Well, I didn’t really invent the Internet. But I did write an article in the May, 1997 issue of Wine Enthusiast — twelve years ago — that was pretty prescient in its predictive power. (And that is a 98-point alliterative triumph.)

I came across an old copy of the ‘zine last week. Re-reading my article, Wine on the Web, I was reminded of the heady excitement of the mid- 1990s when the wine industry and the Internet collided. But what really struck me was how many of the issues back then are still with us, unresolved and perhaps unresolvable.

By the second paragraph, I’d identified the key: “…vintners sense an opportunity to market their wines…”. I quoted the then-PR manager of St. Clement to explain why her winery had rushed to set up a Web page. “We didn’t have a goal,” she explained. “We just knew we had to be a part of it.” From there, I quoted Peter Granoff, an original founder of Virtual Vineyards (which went belly up; it’s now morphed into wine.com). “[M]ost wineries are still caught up in the Web for its own sake and are struggling to find out what to do.”

Peter, or that PR manager, could say precisely the same things today! It’s amazing that, as far as we’ve come, most California wineries remain well behind the digital curve and don’t seem to know what to do with the Internet, including social media (which didn’t exist in 1997). True, most wineries have a website. But most of them are boring, unfriendly, and not even up-to-date with new vintages (which you’d think would be easy to do with a computer). Wineries should be leading other businesses in forging ahead on the Internet, not dawdling behind.

I also wrote: “There are only two things a winery or wine company can do on the Net….marketing and sales. Although intimately related, they’re really quite different.” I called marketing a “soft activity,” meaning it did not directly make money. Concerning sales, I wrote: “this is the hard part of the transaction. It’s where the customer actually forks over a credit card number.”

Couldn’t have said it better today.

I quoted an electronic marketing expert: “The question today is whether the Web’s primary value to business will be as a revenue builder, a cost-cutting device, or a brand builder. I believe that brand-building will win out.” That woman was right. We’re seeing that brand building and customer loyalty are the end products of web sites, blogs and twitter, not sales in and of themselves, much less cutting costs.

In my article I also quoted Granoff as saying it didn’t make sense for mass-produced wines, which are readily available in supermarkets, to sell direct over the Internet. “Why would you buy it on the Net and pay the extra cost of shipping, and then have to wait to get it?” The same is true today. Instead, he and others told me, it would be smaller wineries that would benefit from DTC sales. (Of course, this was well before the Granholm v. Heald 2005 Supreme Court decision.) Let’s hope that day is near when all 50 states allow shipping of wine. That will be the salvation of many small family wineries that otherwise may not make it.

I quoted de Toqueville: “Time has not shaped it into perfect form…and it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away…and what will survive.” He was speaking of America in the 1830s, but we could use those exact words about the Internet right now.

Dept. of Oops

The Associated Press is reporting that “A man suspected of breaking into a Maine restaurant will have to get used to jailhouse food after workers at the eatery discovered lobsters and wine missing – and the suspect asleep on a bench. Police said [name withheld] broke into the Portland Lobster Co. through a rear window and stuffed his pockets with cash before chowing down on the better part of 11 prepared lobsters worth about $300. He washed it all down with a white wine…”

Same thing happens to me when I eat 11 lobsters. I just wanna close my eyezzzzz and drifffftt… By the way, I went to the Portland Lobster Co.’s website to see what white wines they have. I hope the thief washed his crustaceans down with the J. Lohr Chardonnay because that’s what I would have picked.

And you thought “Sonoma Coast” was too big

The TTB in its wisdom announced its latest Frankenstein AVA yesterday. Quote from the PDF: “The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) published a final rule in the Federal Register establishing the Upper Mississippi River Valley viticultural area.  This viticultural area consists of 29,914-square miles…”

In other words, just your typical tiny little appellation.

Thirty-thousand square miles! That’s 175 miles on each side. Here’s the truly pathetic part of the press release: “We designate viticultural areas to allow vintners to better describe the origin of their wines and to allow consumers to better identify wines they may purchase.” Yes, it’s truly helpful to the consumer to know that the wine hails from somewhere in the upper Midwest.

Your wine comes from someplace in here

It’s been proved by Iran. I spent a good part of the weekend transfixed by the live coverage and images from the streets of Tehran, and saw YouTubes even before CNN aired them. Whatever doubts I had about Twitter’s historicity have now been erased.

But let me elaborate: that’s for breaking news. Twitter obviously does a great job when a government doesn’t want to let the world know what’s happening. No government can stop a cell phone or some other mobile device from capturing images and sending them around the globe at warp speed.

Where I’m still perplexed is how twitter relates to wine. It’s hard to imagine 100 tweets coming in every few seconds about anything wine related, the way they were on #iranelection. Nor is it easy for me to see how a tweet will get anyone to part with his or her money in order to buy a bottle of wine, or earn a young wine writer any recognition. Sure, maybe someone here or there will do it. Maybe someone will go out and buy something because their twitter friend recommended it. But I don’t think anyone’s figured out how to monetize twitter any more than they’ve figured out how to monetize a blog. Twitter is the essence of the World Wide Web: free, instant, democratic and viral. What it isn’t — as least, so far as I can tell — is marketable.

I wish someone would prove me wrong and show me how twitter has made any winery or blogger any money. Maybe, being in the depths of this recession, this isn’t the best time to be measuring twitter’s impact, which may be neutralized by other economic factors. Maybe when and if we emerge from the downturn, twitter’s power will become evident. Maybe there will be a model that proves that twitter can move quantities of wine, or earn a living for a writer, in a way nothing else can. If so, we haven’t yet seen it.

All this being said, it obviously doesn’t hurt, and can only help, a winery or writer to twitter, blog, do Facebook, etc. For wineries, they’re the equivalent of winemaker dinners, open houses and newsletters — traditional forms of outreach, updated for the digital age. Every little bit helps. But I think one winemaker dinner in New York or L.A., or a favorable review much less an article in a big magazine, is going to sell a hell of a lot more wine than having somebody from the winery tweet something that will just get washed away by the next 1,000 tweets in the next 30 seconds.

For wannabe wine writers, well, good luck breaking into the paycheck brigade. If twitter earns you a few bucks, mazel tov!

From time to time I’m reminded that sometimes we don’t always see things as they might appear from someone else’s point of view. In my line of work, wine writing, this can cause misunderstandings, because writing is all about communication, and if communication is muddled, it doesn’t help clarify the message.

Well, this long-winded intro is a way for me to let P.R. people, winery execs and others whose job it is to promote their winery know how best to work with me, to help me do my job so I can help you do yours. In an ideal world — and why should ours not be ideal? — P.R. and wine writing both would benefit.

1. You can call me. I’m amazed at how many people think they can’t. They think they’re pissing me off or something. You can! I answer my own phone. (My secretary, Rose Mary Woods, retired many years ago…badda bing!) I ask only that you keep your pitch brief, know what you want to say and say it. What gets me impatient is when someone calls, and 10 minutes later they’ve just gotten to the year 1987 and I’m like ZZzzzzzzzzz…. If I say at some point, “Thanks, but it’s not really working for me,” please don’t argue with me or ask whoever else they can talk to at the magazine. And please don’t feel like I’ve been rude. I’m a polite, courteous, sensitive guy, but I do have a job.

2. If I visit you at the winery, let’s both relax and enjoy it. You have a message to deliver, of course, and I’m there to hear it. But you don’t have to be on message all the time, just as I don’t have to be “Steve the wine critic” all the time. Before I was “Steve the wine critic” I was “just Steve,” and I still like being “just Steve” even as I assume you like to be “just whoever you are.”

I realize we can’t take the “friendship thing” too far, in most cases. In the end, this is business. But there’s business that feels sticky and awkward, and business that feels warm and fun — even when we’re not drinking!

3. Ask me questions about my tasting process. It shouldn’t be a mystery. I’m very transparent. I have well-formed opinions on tasting and scoring, and am glad to share them with others. Above all, if I’m tasting with you, let me know what your desires are concerning my thoughts. If you want me to be blunt, tell me. If you don’t say, “Steve, be honest, warts and all,” then I’ll assume you don’t want real feedback, and I’ll just make nebulous remarks. You’re the host — we’re playing by your rules — so make them clear. I’m not a mind reader.

4. There are certain things that make me feel weird. They won’t affect my reviews — I mean, we’re talking about my integrity — but it does make me wonder. For example, if we’re in your office and I see Spectator magazines and plaques all around, but not Enthusiasts, it’s like, WTF? Elementary courtesy and common sense. Nothing like ‘em.

5. Know that I don’t typically review at the winery. There are exceptions, but in general I subscribe to what Wine Enthusiast’s tasting director, Joe Czerwinski, calls “tasting room bias.” That’s where the wine tastes better at the winery than in your office or home. But even though I won’t be formally reviewing the wine with you, I’m happy to talk — and talk — and talk about it with you. That’s what we both love, right? Drinking wine and talking about it. But know this, too: the published score has a fair probability of being lower than you might have thought based on my remarks at the winery. Why? Tasting room bias.

I’d be interested in hearing from other people, especially reviewers, if you’ve experienced tasting room bias. Do you believe in it, and if so, how do you counter it?

Nothing gets a good debate going in wine country like the issue of pricing. Is the high-end super-ultra-premium bracket busted? Will $60 Cabs rebound? Is there an end in sight?

“No,” seems to be the response of the Henny-Penny segment of the market, and there’s evidence they’re right. My friend Scott Carpenter, who publishes The Broad Market Report, headlined yesterday’s issue “Price Points of No Return?” and quotes numerous retailers to the effect that prices will never rebound to previous levels, even when and if the economy improves. Then there are the anecdotes about formerly expensive Napa Cabs being seen in the likes of Costco for $40 or less.

Of course, it’s impossible to know who’s hurting in wine country, since most wineries are privately held. The consensus is that the older wineries will get through this, since they have less debt. The threat to the scores of newer wineries — many financed on borrowed money and heavily leveraged — is obvious. We haven’t seen too many sparrows falling to earth, yet — a few here and there — but, to continue the bird metaphors, there are canaries in the coal mine suggestive of the future. Today’s Napa Register quotes the owner of Napa Valley’s biggest wine tour company, California Wine Tours, as saying the company is hurting as a result of the economy. “The luxury transportation market is usually the first to get hit,” he said. (He might have put wine auctions on the early-bird list, to judge by the Napa auction’s recent take.)

Even in Burgundy prices are heading south. “Burgundy wines, hit by a fall in U.S. and British demand suffered a 30 percent drop in first-quarter exports and a ‘more difficult’ year ahead is expected to lead to price cuts for the region’s finest vintages,” Reuters reported today. And in Bordeaux, “A third of appellation Bordeaux winemakers may lose their vineyards within a year” due to slumping worldwide demand, Decanter is reporting.

There’s a flip side to the doom-and-gloom scenarios. “Some wine country entrepreneurs see vine opportunities” in the recession, the Associated Press reported yesterday. With the price of everything from labor and building materials to wineries themselves still falling, “It’s a great time to be in the market,” said Bill Foley, who the article said “is looking at three or four deals a week.”

My guess is that the coming months will see many wineries changing hands. They will be family-owned, and will pass into the portfolios of larger companies, like Foley’s, or The Wine Group, Constellation, Gallo, Diageo and Jackson Family. I think we’ll also see newer formations of private equity galloping in and buying up failing brands. For example, late last month Walter Klenz, who formerly headed Beringer/Wine World, and some associates announced The Vincraft Group, which is assembling a portfolio of boutique wineries whose wines retail in the $50-$100 range — precisely the price point that’s most threatened, and which brings me back to those Costco bottles that used to be $100.

I can’t help but think that the industry is taking all this very seriously. Could it be one reason why members just elected Diageo’s Ray Chadwick as Wine Institute’s Chairman? Perhaps they felt his entrepreneurial understanding of how to move product through a sometimes resistant pipeline could aide them all.

How ironic is it that, even as California seriously considers legalizing marijuana (to help stanch the  budget deficit), anti-alcohol forces are once again attacking the concept that a little wine each day is good for your health.

The “wine isn’t good for you” crowd was reported on in yesterday’s Times (come on, you know there’s only one Times in the country, right?) under the provocative header, Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It. After all these years (since The French Paradox) of study after study demonstrating that a little wine is good for everything from hearts to diabetes prevention and anti-cancer, there are still some stubborn scientists stuck in the “you can’t really prove it, so nyaah nyaah” camp.

The basis of their objection, the Times writes, is that “No study, these critics say, has ever proved a causal relationship between moderate drinking and lower risk of death — only that the two often go together.”

When I was a philosophy major back at good old Clark U. in Worcestor, Mass., we studied the Scottish philosopher, David Hume. I never forgot his metaphor about billiard balls to illustrate how hard it is to actually prove causality. When we hit the cue ball, we see it smash into the six ball, which then moves (hopefully, into a pocket). But we can’t directly observe this causality, which must happen on the atomic level. All we can do is infer that the causality is there.

Hume and Socrates playing billiards

So the anti-wine scientists say, in effect, “Just because people who drink moderate amounts of wine are healthier, we’re not justified in saying that wine causes them to be healthier. It may just be that wine drinkers lead healthier lifestyles (more balanced meals, going to the gym, jogging, staying slim, don’t smoke) and therefore are healthier, regardless of wine.”

On the scale of dumb, self-serving arguments, that one takes the cake. Look: whether it’s wine that makes you healthier — or the fact that healthy people choose to drink wine — either way, the bottom line is that WINE DRINKERS ARE HEALTHIER, not to mention happier! Would it hurt for these scientists to admit it?

Meanwhile, the Associated Press yesterday reported that momentum is building for legalizing pot. Seems that with states and municipalities struggling to pay their bills and keep services, a tax on weed could raise billions — money that Mexican drug lords are now getting instead of our local police and fire departments and public health facilities.

Here in (not so sunny) California, even Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said he’s open to the idea of at least talking about legalizing pot. And I recall that the late William F. Buckley and the still very-much alive former Secretary of State, George Schultz, also expressed support for legalizing, or at least decriminalizing, marijuana. So it’s not like a Republican-vs.-Democrat thing.

It’s definitely worth looking into. Not only would this rob the drug kingpins of the source of much of their wealth, it would result in far fewer people being locked up in prisons, which would save the state money.

Think what a nice place California would be if everyone drank a few glasses of wine everyday, went to the gym, stayed healthy, ate right, and smoked a doobie every once in a while. Why, we could almost get mellow again, like back in the Sixties.