And this is what makes any blogging community interesting.

There are so many different perspectives on wine and IMHO that is what readers want. Not everyone wants to read tasting notes from an experienced wine critic (or vice versa) and that is where some of the not so educated bloggers come in and while they may not have the experience, they still are a part of the wine world and can influence those who would rather read their POV.

Anyone who drinks a bottle of wine or visits a tasting room now a days is a potential wine blogger or critic and I think there is room for all sorts of opinions on wine, not just the ‘experts’

Just one point of clarification regarding the Rockaway event – RS didn’t pick any of the participants, Jeff (GoodGrape.com) selected them.

Cheers!

Not all winewriters are created equal (no, I won’t tell you whose reviews I think are less accurate than others–only whose methodologies are lazy or less rigorous or inevitably raise questions about bias). And not all bloggers are created equal. Mea culpa–subject to the comments below.

I will bet you a bottle of two-buck chuck or even ten-buck tempranillo that a selected group of winewriters will come to the job of judging wines with far more experience and far more tasting rigor (blind tastings, peer-to-peer comparisons) than the group of bloggers selected by R. Strong.

I don’t see anything wrong or nefarious in the R. Strong gambit. Wineries have lots of responsibilites. And one of the most important is to sell wine. While I might get a chuckle out of the Murphy-Goode blogger idea, I also understand and respect the idea behind it. It is a lot more honest than the paid Ford shill who was not identified as such.

This is an era not unlike when I first started writing. Within a few years of each other, Connoisseurs’ Guide, the California Grapevine, the Wine Spectator, the Wine Advocate, Art Damond’s Wine Discoveries all came into being. I don’t know the history of the WE, but it is no spring chicken either. But one cannot point to many print wine journals that have started up in the last ten years.

Now, it is the era of the blog startups. Their cost of entry is far lower than even little guys like me, Parker, Tanzer, etc. who did not have to give up our day jobs or risk big bucks to get started. Even the Spectator was a second career startup. We were all enthusiastic amateurs when we began three decades ago. And we were welcomed into the trade by the folks who were already there.

I have not forgotten those days, and I have no problem welcoming a thousand bloggers into the business. Most of the established guys are in their fifties and sixties. It is the enthusiastic amateurs now getting into writing that are the future. Good luck one and all.

But, that does not change the fact that the Rockaway gambit intentionally targeted a group who, as a whole, would find the wine very fancy when measured against their experiences to date. It was a smart thing to do, and as I said, I see nothing nefarious in it. It is, however, as open to judgment and analysis as the tasting methods of Jay Miller or Steve Heimoff or me or anyone else.

Twenty or thirty years from now, if you are still writing about wine, you will be the one welcoming another round of enthusiastic amateurs to the stage.

I think we all need to be careful here regarding generalizations. Case in point:

“The Rockaway situation was not caused by a winery trying to manipulate bloggers. It was caused by bloggers who, as Greg said, had no context to judge the wine and so loved it without context.”

It might appear that way at a cursory glance, but Jeff L. picked the group of participating bloggers in that case because (in part) they taste more wine than the average wine blogger. Go back and look at the list of participants, check out their blog articles beyond just the Rockaway posts, and you’ll see that what I’m saying is true. Speaking for myself, I’m lucky in that I have a career that pays me well enough that I can easily afford a $70 bottle of Cab. without thinking twice about dishing out the cash. I’m not buying 2 cases, but certainly can afford taking a chance on a bottle in the price range. So in my case, the naivete and $$ arguments don’t stack up. Now, if someone sends me a half case of DRC, then you can question the objectivity of what I’ll post about that person or company (assuming I don’t keep 2 bottles and sell the rest for a profit, that is .