1.

Reaction to my distributor post was fast, furious

And unexpected. I never know when or if something I say will inflame passions or just bore. But the chastising comments I got have forced me to think this thing through.

Most of the negative comments to my post were along the lines of “stop bashing distributors.” Many seemed to be from distributors who took offense to my statement that they lack passion. One comment scored my post 68 points. Ouch. The most telling comment was from someone who accused me of the same faulty logic that Parker used when he said all bloggers are irresponsible: i.e., that all distributors lack passion.

For that, I issue a mea culpa. All distributors do not lack passion. I was wrong to tar them with the same brush, and I apologize.

Others wrote that it’s not fair to blame distributors when there are retail accounts that demand high Parker and Spectator scores; what are the distributors supposed to do? One or two said that the last thing the world needs is another high-priced Napa Cabernet from a famous vineyard. I’m not sure I agree with that. High-end Napa Cab is one of the most in-demand wines in the world, and when this recession is over, I expect it will bounce right back. But that writer is entitled to his opinion.

Someone else wrote in to say that the winemaker I referenced, the one who made the Beckstoffer Cabernet, really had no story to tell. I don’t understand that. Everyone has a story to tell, whether it’s some little peasant winemaker in the Veneto or Robert Mondavi. It’s dismissive to say that just because a winemaker uses Crushpad, he lacks authenticity as a winemaker. The industry is exploring new options and approaches, and these custom-crush, do-it-yourself facilities are one such. In fact, they’re more democratic than the traditional approach, because they enable people without deep pockets to get into the industry.

I think my frustration with distributors is due to the fact that I’ve heard countless stories from innumerable small family winemakers about not being able to get picked up and moved through the system. It’s true, as some commenters noted, that the wine business is exactly that, a business, and no one has the right to expect it to be easy. But when you hear this sad story about lack of distribution year in and year out, it gets to you. Something seems broken, somewhere along the line, if honest men and women who just want to have a little winery can’t sell the stuff without being on the road for 300 days a year.

Finally, there were commenters who agreed with my post. One thing I’ve learned about blogging is, We live in a big, messy democracy and people are going to have all kinds of different reactions to the issues. The 3-tiered system, obviously, is one that ignites passions, as it should. The status quo is unacceptable, and if my post moves the discussion an inch forward, that’s good. But thanks to my critics, I won’t be painting with such a broad brush anymore.

2.

Parker, the Wall Street Journal & Me

I guess the Wall Street Journal is going to do an article on this Robert Parker thing that 1WineDude started and that Dr. Vino hopped on to. Actually, it’s more than a guess. The reporter, a guy named David, called up to interview me, and said he hopes to get to press this week. So, knowing a thing or two about the interview process, and bearing in mind that the WSJ now is owned by that paragon of fair and balanced reportage, Rupert Murdoch, I decided to inoculate myself against any possible misquotes, out-of-context quotes or just-plain lies.

Here’s what I told David.

1. Parker was wrong to impugn all wine bloggers (as I was wrong to impugn distributors).
2. He should say he’s sorry and get this behind him (as I hope to).
3. In fact, he should reach out to bloggers and find out who they are and what they’re trying to do. He might find, as I did, that they’re pretty cool. (I invite distributors to contact me anytime.)
4. The reporter wanted me to say that Parker’s diss of wine bloggers is a huge story in the wine industry. It’s not, and bloggers should let it go.
5. Re: Dr. Vino’s writing about paid travel:
6. It’s all about transparency. If Parker revealed, in his disclosures, that his hired correspondents accept junkets, I have no problem with that. (I don’t know if he did or didn’t, as I don’t read his blog.)
7. If he didn’t, then he should have.
8. If he’s now saying that he, Parker, personally never accepts junkets, but that he doesn’t concern himself with the business minutae of his hired writers, then Parker does have a little ‘splainin to do. But, again, it’s not some huge scandal he’s trying to cover up, IMHO.
Finally:
9. Some bloggers sometimes seek to advance their careers by bringing down the big dogs with sensationalist exposés. I’m not saying anyone in particular is doing this, but it’s been known to happen.

I was talking with my friend, Jo Diaz, the other day. (She writes the Juicy Tales by Jo Diaz wine blog.) Jo is a visionary when it comes to blogging, social media and that fabled nexus where the wine industry meets the Internet. Jo, who runs the Diaz Communications P.R. firm with her husband, Jose, has thought more deeply about the future of blogs than anyone I know. During our conversation, she told me she now thinks that the way for a blog to make money is to attract corporate sponsorships.

Her reasoning is that, if a blog attracts enough eyeballs, corporations will want to be associated with it. They’ll pay the blogger money in order to have a presence, or, as Jo put it, “Give something popularity, and some company somewhere wants that face behind the name to further lend credibility to their product.”

People are cynical when a corporation runs its own blog (or Twitters) extolling its products, but apparently they’re willing to trust a third party endorser. This is the essence of corporate sponsorship. It’s similar to a celebrity with a high likeability factor, like John Madden endorsing Ace Hardware, or Ashton Kutcher pitching a digital camera. There’s an interesting article about this phenomenon on a blog, BlogCampaigning, in which corporate sponsorship of a blogger is defined as “great content, great conversation,” as opposed to “sponsored posts” written by that corporation, which are perceived as not so great. By coincidence, last Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle reported how celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is attracting movie studio endorsements that pay him to blog and Tweet about their films. And the young blogger Jon Ray recently told his readers, in a post entitled My new blog…with corporate sponsorship, that a college lifestyle magazine, Study Breaks, “has offered to actually give me a paycheck for writing…”; their hope is that his cheeky, hip personality will lure young readers to the site.

This may work in the entertainment industry, but it’s not clear to me that it can succeed in wine. For one thing, why would a non-wine industry corporation sponsor a wine blogger? And if the blogger is sponsored by a wine company, then people might not believe he was being objective. This potential conflict-of-interest was expressed last week in the British drinks trade magazine, Harpers Wine & Spirit. In it, the authors correctly note that the wine industry must target “the technology savvy ‘Generation Y’” if it hopes to “secure its long term future.” But they introduce this important caveat: “However, the younger generation is likely to be cynical about companies targeting them with products via networking sites…these type of consumers were wary of recommendations by wine writers believing they are not ‘impartial’ and some how connected to the wine trade.”

Do you recall the news from a few week ago, when Jackson Family Wines announced that social media job opening for Murphy-Goode? (I blogged about it.) Well, Jo Diaz told me the entire wine P.R., marketing and advertising community is going to be watching that development with the greatest interest. Will it work? And how will the results be measured? If there’s a new model out there that can succeed for both the winery and the blogger, you can bet Jess Jackson has the resources to find it. (And congratulations to him for Rachel Alexandra’s stunning Preakness win.)

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers
Shakespeare, Henry VI (Part 2)

So I blogged last week on cult wines and got a private email. The only reason I’m not identifying the sender is because he explained he didn’t want to comment publicly on my blog, which is why he emailed me. (I have edited the original to shorten it).

Appreciated your article on “cult” wines and how to get them marketed…what you said really resonates.  I am a small, “boutique” producer who uses a custom crush (Crushpad), and  am very hands on, basically the wine maker. I am just releasing my 2005 Napa Cabernet – it’s from Beckstoffer ToKalon, and it is fantastic…and yet, it is still almost impossible for me to market it. The sad, general, response I get is “we love your wine but it has no scores and no name recognition.”  One distributor told me it was “the best Cabernet I have ever tasted…” but added “I won’t distribute it because it won’t sell, my clients are shallow and only buy wines Wine Spectator and Robert Parker have rated…”  Oh boy!  What an uphill climb.

Look, we have got to assign some blame here. The distributors routinely say, “Don’t blame us, we just reflect what we hear from buyers.” Well, let me tell you something about wine distributors. They do not have passion for wine. You, dear reader, have passion for wine, or you wouldn’t be reading my blog. I have passion or I wouldn’t be writing it. Wine magazine owners and editors have passion for wine, because Lord knows, wine magazines don’t make a ton of money. Wine merchants have passion; that’s why they work at wine stores. Winery owners have passion, or they wouldn’t have gotten into this business in the first place. Winemakers have perhaps the greatest passion of all. Everybody who works in the wine industry has passion, except for one class of people: distributors. Their passion is for a paycheck.

Without passion, wine becomes a commodity, no different from selling sub-prime mortgages or toilet paper. Without passion, a wine salesman becomes Willy Loman — not an heroic tragic figure, but someone to be pitied for his pedestrian outlook. There can be no moving forward in wine without passion, which is what the guy who emailed me sadly discovered. He put everything he’s got on the line, trying to do something new (not that there’s anything particularly new about another Beckstoffer To Kalon Cabernet, but that’s a different story). And what happens? Distributors break his back.

And it’s not only this guy, it’s hundreds of other small family brands in California, and thousands around the country, whom the distributors are trying to kill off. I don’t buy their crocodile tears: “Oh, we wish we could sell you. We really do. We really, really like your wine, and we really like you. But we’re afraid all we can offer you is this middle finger. Cheers!”

And by the way, who are these “shallow clients” the distributor referred to, the ones who demand Parker/Spectator scores? Certainly not fine wine stores that pride themselves on making their own selections. Certainly not fine restaurants, whose sommeliers or wine managers go to great lengths to choose wines that complement the chef’s food. Supermarkets? I don’t think the typical Safeway shopper knows or cares who Robert Parker is. So what is the origin of this Parker/Spectator thing? Sometimes, we see and hear what we want to, not what’s really there. I think distributors have convinced themselves that they can’t sell anything without Parker/Spectator’s approval. They remind me of the McCarthyites of the 1950s who saw Commies under every bed. Distributors see Parker/Spectator behind every sale, but it just ain’t so.

As for that distributor who told the emailer his Cab was the best ever “but I won’t distribute it”, he’s the poster child for everything wrong and stupid with the system.

We have got to break down the stranglehold the distributors have on the U.S. wine market. I say, the first thing we do, let’s…well, like Shakespeare said.

When I started my blog, I wrote: I don’t have a well-thought-out, coherent plan. This is Day One; I’ll start Day Two tomorrow. But what I think I want to do [is] Express my opinions about things that interest me.

That’s exactly what I’ve done.

I wrote also: I hope this blog will be relevant.

I think it is.

And: I’ll try as hard as possible to make your visits worthwhile.

I hope your visits are worthwhile. (And for the record, it is hard work.)

What a year it’s been. Everything’s changing, upside-down, uncertain. For wine, it’s not only the general world financial meltdown but the rise of the Internet that’s so challenging. A year ago, I hardly understood its significance. Now, blogging has plunged me into the digital world with all its twists and turns. I see two emerging areas in which the Internet will play a role: through blogs (and other social media, but I think Twitter is going to fizzle out), and through online marketing and sales companies that will assist wineries in direct-to-consumer sales. One of these days, the three-tiered system will collapse, and DTC will rule.

More personally, blogging has had great impact on me. My writing has become, I think, clearer and more direct and more expressive of who I am. And blogging has forced me to delve more deeply into researching the news of the industry; I sometimes feel as though not a sparrow falls to earth in the wine world that I don’t know about. Blogging has made me feel connected to a younger, and more international, audience than before. That’s empowering.

A few bits of trivia about my blog. Since May, 2008:

# of posts: 247. That’s about one every 1.5 days.

# of comments: 2,329. That’s about 9.4 per post.

top 5 posts, by number of comments:

Did Rodney Strong manipulate bloggers, use clever marketing, or both?: 78
The Appellation Myth: 55
The straight dope on wine reviewer inconsistency: A long post on an important topic: 45
Top ten list of things gatekeepers could do a better job of explaining to consumers: 36
Why is the reaction to the Spectator hoax so fierce?: 35

# 1 country, by visits: U.S.A., followed by Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia, the U.K., Slovenia, China, Spain and France.

So now it’s on to Year 2. Thank you, readers, for carrying me this far.

I WON THIS CONTEST AND ALL I GOT WAS MY PICTURE ON THIS STUPID BLOG!

The other day I wrote about a new wine and said that if anybody could identify it, I’d put them into this blog. Well, I got an email from a dude who nailed it! The wine is Boyanci. Meet the winner, Marc Stubblefield.

Town: Chicago, IL
Age: 36
Occupation: Director of Production, Court Theatre.
How did you get interested in wine? Always was wine on the table growing up (nothing special), got more interested in the last few years as I began to think more about wine and food together, rather than separate ideas.  The idea of classic / regional pairing led me to look away from just domestic supermarket brands and more to Oregon, Loire, Tuscany, Mosel, etc.
What are the last 2 bottles of wine you bought? 2008 Tempier Bandol Rosé, 2006 Bernard Baudry Chinon Les Granges.
How did you come to be reading my blog? I have your blog in my RSS feed reader, along with others.
How did you know the wine was Boyanci? Some internet reference in the last few months, confirmed with a quick check of their website.  I tried to dig it out of my feed reader or wine boards, but couldn’t find where I heard about them.
What social media networks do you regularly use? Facebook, Twitter.
What wine blogs do you regularly read? Too many to count  –100+ in my RSS reader – they all don’t post every day, and some of the feeds are from boards rather than blogs per se (West Coast Wine Net, Squires, etc).

Thanks, Marc, for being a good sport!

“We believe we are at the beginning of a longer-term change in the fine wine market that will generally compress the pricing of wines and separate out high-priced cult brands that deliver consistently good quality from the me-too entrants.”

That’s the startling money quote from this new study on the state of the wine industry by Silicon Valley Bank. (It was reported at Wine Business Online earlier this month.)

So what do you do if you’re a me-too wannabe just introducing your brand into this dismal market?

I had the chance to talk to a guy in precisely this situation the other day. He dropped off his new $130 Napa red blend at my home, which gave me the opportunity to ask him a bunch of questions I’d been wondering about.

The background to this is, not only has the volume of samples I’m being sent greatly increased since the Recession began, but so has the number of expensive new wines. And I’m talking not just from Napa, but all over California. I mean, $50, $75, $100-plus. So what I’ve been wondering is, what’s up with all these pricy bottles coming on in the middle of the Great Recession?

Well, the obvious thing, as the guy explained to me, is that it takes a long period of preparation before a wine is in the bottle, ready to be reviewed by Mr. Critic. “It’s like a three year pregnancy,” he said. So these new brands were conceived well before the Recession hit or was even imagined — say, ‘round about 2006, when we all knew that housing prices would only get higher, and never drop.

Okay, bad timing: 2009 is not an auspicious time to introduce a new brand. I asked the guy what his experience has been, and he said it’s even tougher getting into the distribution system these days than usual, because distributors are dropping little guys (or not taking them to begin with), in order to concentrate on the big “name” wineries that make them money. As a result, the guy and his partner have to focus more on direct sales: wine club, the Internet, and the old-fashioned way of schlepping samples around to gatekeepers, like sommeliers. In fact, he said, he’d just come back from Vegas, where he’d had success getting the wine into restaurants.

That made me wonder, How do sommeliers decide which new wine to add to the list? Or, more to the point, how does a wine salesman talk a sommelier into taking his wine? Obviously, the wine has to taste good; if it doesn’t, no respectable sommelier will buy it. But it also needs a story, because (a) the salesman needs to entice and interest the sommelier, who in turn (b) has to be able to entice the customer, especially when the wine — as in the case of the Napa red — will sell for north of $100 on the list.

Here are some of the things the guy was able to tell those Vegas somms:

1. Starting with the 2007 vintage the wine will be made by [I don’t want to say the name, but it’s another celebrity Napa winemaker].
2. Ten percent of the profits will go to charity, in this case at-risk youth. Gotta love that.
3. It’s an unusual blend: Bordeaux with Syrah. Sommeliers love phrases like “unusual blend,” which let them expound on their knowledge.
4. The grapes are primarily from Pritchard Hill [think: Colgin, Bryant, i.e., greatness by association].
5. Production was under 200 cases [as in rare, coveted]

I’m not being cynical here. These are actually darned good story points. It’s also a really good wine. I gave it 94 points, and if anyone out there can identify it, I’ll put you in a future column, complete with your picture.

Anyhow, I predict this new “me-too” cult wine will make it, because the guys who put it together did their homework and got it right.