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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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…

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!

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?

Besides not writing or podcasting I pretty much stopped my blog reading. As I returned to Google Reader last week, I had the maximum 1,000+ posts on each of my subscription categories. So I simply pressed the “Mark all as read” button on most categories except for wine blogs.

In my perusal of the past several days, a few posts stood out. But none of these got me thinking more about wine blogging than Jeff’s post over at Good Grape on how 98% of Wine Bloggers Are Hacks. When I saw Ryan’s post today asking the difference between amateur and professional wine writers, I started to think about my credentials, or lack thereof, for what I do here.

Jeff’s post highlights veteran wine writer Matt Kramer’s piece about how 10,000 hours of training is the minimum to attain expert status in any field. Said another way, that’s 3 hours a day for 10 years. It’s been 9,458 days since I turned 21 back in the early days of the first Reagan Administration. To be fair, my wine drinking started three years earlier due to the drinking age in New York being 18 at the time but I really didn’t get into wine until I transfered to a university in northern California in 1980. If I assume that I spent an hour each day studying wine since then, I’m nearly at that 10,000 hour mark now. But my daily consumption of wine didn’t really begin until the mid-80’s and tasting wine is not the same as reading about wine.

So I’m still very much a hack by this definition.

Ryan’s post this morning asked when a blogger crosses the threshold from amateur to professional status? Since by definition an amateur does not get paid for doing a particular task this seems like an easy question. But in this age of affiliate marketing and sponsorship most wine bloggers can earn some sort of income from blogging. But this is not yet enough to earn a living for any wine blogger I know so I guess most of us are still amateur wine writers (or critics, if you like).

But I don’t think this matters very much as wine bloggers are starting to be taken seriously by consumers. Expert or professional status might have been the hurdle for wine writers in the print era but in today’s low-cost, online personal publishing era this barrier has evaporated.

I’ll still working on getting my 10,000 hours in, anyway

I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed the current outage of the Wine Spectator website today but they sent me an email informing me that they would be down for the entire week. I guess it’s not just a database problem that could be recovered from in a few hours at most sites; they went down hard.

But I’m not sure if it matters much given all the other choices for reading about wine online these days. So maybe I should cancel when they come back online and try Robert Parker’s online subscription (I do miss Neal Martin’s prose)?

Or maybe I should just save my money all together?

The answer is it is not possible. What I think happened was one of a few things that I haven’t seen anyone write about.

Batch Variation

Charles Shaw is made in industrial quantities from inexpensive grapes grown in California’s Central Valley. They have also been known to buy wine on the bulk market to bolster their blend as the market allows. My guess is the bottles judged at the California State Fair came from a vastly better batch than what I, and other wine podcasters, have tasted.

Palate Fatigue

I’m not sure who the judges were for this event, but I expect they were all well qualified to distinguish thin, flabby wine from truly complex and interesting wine. Given the hundreds of wines sampled at the competition I would expect some palate fatigue might have contributed to this result.

Random Chance

The blind format for tasting is absolutely the best way for wine to be judged as it takes away all the preconceptions one might have for a given wine. But one of the artifacts of this approach is the line-up of wines can affect the tasters perception. So I think the most likely cause for Charles Shaw Chardonnay winning double-gold (the equivalent of a 98 score) is the wines tasted immediately before the Shaw. Since many California Chardonnay falls into the over-oaked, buttery category, a fruit-forward, little to no oak wine might appear “better” due to the contrast in styles.

But I could be wrong here and Shaw Chardonnay could be one of the best values available on the U.S. market today.

The last time I tried this wine I left unimpressed but I will pick up a bottle and put it into a blind tasting along with some of the best that California has to offer. It will be interesting to see if my judgement in Minnesota lines up with a Judgement in California. As with all wine tasting, your mileage may vary.

Now seems like the right time to put on the table how this system might work in practice. After thinking about this some and considering what Ryan wrote the other day, I humbly propose we wine bloggers adopt the following rating scales:

Overall Wine Quality

* Flawed, Not Recommended
** Average
*** Very good, Recommended
**** Delicious; A Wine of Distinction
***** Outstanding; A Classic Wine

Value/QPR

* Bad Value
** Average Value
*** Good Value
**** Great Value
***** Excellent Value

We can discuss the merits of adding half-stars to this mix once I get a read on the community’s reaction to this proposal. In the meantime, vote on what our icons should be below (aggregator/email readers might have to click back to the site to vote):

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this modest proposal. I believe we are making some progress here.

Umm, not good; the formatting was off and, as subscribers to my Twitter feed will attest, I had to do a bit of work to get these reviews presentable on the site. I don’t think this is due to anything in the feeds but from some issues with my current Wordpress theme, since all the tests I have done on my personal blog have worked without any modification.

So my question for other wine bloggers is what needs to change in the format of the reviews before you will join me in using the 5-star system (and these Wine 2.0 services) to post your reviews?

As Om Malik posted Tuesday, the iPhone will change the mobile phone landscape but it will also power Wine 2.0 because the application programming interface (API) for the iPhone is the web itself. At first, I thought this was pretty insignificant; in fact, my first reaction was “so what” but the more I think about a mobile phone running a fully featured desktop web browser the possibilities for interesting Wine 2.0 applications come to mind.

Want to post a tasting note to Cork’d or Bottletalk while sitting in a restaurant? No problem. Check prices or scores via Snooth or WineZap while in the aisle of your wine store? Go for it. Read your wine blogs? Of course.

Anything you can do on the web can now be consumed on the iPhone which will be great for Wine 2.0 usage and innovation. Sure, the pricing for this device is way too high now but the same could be said for my Motorola RAZR a few years ago; now they are free with contract.

Give this a couple years and you will really see some interesting traction in the marketplace and anyone with online wine information, recommendations and a wine store will benefit. As long as they make their user interface simple and easy to navigate with a mouse, that is.

For a taste of what’s to come, just fire up Safari on your Mac, and now Windows PC, and check out some of the early iPhone sites.

Photo credit: Engadget

Quite by chance, I received an email today that included a link to a wine review site I had not visited before, Pointless Wines. The author’s thesis is pretty simple. He reviews wine and does not award points like some of us do. There are also some interesting articles about the 100-point system that, when I triangulated with a post Ryan did a few days back, gave me pause as I return to writing reviews.

How important is the score to the reader of the review?

I know, we have discussed this subject before here but, without beating a dead horse, would it really matter too much if I just left those scores out from now on? After all, “The web should be something different.“

Food for thought, anyway.

I wanted to have this discussion face-to-face and not via email because the subject is nuanced and I wanted to somewhat debate the issue in real-time. I’ve always been on the side of transparency, so I’ve disclosed I’m in the wine trade and who pays for the wines I review for some time now. As long as I continue to do this, I reasoned, readers and listeners would take this into account when evaluating the recommendations I make here.

But Alder questioned whether or not a member of the wine trade could actually be objective no matter how transparent the writer is. At the time I — somewhat naively in retrospect — shrugged off this position as a difference of opinion but this idea has continued to reverberate in my head for nearly a week now.

Can I truly be objective about wine here if I make my living marketing and selling wine?

To avoid any conflict of interest I do not review the wines I am marketing nor do I blog about the business of the winery (not directly, anyway). But I am aware that should I review another Napa Valley wine and rate it lower than say, 85, it might appear that I am trying to benefit the brand I am working with. No matter how much I assure you that this is the farthest thing from my mind, I know that some will assume an ulterior motive.

So the only solution here is to stop reviewing Napa Valley wines or give up wine reviews altogether.

I don’t like either of these options simply because wine reviews and recommendations have been a part of the DNA of Winecast from the very first post and podcast. From incoming links and search engine referrals I know that these reviews are popular draws to this blog. Further, I have never considered myself to be a wine critic but a wine lover who writes about wine. It’s just a subjective opinion and readers can judge for themselves.

But Alder’s words are still ringing in my ears. Before doing anything rash I’d like to hear from readers and other bloggers about this issue. Shall I stop reviewing wines that could be considered competitive with my day job, stop reviewing wine altogether or hang it up and stop blogging and podcasting? I know that any of these will hurt a lot because I really love doing this but ethics are very important to me and if what I write here is considered tainted by my association to the wine business then I would be willing to take this course of action. It’s really up to you.

Note: sometimes comments are put into moderation so please wait before re-posting. Frequent participants will see their comments posted immediately.

On one hand, the 100-point scale is the same as the American grading system so it’s easy for us to understand; the downside is the arbitrary nature of scoring, like academic grading, is completely subjective. If I am grading papers written by my marketing students, I look for various points and mark down from 100 to arrive at the final grade. This is reflected in a numerical score that is converted into the A, B, C, D or F grades on their report cards. When “grading” wine, I build from a base of 50, with points added for color, aromas, flavor and overall impression. A much more precise method than grading papers but still completely subjective. An 89 becomes a 91 in different contexts for the same wine as a result sometimes.

The alternative view, equally valid in my book, says that scores are much too precise for something like wine tasting. Judging other art forms like films, plays or paintings does not have such a scoring method. As close as you get are “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” with most of the commentary about why the art is great, average or a complete waste of time. That element is missing in the discussion about wine and I think that’s at the core of my response; scores are a red herring, the real issue is wine writing.

Getting back to Dr. Debs’ post a couple days back, comparing wine writing to cooking is exactly right. I think the good doctor is on to something profound here. This had me thinking about writing styles that most of us use in describing wine in the blogosphere which is based upon the terse styles of the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate.

What if Hunter S. Thompson wrote about wine, I pondered?

I think it would be an intense first person account of the wine in question, the method (or lack thereof) of experiencing the wine, the food and conversation about said wine and any other stream of consciousness provoked by tasting the wine. This would often veer off into tangents relating to politics, the meaning of life and how stupid it is in the 21st Century to seal wine bottles with the boiled bark of dead trees from Portugal. It would be sometimes profane and as real as if the writer was channeling the spirits of Mr. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, Andre Tchelistcheff and F. Scott Fitzgerald. In short, it would be a complete break with the current state of affairs in wine writing and I think a positive step in getting more people to enjoy wine.

So I’m going to take a step into this direction and make my reviews less clinical and more interesting. I might rate on the 100-point scale, I might not. Sometimes there will only be lengthy descriptions and analogies, sometimes terse notes and scores. Who knows? I think this is perfectly aligned with my wine twittering movement and will take Winecast, the blog and podcast, in an interesting new direction. Then again, it could take me into the ditch, but my friend Neil says that’s not a bad place to be…

I raise my glass to Hunter S. Thompson and Dr. Debs for getting me to think outside the box. Where this leads, no one knows… but that’s the fun of it

As a recent practitioner of the Parker 100 point system, I can sympathize with Dr. Miller and his new colleagues as they traveled the world to taste hundreds of wines and record their notes and scores. The pressure must have been pretty high as they wrote their impressions of the wine’s color, aromas, flavor and overall quality/aging potential. What I like about this approach is that each component has it’s own sub-score and typically at a large tasting you don’t know the wine’s final score until you are finished and add up these components. The only time you are aware of the final score during a tasting is if you give a wine most or all the points for each area. In my short experience, this has only happened once while recently tasting at Pax Cellars. So it’s kind of surprising that five 100 point wines would come out of a few months of tasting but not unheard of given that very nearly one thousand wines were rated (how he managed to taste that many wines is another story).

But what this really brings to the surface for me is that Dr. Miller’s use of the Parker scale is different than with others who use it. As with any subjective enterprise, wine rating is an imprecise activity effected by a number of changing conditions. The temperature and lighting of the room, glassware used, condition of the bottle, corks, what you had to eat earlier, etc. All these things affect the result and any person rating a wine will most likely have slightly different results for the same wine tasted under different conditions. Hopefully this variation will be less than 5% so there will not be too much variation in the final scores. Your mileage will almost certainly be different so you have to experience some of the same wines yourself to get attuned to the reviewers preferences.

This also had me pondering what a 100 point wine is in the first place. I believe it is the best wine a taster has had without any flaws and the maximum of complexity. I’ve never had a wine I would rate a perfect 100 but I think I will know one when I drink it. Or maybe I won’t and all my “best” wines will be rated 98 or 99 points. It’s hard to say really since I’ve not tasted and rated very many wines.

So the bottom line for me is that I will try to taste some of these same wines and see if my ratings agree with Dr. Miller’s. As I expect they will not, I will have a rule of thumb to go by when reading his recommendations. It will also have me scrutinizing the written impression of the wine more and looking at the raw score less. That’s probably a good thing in the long-run.

Whatever the cause of Wine X ceasing publication is really not that interesting to me anymore so I started to think about what a successful wine publication would look like targeted at Millennials. For one, it would be online and more like My Space or Facebook than Wine Spectator. The social aspects of sharing tasting notes and linking to friends and blogging about wine would be the main focus with perhaps a bit of eCommerce thrown in for convenience (and site monetization). In short, more about the wine experience than degrees brix and terroir.

Sounds like some Wine 2.0 opportunities to me. Talk amongst yourselves

There’s an interesting piece in Decanter about the demise of Wine X magazine. For readers unfamiliar with this wine publication, it’s been around for about 8 years and targets young adults with hipster lingo and quite a dollop of irreverence (sample wine review: “Tastier than a food fight at the Playboy Mansion… and the best part is lickin ‘ it clean.”). Jeff posted about their recent “Just Points” campaign a few weeks back. Founder and editor Darryl Roberts blamed the entire wine industry for the shuttering of his magazine, stating, “The wine industry says it’s interested in young adults but spends all of its ad and promo money targeting the same people it’s been targeting for the past 30 years - rich, old white people.”

I don’t think the wine industry is as completely to blame as Mr. Roberts accuses here. Sure, this is a very traditional industry slow to catch onto online marketing or the targeting of demographic groups other than Baby Boomers but Wine X itself deserves much of the blame. That’s because they didn’t evolve with their target demographic who don’t read print publications. Yes, I know they have a hip website complete with RSS feeds, podcasts and email newsletters but these always seemed secondary to the print magazine.

It’s interesting to note that when Wine X started, back in 1997, their demographic was Gen-Xers as the oldest Millennials were only in their early teens. Over the past 8 years, Wine X continued to cater to entry level wine drinkers in their early to late 20’s who now are predominantly Millennials. This group has taken to wine, but not exactly like their Baby Boomer parents, and tend to gain their information via the internet. So if Wine X had evolved to serve this group, they would have beefed up their web presence while phasing out the expensive print magazine. Even their “podcasts” were played on the radio; not the way to get into the heads of the iPod generation. And since Millennials are multitaskers, reading blogs while listening to podcasts while watching Family Guy, they just don’t read many magazines. It’s really that simple.

I’m sorry Mr. Roberts, you have to shoulder most of the blame for Wine X’s demise. Let’s hope you have enough funding to reboot your website and really market wine to Millennials.

I’m all for truth in labeling, particularly with the use of appellations of origin, but I find this to be ridiculous as it will confuse a lot more customers than it would warn. Since egg whites have been used for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years in wine production as a fining agent, I doubt allergic reactions to these substances is a wide spread concern. If you sometimes have an allergic reaction to red wines, post to the comments.

What’s next, “this wine may cause headaches”?

Check out the full story here.

Like many in Western democracies, our tradition is Christian. Today in church the lectionary included the familiar Gospel lesson of Jesus turning water into wine. Even those not practicing today will remember the story from Sunday school. Jesus and His Mother are attending a wedding in Cana and the host runs out of wine. After Mary brings this fact to Jesus’ attention and a bit of motherly arm-twisting, He turns six, 20 gallon jugs of water into wine. But not just any wine; one that the chief wine steward at the event deems the best served.

After the service I was thinking about how amazed the guests must have been and wondered why Jesus’ first miracle involved something as seemingly insignificant as providing more vino at a wedding. I’m sure that the Gospel writer chose this miracle on purpose since wine must have seemed like a miracle given to man by God. Unlike other alcoholic beverages which require human intervention, wine occurs naturally without any encouragement. We know today that wild yeasts penetrate the grape skins and fermentation begins within each berry; the technique of carbonic maceration takes advantage of this natural occurrence. To ancient man, it must have appeared to be magic.

The second thing I wondered about was how did this wine taste? The scripture says it was “good” but doesn’t give us any details as to the grape varieties involved or even if it was white or red. I’m guessing the wine was Falernian made from the Aminean grape as Jesus certainly would provide the best wine of ancient Rome to convince his Disciples He was The One. A white wine, Falernian was aged until an amber color somewhat like tawny port or sherry is today. I’d bet the wedding guests didn’t really care about what grape the wine was made from, only that it tasted good.

If this wedding took place today, I wonder what variety Jesus would provide? The crowd would be happy if Pinot Grigio and Pinot Noir appeared in the jugs of water, but what if it was a blend of obscure grapes?

It really doesn’t matter, of course, but I connected this story with a couple wines I tasted yesterday. The first was a red blend of Castelao (a.k.a. Periquita) and Alicante Bouchet; the second, a white made from Viognier, Chardonnay and Muscat. Both quite nice tasting but a bit of a tougher sell with consumers due to the nature of the blends. I’m hoping more American consumers stop caring about the grape varieties and concentrate on the taste of the wine.