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?

If you are still with me, you will enjoy the challenge of reading a half-dozen books and posting your reviews. There is even a “spin the bottle” round every other month, inspired by Dr Vino, with coordinated reviews of a wine book by two bloggers. I’ve volunteered for the first month along with founder Dr Debs to review Wine and Philosophy by Fritz Allhof. Look for our reviews later this month.

The first book to be reviewed by everyone in this series is Vino Italiano hosted by David McDuff. Like WBW you are to read the book and then post a review on your blog or the new group blog to be established before the last week of February. I’ll post here when it’s up since I’m building and hosting it.

This will be another regular feature I’ll be participating in and hope you will too. Thanks to Dr Debs for her leadership in getting this venture launched. Now I have no excuse to not get all those books sent to me read and reviewed

Before I get into my angle, let me backup 25 years and explain how I first learned about wine. This was in the early 1980’s and there were not very many wine books to choose from, particularly the cheaper paperbacks I tended to favor in my college years. But I did find a couple from Signet that I read and these became my guidebooks into all things vino.

The first book was a quick read, the Signet Book of Inexpensive Wine. For all of $1.95 I was treated to, “…over 400 wines rated.” But in retrospect the ratings did little to inspire my wine education. It was the brief overviews on the major wine regions that gave me the confidence to buy wines from outside the jug brands of California. Some additional time with the Signet Encyclopedia of Wine (around $5, I think) filled in the gaps and I was off to learn more about wine by tasting them.

What I see now on the shelf are books with strategies to find wine bargains or make wine easier to understand. I don’t see a field guide that would inspire someone just getting into wine to expand much beyond their comfort zone of Cabernet, Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio. So I’m going to write such a book this year and post sections here for your review and comment. After I get the manuscript done, I’ll publish an electronic version for free but also self-publish a printed version for a modest price. And, yes, there will also be an audio book version.

Although I have not decided on a title yet, all the posts will be tagged here with the “Guide” category. And I expect to write the first draft in roughly chronological order to make it easier to follow here on the blog. Since I’d like to have this ready for the holidays, I will close the manuscript off on my birthday in mid-November. I’ll also post monthly summaries of progress to date.

I’m really looking forward to going down this path and see where it takes me… now off to write an outline!

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?

Aside from being tripped up by one of Bernard Pivot’s signature questions I think I did OK. And Tom even publishes a wine geeky pic of me in my podcast studio Check it out for yourself.

Thanks Tom!

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

Roussanne is a high acid variety so we should have good acidity to work with right off the vine. If needed, we could acidify with tartaric acid which is very common in California winemaking and not something to be avoided, unless necessary, like watering back. The high acidity of the Roussanne can be blended back some with the addition of fatter varieties like Marsanne or Chardonnay which we will explore further as we go along.

So the main decision here is the intensity of the acidity, measured by the pH. The higher we go makes the wine more impressive by itself but sacrifices it’s friendliness with food. My preference is for the most food friendly wine here but I’m open to your comments and suggestions.

Next, we’ll get into yeast; such fun!

Alcohol gives the wine body and weight on the palate but too much can produce off odors and a “hot” finish. Too low and the wine is thin and watery. The range Crushpad has is between 13-15.5+%. Shall we shoot for 14% but limit to 14.5%, or perhaps aim a bit lower?

Style: Describe characters you would like to highlight or downplay in your wine.

Sounds like a simple request but one that I find difficult to put into words. Sure, I’ve had some Roussanne I really liked from both California and the Rhône but what were the specific elements that made these wines something special?

Before we get into this any further, let me back up and talk about the Roussanne grape as this might be new for some readers. Roussanne is native to the northern Rhône region of France where it is one of two white grapes, along with Marsanne, allowed in the appellations of Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage and St. Joseph. It’s also grown in the southern Rhône where it is often blended with Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and Clairette Blanc.

An inconsistent producer, Roussanne is not grown in large quantities anywhere in the world and there are less than 250 acres planted in California today. The name Roussanne most likely comes from it’s russet-colored berries when ripe. Wine made exclusively from this grape is highly acidic, but high in aromatics, so other white grapes are often blended to balance the final wine.

The Westerly Vineyard was established in 1995 by entrepreneurs Neil and Francine Afromsky. These were the first wine grapes planted in the Happy Canyon area of Santa Barbara’s warmest wine region. They planted 85 acres of Bordeaux and Rhône varieties and developed a name for the vineyard with their Westerly Vineyards brand. Last year they sold the Westerly Vineyard to Chicago financier Jack McGinley, but retained the “Westerly Vineyards” brand and access to the grapes grown in this vineyard. Thus, the vineyard name change and it’s unclear if we can use Westerly on the label of our Roussanne this vintage.

Westerly Vineyards Roussanne is released as a blend simply called, “W Blanc” which is mostly Roussanne (75-80%) blended with Viognier. Both the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate have favorably reviewed Westerly Vineyards W Blanc which I will excerpt below:

Wine Spectator:

The 2004 W Blanc Estate (75% and 25% respectively) exhibits a light gold color along with a gorgeous nose of honeyed flowers and tropical fruits, good underlying acidity, and bold, exuberant, intense flavors nicely buttressed by acidity and tannin. This serious, French-styled white is reminiscent of an exotic white Hermitage. Drink it over the next several years. 90 points

Wine Advocate:

The 2003 W blanc (80% Roussanne and 20% Viognier) offers up a beautiful, crisp bouquet of rose petals, apricots, and exotic tropical fruits (passion and guava). An elegant, streamlined effort, it exhibits more minerality than most California dry whites, as well as a dry, well-delineated, ravishing style. Drink it over the next 1-2 years. 90 pts.

Although this sounds almost exactly like the style of Roussanne I prefer, it seems to lack the aromatic and flavor characteristics of mandarin orange that I find so fascinating with this varietal. Perhaps this aspect will be in our grapes or we might need to trade some juice with another Crushpad Marsanne group to introduce this complexity. I will buy some bottles of Westerly Vineyards W Blanc to taste for myself and will also bring them to group barrel tastings of our wine as a benchpark.

Whatever the final decision, what do you think we should aim for style-wise with this wine?

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars Flawed, Not Recommended
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars Average
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars Very good, Recommended
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Delicious, A Wine of Distinction
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars Outstanding, A Classic Wine

Note that this is an overall reflection of a wine’s quality and value as having a second scale for value seems too complicated.

It’s great to see other Wine 2.0 sites support this proposal (thanks, Philip, and great Facebook app!) and I expect others to follow. For devotees of the 100-point scale, I will also include that score in all reviews for the foreseeable future along with this 5-star rating.

I know this is somewhat of a contentious issue but I’m hoping some other wine bloggers join me by adopting the 5-star scale (I have noticed Andy begin to use this scale recently). Perhaps we might have some standardization in the wine blog world that seems to exist in the established wine press.

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.

El Jefe laid me bare in his post early this morning (insomnia?) with his poetic argument regarding scores. Let me be clear here, the score is the exclamation point on a bit of prose on the wine in question. Sure, I’m a bit clinical and detached in my reviews sometimes but I do have some passion to spare that Spock might not express. I’ll work on expressing this a bit more.

But I stil think the 5-star (or glass/bottle/cork/bung/unicorn) system is the way for us wine bloggers to go…

Discuss

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?

One of my daily online sources is Decanter which publishes a fine RSS news feed which keeps me somewhat current with the thinking on wine “across the pond.” Whilst on a visit to downtown Minneapolis this weekend I noted the print version of this British wine journal on offer at a local news agent. I eagerly plunked down my £3.60 to sample the best wine magazine from the UK (eight bucks over here).

What a revelation.

As an old print guy, the production is excellent; much better, technically, than the Spectator or any other wine glossy in North America. But the writing is what drew me in. Instead of browsing features, I actually read them, and have a boatload more to read making this a fine value. I also appreciated the focus on Bordeaux and Burgundy which gave me an appreciation for the debate over the 2005 (a Parker favorite) and 2006 vintages like no other wine journal.

I also enjoyed comments like Steven Spurrier’s assessment of ‘06 Bordeaux as, “…not a vintage to buy off the peg.” My translation would be that 2006 Bordeaux is, in general, a bad value, but Mr. Spurrier’s understatement allows for the reader to infer their own experience. I enjoyed Mr. Broadbent’s comments comparing Madeira to the “morning coffee” at Christie’s with equal gusto. This took me back to my days working in London some years back, but I digress.

So the point here is to pick up a copy of Decanter when you see it, North American readers. It’s very worth your hard-earned eight U.S. Dollars or ten Canadian Dollars.

1) I want to share my passion for wine: This is really the heart of the matter; I love wine and want others to discover it, too. I hope what I do here will get more people into wine.

2) I want to grow & learn: The podcast and blog have compelled me to try new wines I would not have otherwise. This has opened up an entirely new wine world to me. Each week I look for new wines to try and not the big jugs of plonk.

3) Wine blogging & podcasting is cool: OK, so this was one of the reasons back in 2004 when I got started. Now it’s just nerdy but I don’t care

4) I like the gigs: Kinda like a musician, this blog has provided me with employment marketing the beverage I love. How cool is that?

5) Because I can: I wish this didn’t sound so egotistical but the tools to share my thoughts about wine are well within the reach of tech geeks like me. I hope more folks with similar passions and technical chops follow, although it’s really pretty easy these days…

I hope I’ve shed some more light on why I do what I do and now will tag a few others in the wine blogosphere and ask the same question: Why do you blog?

St. Vini from The Zinquisition
Beau Jarvis from Basic Juice
Andrew Barrow from Spittoon and Wine Sediments
Tyler Coleman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino
Mark Fisher from Uncorked and The Dayton Daily News

You have all been tagged!

We have two daily newspapers here in the Twin Cities and today the St. Paul paper published a story on Twitter, in Twitter format. I was the local ‘wine nut’ Twittering tasting notes from my recent Napa Valley visit. More on the wine Twittering movement a bit later, in the meantime check out my 15 minutes of (local) fame

Thanks, Alder!

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.

In short, I have no credentials. Although I have a B.A. in communications, I didn’t take any journalism classes. My MBA did nothing for my love of wine but perhaps provide a bit more income when I was in the corporate world. Nor have I ever taken a formal wine education course; not even those $25 ones offered by good wine stores. All of my knowledge about wine has come from tasting different wines over the past 25 years. I’ve also read quite a few wine books. I should also point out that my quest began with jug wines and I progressed to “fighting varietals” and it was only in the past decade that I really broadened my wine horizons and developed my palate.

From the beginning, however, I preferred New World wines for their pure fruit. My love for Zinfandel came within my first year as a wine newbie where Sebastiani Zinfandel was my main choice for $2.50 a bottle. This was back when Sam Sebastiani was still the winemaker for the eponymous family winery and this wine was a simple, but true version of the variety. For special occasions I splurged on bottles from Lytton Springs Vineyard and Ridge Geyserville. I also tried the odd bottle of Bordeaux which seemed thin and disappointing when compared to Napa Valley Cab.

Years past and my income increased to a point where I was able to enjoy better and more expensive wines. This is really where I really took a turn into wine geekdom and set the table for starting this blog and podcast in December 2004.

My tasting process for bottles reviewed normally is held in my home over a 2 or 3 day period. I use the same Riedel stemware for each wine tasted and try each wine with and without food. My notes are a composite over this period. When I taste at wineries or large tasting events, I only try the wine once. Each of these reviews should be judged as first impressions for the wines in question.

No matter the venue for tasting, all reviews presented here should be taken as just my opinion and not replace your own experience with the same wines.

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.

So hold the date of April 18th at 9:00 pm EDT/6:00 pm PDT. You can join by either calling +1 724-444-7444 or downloading the TalkShoe software on your computer. The Talkcast ID is 23964. Hope to have many of you join me live and I’ll also release a higher quality recording after the event.