’ve tasted different blocks of the same vineyard and found each wine quite different. So there’s something to this notion of terroir.

But the real learning from this podcast is that those of us who write about wine are too often obscuring the true enjoyment of the beverage with jargon and a learning curve that most people will not invest the time to learn. Perhaps that’s really at the center of the argument that most wine blogs are boring.

So I’m going to make an effort to change the way I talk about wine here and on my podcast to make the content easier to understand for the non wine geek.

I’m also hoping to tell the real story of what happened at Stormhoek in coming days.

There was a little bit of discussion in the wine Twitterverse this evening about a post over on PBS’ MediaShift blog. In a rundown on video podcasts, writer Jennifer Woodard Maderazo described most wine blogs as having, “…content dull enough to bore an enthusiast like me.” Not sure which wine blogs she is referring to but I thought it was a pretty interesting comment from a fellow blogger.

Sure, many of us are not as zany as the folks at Ask a Ninja, entertaining as Gary Vaynerchuk or as quirky as Rocketboom but I’d hardly call “most” wine bloggers boring. Many of us try to inform, educate and feature wines most people might like and write in not the same way as the established wine press (well, most times anyway). There is a camaraderie among wine bloggers that I don’t see in other parts of the blogosphere that is far from pedantic. Whilst we might be seen as somewhat geeky for our language and devotion to all things vino, I wouldn’t characterize the majority of wine bloggers’ work as “boring.”

But I’m biased. What do you think?

One of the announcements at last month’s Macworld Expo was Apple TV Take 2, an update — rethinking really — of the unsuccessful media player released a year ago. Apple CEO Steve Jobs featured the new iTunes movie rental service as the killer new feature of this update but I think video podcasts will be the real winner here. That’s because for the first time it will be easy to consume this content on your TV and not the exclusive domain of the computer or ipod.

I think this development has profound implications on wine podcasters, particularly video podcasters like standard-bearer Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV. This is not lost on Mr. Vaynerchuk as he is putting up 5 Apple TV’s as prizes for a contest he is running right now (BTW, Gary, subscribed). And I fully expect the circulation of Wine Library TV to double as a result of the improvements to Apple TV.

This will provide the first platform for cross-over of niche content to a larger audience outside the digerati. I might even dust off my video podcasting skills and produce a Tony Bourdain influenced wine show if I can raise enough money to do it properly. Plenty of others in the growing Wine 2.0 movement will also jump on board and I expect to see another surge of interest in wine podcasting.

So if you have ever wanted to be on TV, now is the time to get started.

Before I post about the wine trends I see for 2008, I thought I would take a look back at my predictions made last year. Overall, I didn’t score too well but what I did get right was interesting.

So here are my predictions for 2007 with what actually happened:

Online Wine Communities Go Mainstream - This time last year I was fascinated with Web 2.0 and wine. I remain bullish on this category but resigned to the fact that none of these communities will go mainstream any time soon. This one was a complete miss.

The Old World Strikes Back - Although the full data has yet been published, imported wine sales in the U.S. increased in 2007 with Italy edging out Australia for the top spot. I’m not convinced this was due to a preference for more balanced, food-friendly wines but I’ll chalk this one down in the success column; at least for now.

Direct To Consumer Sales Soar - This didn’t seem to be much of a risky prediction as I expected the trend from 2006 to continue. But there were also legal challenges which made it more difficult for wineries to sell directly to consumers in some states. Although I have yet to see definitive numbers for 2007, I sense that this prediction came true.

There Will Be Another Stormhoek - I fully expected there would be another wine brand who would follow the social media route to success like Stormhoek did in 2005-06. But no wine brand did this. As close as we got was from my friends at Sacre Bleu but they are still way under the radar. Another miss for me.

Pinots Come Back To Earth - I expected to see a slight pull-back in the popularity of Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio in 2007 and was half right. Pinot Noir seems to have slowed down in growth while Pinot Grigio continues it’s assent. It was good to see Riesling also increase but all the other varietals I mentioned didn’t seem to change. Overall, a miss as a prediction.

South Africa Emerges - I expected to see the wines of South Africa emerge in a big way in 2007 and they really didn’t. Perhaps I was a year early? Another miss.

Flights Replace Wine By The Glass - Of all my predictions, this one was the most aspirational; it was also totally off the mark. Although I have noticed a few restaurants add flights to their by-the-glass programs, they have in no way replaced them. We can hope to see this someday but I doubt it.

At Least One Wine Blogger ‘Goes Pro’ - Alder’s April Fool’s Day post aside, we did actually see wine bloggers go pro in 2007. Both Tyler Colman and Gary Vaynerchuk crossed over into the mainstream media in 2007. I expect to see more of this in 2008 as wine blogging becomes more accepted by the public and the traditional wine press looks for writers with an audience.

So three correct and five wrong or 60%. That would earn me a D- in school so I’ll think about my 2008 predictions for a few more days before posting. I know I can do better…

A new year is a time for predictions and resolutions but for me it’s also a time to take stock. Last year was a difficult year for me personally and, thus, Winecast. I entered and closed 2007 basically between gigs and it’s unclear where this will take me this year. Although I’ve enjoyed working in the wine trade, it’s also created some challenges to my writing here. So I’m looking to return to the corporate world early this year which will eliminate any appearance of conflict of interest.

Whatever the outcome of my employment situation, it’s clear to me that things have to change here in the coming 12 months. After looking at my stats for 2007, the most popular content are my wine reviews and podcasts. Although I posted many reviews in 2007, as many or more remain scribbled on the pages of my tasting log. I’ve also recorded a number of podcasts that remain unreleased.

So my goals for this year are simple: post here as often as I can, featuring wine reviews, and produce more podcasts. I’ll also do some blog redesign, read more wine books and actively seek sponsors.

I appreciate everyone who’s participated in the discussion here in the past year and look forward to meeting many more friends in 2008.

Happy New Year and cheers!

During the past week, I’ve been watching a lot of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” show on my TiVo (as I write this post, more is being recorded as part of a marathon on The Travel Channel). Of course, I’ve been aware of Bourdain’s antics over the years but have not read any of his books or really watched his TV show until the past week.

In typical fashion for me, something resonated with his world-weary sarcasm, irony and, yes, discovery which led me to watch 10 hours of No Reservations and pick up his first book “Kitchen Confidential” of which 161 pages are now read.

How did I miss the pleasure of his wit, insight into the restaurant business and recommendations on when to eat seafood while dining out? Until this past week, Bourdain was the snarky judge on Top Chef who I assumed Tom Colicchio demanded be on to make him seem more reasonable by comparison. But now I see Bourdain as an old friend who is giving me the inside skinny on what it’s really like behind the scenes in restaurants. So it made me wonder who would do the same for the wine industry?

Almost every book about wine props up the romantic notion that great wine mostly comes from privileged ground in the Old World where centuries of learning and adaption to the earth produce these ethereal beverages. The French even invented a word/marketing strategy called “terroir” around this notion. While some of this is based upon fact, the real story is drastically less romantic based upon my short time working in the wine trade. And because I take non-disclosure agreements seriously, you will not see many such anecdotes on this blog unless anonymous sources start sending me emails.

Sure, there are a few juicy books about the wine business that sometimes expose insider details but they are always told from an outsider’s point of view. James Conaway’s “Napa: The Story of an American Eden” and the more recent “The House of Mondavi” by Julia Flynn Siler come to mind. But no one has taken on the first person, I-know-where-the-bodies-are-buried approach to demystifying the wine industry.

So who will tell the real insider story here, a la Bourdain?