Reading the Blogs

by Rob Bralow

Last week I was on Jury Duty for most of the week. It was long and boring, and it allowed my Google reader to pile up with posts. When I got back to the office on Thursday, I found over 600 blog posts waiting for me to read them.

Oh yes, I took a look at every one of them. But I really did not read most of them. The vast majority of the posts were wine reviews. Are they interesting? Not really. Seriously, reading the tasting notes of 200 people over 7 days is almost worse than sitting in a windowless room deciding the fate of another person.

It is just that tasting notes from someone else do not really mean anything to me. There are a few bloggers that I might ask for a Zinfandel recommendation, because they live in the heart of Zinland. If I did not turn to my friend who works at Sunset Corners in Miami (she's a bubbly fanatic) there are one or two bloggers that I might ask for advice.

But what are people writing about right now? The answer is whatever marketers are sending out samples of. And that is low priced, high volume wines that everyone has named "value" wines. So far I have tasted many of these "value" wines and I value very few of them. Therefore, I am not really interested in the majority of reviews of these wines. Whenever I see a review of a wine I have tasted, I stop a moment to see if they author agreed with my taste. I have found more and more that I find glowing reviews of wines that I do not think are worth the price of the glass the wine is in.

What I do read are the commentaries that very few bloggers write about the wine industry and their experiences. Not necessarily the review of the wines, but their view on how the wine industry is moving. These are interesting and incite my curiosity. I want to know what these writers are thinking. I want to see if I agree or disagree. I want to know how their ideas will become the next evolution of new media, of wine sales, and of how all of us think about wine.

I will definitely be one that writes reviews of wines I have tasted, because that is what I do, it is the reason why wineries send me their wines. But hopefully I will intersperse nuggets of interesting commentary throughout my wine reviews to keep you interested in my writing.

Jury Duty - Like a Fine Wine

I have been quite absent lately because I had Jury Duty. I was selected by the lawyers to sit on the jury for the case they were trying.

I found the experience to be interesting. This was the first time I had ever had Jury Duty, and the first time I was on a jury.

I had plenty of time to think while sitting on this jury. Lots of sitting in rooms with no windows either listening to witnesses testify or alone with 13 other people, not allowed to talk about the case so instead we were all just silent. The more I sat there the more I recognized the players in this drama to be very similar to wines I have had.

The prosecution: A clean, clear-cut New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. The prosecutor was bright and vibrant, but sharp and acidic. There was plenty of zest, but also a clearly defined structure with no chance of finding more outside the lines.

The defense: A cheerful Chilean Merlot. Smooth and sleek out of the bottle, this is everybodies' friend. That is until you leave it over night when it becomes more harsh and angular. Plenty of variety and creativity, but very volitile.

The judge: A well known and well liked Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Perfectly contained and balanced, with a well defined structure but also the age and experience to easily transition from one flavor profile to the next.

The defendant: An unknown quantity, perhaps a Pinotage from South Africa, or a Cabernet Franc from Ohio. You are not really sure what you have, but you are willing to give it a try. Why not?

The officers of the court, the clerk, the court reporter: The glassware that allows the wine to reach your lips, the corkscrew that opens the bottle, the cooler that keep the wine at a perfect temperature.

The jury: Well, that's me! I mean, you! I mean... the taster. Through all the intructions, the moving, the sitting, the standing, the sitting, the moving, it is the jury to decides guilty or not guilty.

Have you ever served on a jury? Did you find a similar experience?

When Bloggers Get Fooled

By Rob Bralow, Editor

I want to start this blog post with an apology to Randy Watson, The Wine Whore. And I apologize, because I have to call him out on a recent blog post of his.

Currently there are hundreds of wine bloggers. There has been an explosion of wine writing on the Internet and there are now more voices than ever giving people advice, relating experiences, and generally spreading the word about the virtues of wines and their producers.

One of the main topics of conversation among blogs and other bloggers is the dominance of the reviewing publications. The main five are (in alphabetical order) International Wine Cellar, Wine & Spirits, Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast, and Wine Spectator. There are other internationally recognized publication such as Decanter and Penin Guide, but by and large those five are the only publications in the US that retailers use to sell their wines.

There is plenty of argument on the use of the scores of these publications, and on scoring in general. There are many discussions on the marketing towards these publications and the influence of marketing on ratings. There was also a lot of navel gazing regarding the ethics of receiving samples, advertising, press trips, meals, etc. by wineries. The US government has even posted new interpretations on the laws of advertising specifically for bloggers (something I wrote about back in April, before it hit the wine blogosphere... goes to show how important I am in this community).

That is all well and good. Everyone has decided where their ethical compass points them.

So then I came across a post by Randy, giving praise to a winery that told him that they do not submit their samples to "corporate tasting panels, yet still looking for online reviews and general presence..." Randy, a self proclaimed whore for wine samples, praised this winery for not feeling pressured into submitting to these reviewing publications and how honest and genuine this winery is. You can read Randy's entire write-up for yourself.

I am in the marketing business, I work in public relations for several wine companies and regions. When I hear that a winery does not submit their wines to the reviewing and rating publications, I get somewhat curious. Why not? You can always tell them no when they come begging for advertising revenue. I also get curious to see if what they say is actually true and that their wines are in fact NOT submitted to the reviewing publications. So first I looked on the winery's website and found this:

Our winery "does not submit to professional competitions, nor do we submit our wines to for-profit corporations seeking advertisement revenues (in exchange for numeric scores.)"

Fair enough. That seems to be completely consistent with what Randy reported. In fact it seems that this winery has done a great deal reaching out to bloggers and other online reviewing outlets. There is a long list of blog posts discussing the wines (probably in positive tones, although I have not read them all). The prices of the wines are all standard prices for Russian River Valley wines. Nothing too pricey, but in the $25 - $40 range.

I then went to the reviewing publications (since I have subscriptions to all of them). In the International Wine Cellar and Wine Advocate I could not find the wines listed, which surprised me because neither of these publications accept advertising. I then checked the Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator (both publications that accept advertising and send their reps out with a vengeance) and in both of these publications they had their wines rated, as recently as last year's release in Wine Enthusiast, although the late rated wine in Wine Spectator was several year's ago. This entire process took me less than five minutes.

So what happened here? Did Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast purchase these wines, just to give them mediocre reviews? I think there is probably enough wine out there that neither Spectator nor Enthusiast need to be purchasing wines.

I am not writing this post to call out the winery. I am sure this type of thing happens all the time and there might even be a very good explanation of why these reviewing publications have ratings of these wines. I really wanted to relate that my experience has been that bloggers rarely do the research to verify the marketing of the samples they get. If you want to be taken seriously as a wine writer, do your research, ask questions, take nothing for granted just because the winery told you so. Perhaps this makes my job harder. But it also means that I need to be more authentic. It is my job to be an educator, to teach the writers, reviews, bloggers, and everyone else about my clients. One of my favorite parts of this industry is that there is always a story to tell.

Randy said he did not get any marketing materials, only a nice hand-written note with his samples. I would argue that he did get marketing materials. And evidently they were rather persuasive.

Quick Taste: A Little Syncopated Rhythm

Music and wine can definitely be combined. Just ask Katie. So when I received a few samples from R&B Cellars, I thought the marketing people had found something wonderful.

The label is classy, the concept simple and the language musical. Each wine has a clever name and what's in the bottle... is ok. One thing I found really strange about these wines that I only equated with Idaho wines, a slight bitterness in the finish.

2007 "Serenade in Blanc" Sauvignon Blanc, North Coast, California - There was such a great helping of vibrant lemon and mandarin orange citrus in this wine that I had high hopes to go out and find some oysters. The taste was creamy and started with a lively lime citrus but degenerated into a bitter rind finish. Could do worse for $13.

2006 "Saxy Syrah" Syrah, North Coast, California - Sweet plumb and blueberry on the nose. Then again with the strange bitterness. What was even weirder for me was that after the bitterness was a really pleasant raspberry finish. It was to the point where I just wanted to get past the initial taste to enjoy the ending.

2007 "Swingsville Zinfandel" Zinfandel, Lodi, California - My favoirt of the bunch. Ripe and smooth fruit, centering on fleshy blackberries. The taste was almost sweet at first with spicy tannins coming to give the wine some backbone.

Value Brands

Value is quickly becoming a codeword for cheap and totally destroying the meaning of the word value. Two years ago the word was quality, and everything was the best, supreme, highest quality in whatever section of the world, coastline, river, valley they were in.

Today the word is value, for obvious reasons. Everyone wants to spend less money, they WANT the cheaper wine. It's ok to say it. CHEAP! Let's all say it together like a bunch of little yellow canaries. That reminds me of one of my favorite jokes that was told to me by the one and only Sophie Eustis.

So now, every "Value" brand wants to get people talking about them, get reviews, get bloggers interested in promoting their brands for them. It is exactly what I would do if I had one of those brands as my client. As a blogger, I have been getting a flood of these wines. I received a bottle of Martini & Rossi Asti and Rose for review on this blog.


If you are unfamiliar with this brand, you probably had the brand's vermouth in your last martini. They make a lot of "Value" sparkling wine from Italy, most of it from Asti in the Piedmont region. These two sparkling wines were sugartastic, as one would expect of a sparkling Moscato d'Asti. What these wines did not have was anything else. Really it was Coca Cola with jolly rancher flavoring instead of cola syrup. For someone looking to get drunk, this wine will get you there. However you will have to drink the entire bottle because there is more sugar than alcohol in the wine and you will also have to deal with the headache in the morning...