Got the Husch Vineyards newsletter in the mail yesterday. It was all about that Anderson Valley winery’s 30th anniversary under its current ownership. (The founding, by the Husches, actually dates to 1971, making Husch one of the older wineries in the North Coast.) The newsletter had the usual grainy pictures from the 1970s of longhaired guys and old cars, and it put me in a nostalgic state of mind for “the old days.”

Back when Tony and Gretchen Husch started their little winery, wine was still a fairly obscure thing in California and, even more, across the U.S. It was not perceived as a money-making occupation, nor did the title “winemaker” receive much respect among opinion makers. If you started a winery, you usually did so on a shoestring budget, borrowing from your parents or mortgaging your house, and you also were dependent on the kindness of other local vintners, who might lend you a tractor or let you use their bottling line.

The 1970s was a more innocent time, but it also preceded a lot of the controversial phenomena that have changed the wine industry — for the worse, some say. Back then there were no celebrity wines, no movie stars and superstar athletes who lend their names to marketing indifferent products, the way it is today. There were no “cult wines” to foster jealousy among those who couldn’t get them and distort the pricing structure of everything else. There were no “flying winemakers” to make those cult wines. There were no billionaires parachuting into Napa Valley in order to buy themselves an instant lifestyle. There was no “international style” of wine that made everything taste like everything else. There were a few large corporations actively involved in acquiring wineries, but nothing like the massively consolidated field we see today. Napa Valley still was a sleepy place, not the theme park, Disney-fied mecca it now is. Winemakers quietly went their way making the best wine they could, and depended on word-of-mouth to sell it, instead of hiring high-priced P.R. firms to issue press releases and slick marketing managers to make side deals with distributors. And wealthy people collected wine because they wanted to age it properly in their cellars, not because they expected to make double-digit profits on it as an investment.

Anderson Valley is still a 1970s kind of place. The locals have mixed feelings about being located so far north of San Francisco — really beyond the ability of the average wine tourist, who will drive as far as Sonoma County but no further. On the one hand, this keeps Anderson Valley from reaping the benefits of an active tourist industry, and to some extent prevents wine prices from getting too high. On the positive side, Anderson Valley and its three little villages — Boonville, Navarro and Philo — have not been overrun with outsiders, traffic jams and all the associated bedlam that tourists bring in their wake.

I’m not foolish enough to think the California wine industry will go back to the old ways. History doesn’t march backward. But sometimes, I do miss the sleepy days when wine was truly an amateur pursuit of love. Today, it’s Big Business. But thankfully there are still quiet, out-of-the-way places like Anderson Valley where you can get a sense of the way it used to be.

The San Francisco Examiner is reporting on the “Top 7 Wine Bloggers,” as determined by an outfit called Wine Opinions, which describes itself as “a provider of consumer research to wine producers…”.

Here’s the list:

1. Eric Asimov, N.Y. Times, The Pour  23%
2. Eric Orange, Local Wine Events  21%
3. Steve Tanzer, International  Wine Cellar   15%
4. Jancis Robinson (tie), Jancis Robinson  13%
5. Alder Yarrow (tie), Vinography  13%
6. Tyler Colman, Dr. Vino  12%
7. Gary Vaynerchuk, Wine Library TV  9%

The numbers following each name represent the percent of respondents who said they visited the blog “frequently” as opposed to “occasionally.” The respondents were members of the wine trade, not ordinary consumers, which probably explains Gary V.’s last-place rank.

It’s not strange that the trade should rank these particular seven bloggers on top. Two of them, Jancis Robinson and Steve Tanzer, were critical and literary superstars independent of their role as bloggers, so they have simply carried their fame into a new medium. Three others — Eric Asimov, Alder Yarrow and Tyler Colman — have been ranked at or near the top for years, so it’s a case of “fame begets fame.” (And Asimov might never have made it had he not had the clout of The New York Times behind him.) I’ll have to admit I was unfamiliar with LocalWineEvents.com, but I’ve now bookmarked it as a useful site.

I do find it strange that Tom Wark’s “Fermentation” blog is not on the list, as it almost always is on everybody else’s list of most popular blogs. For example, Alawine.com, a website that is a leading source of information about blog rankings, recently came out (Sept. 15) with their lastest update of the top 100 wine blogs and “Fermentation” was number one!

The problem with rankings like these is that they’re very non-transparent, and while the rankers seem innocent of any guile, you never really know how they determine their numbers.

And in the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion, steveheimoff.com — this very blog — is now Number 11 in the country, according to AlaWine:

Rank Wine Blog Rating
1              Fermentation     100
2              Vinography        93
3              Dr. Vino              93
4              The Pour             89
5              Catavino              89
6              Wine Peeps         87
7              The Wine Connoisseur 83
8              Dirty South Wine  81
9              Do Bianchi             81
10            My Wine Education    80
11             Steve Heimoff’s Blog    78

Pretty cool! And before someone can say that I wouldn’t be in the position of having a top blog if I didn’t already have a name from my Wine Enthusiast reporting, I totally agree. But I will add that, while my name might have gotten me some curiosity when I started my blog, it’s been hard work and good writing that persuade people to read it everyday.

Tom Wark blogged a few days ago about the new AlaWine list and said, “The real interesting question is which blogs you’ve never heard of will have moved in to the top ten a year from now?” Well, I hope one you have heard of — mine — will be right up there. Maybe even on first.

And fresh in this morning:

See this latest survey of top American wine blogs, where steveheimoff.com is #5 with a bullet! (And congratulations to 1WineDude for being #1!)

Many more people will praise this highly anticipated book than will actually read it. In that, it’s something like “Finnigan’s Wake” or the “The Divine Comedy” and other tomes Grahm has enjoyed parodying in his Bonny Doon newsletter, works that few can get through but nonetheless thought they should respect. In fact, the book consists largely of old material from the newsletters, and if you couldn’t finish one before, it’s even more unlikely you’ll be able to get through all 318 pages of them.

Randall Grahm is, of course, the California vintner who started Bonny Doon in the 1980s and was made famous by — well, by himself, by being eccentric and interesting to the media and innovative (the word “visionary” is frequently used), and by having one of the most unusual newsletters in the industry. His wines never rose to the level of First Growth, but they were good enough to get by. He deserves proper respect for having been an early proponent of Rhône varieties.

Now, in this new publication, from University of California Press, Grahm adds another credit to his resumé: book author.

The Introduction and the chapter following it, “The Etiquette (and History) of the Bonny Doon ETIQUETTE,” both of which were written for the book, are its most interesting and readable sections. Grahm, always known for a tongue-in-cheek candor, informs us how throughout his career he has been an opportunistic winemaker, making wines of convenience and sometimes even interest, but seldom of terroir, although terroir was what he spoke of incessantly and criticized other wines for not having. Along the way he slams those villains that long have piqued his ire: “the adult theme park, Napa Valley,” the international style of winemaking, winemaker “tricks,” Italian-American wine salesmen wearing “two kilos…of gold chain,” Robert Parker (“Parcade”), the Wine Spectator, Chardonnay, the 100-point system. He comes out of the closet, as it were, as perhaps a greater marketer than winemaker , while promising us that his best days lie ahead.

The reprinted newsletter parodies take up the brunt of the book. They occasionally tickle the funny bone, eliciting laughs (an ostensible wine periodical is “The Avocado del Vino,” “a bimensual publication” which “resembled nothing so much as pulp fiction…lurid and juicy.”) The repeated references (I stopped counting after a while), both direct and indirect in the form of satire, to Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate gave me pause. Grahm puts them down so thoroughly and savagely, you have to wonder why he’s so obsessed with them. He’s like a crime victim who can’t stop thinking about his tormentor. Or perhaps the Stockholm Syndrome explains this curious fetish.

Despite the occasional chuckle, more often these wordy take-offs are just boring. Grahm tells us how much fun he had writing them, but it’s doubful any reader will even be able to finish the overlong, overly wrought and dense sendup of Dante’s Inferno. In truth, Grahm’s commentaries on his parodies, also written afresh for the book, are far more interesting than the parodies themselves.

The “Poesy” section again allows Grahm to display his verbal pyrotechnics in full glory. The man obviously knows how to write (and comes dangerously close, here and there, to admitting to being a better writer than winemaker), but, once again, I suspect this section will be impatiently skimmed, not studied. Ditto for “DoonTune,” the section consisting of too-clever-by-half takeoffs on rock songs (“Born to Rhône”).

“Enough Rope” contains yet more “extracts from the nooseletter,” with additional wordplay, in-jokes and puns. If you like this sort of stuff, it’s a romp. For me, it’s a slog. Grahm is fiendishly smart, but the polysyllabic swamp and self-conscious (and self-referential) stylistic flourishes eventually got to me. Too bad. There are a lot of good ideas in the book, but they’re so elaborately oaked, so intervened with in bells and whistles, that it’s hard to appreciate them; their terroir is masked by 100 percent charred new prose. Sometimes, in writing as in wine, less is more.

Still, Grahm at his best is, well, Grahmifying. He’s a boon-afied jokester; you can’t help but to relate to almost everything he says. When he drops the literary pretense and just lets himself be silly, he’s a riot. “The Heartbreak of Wine Geekdom” is classic. (The snob brings “his own Impitoyable tasting glasses to the restaurant.” Sweet.) The essays that conclude the book — reprints of speeches — contain important thoughts, but in a tendentious style. It is as if Grahm wanted to show a more serious, academic side, to counter-balance the wit. But they make for very difficult reading, like transcripts.

I suspect “Doon” will sell well. It’s a handsome book (as are all U.C. Press books, including mine), and Grahmanatics will happily display it on their coffee tables. It’s not a bad book, and in many respects an admirable one. I just wish it were, doon it, better.

If I’m reading the tea leaves right, and I think I am, the wine blogosphere has entered a new phase. It’s realizing how self-referential it’s been, is growing uneasy about such navel-gazing, and is frankly understanding it can’t indulge in masturbatory behavior forever.

The wine blogosphere, in other words, is wondering, Now what?

Much of the content of wine blogs has been about blogging itself: its meaning, future, ethics, how it fits into social media as a whole, how to monetize it, how old people don’t understand blogging, how print journalists are jealous of blogging’s power, how revolutionary and democratic blogging is making everything, how thrilling it is to go to a conference and be treated with respect by winemakers, how the MSM is looking over its shoulder, etc. etc. etc. There were elements of truth in all of this and, for a while, these issues deserved to be aired and debated.

But what about wine? That was then; this is now. The switch, as I perceive it, is that bloggers themselves are starting to realize they can’t just blog about blogging anymore. The topic — dare I say it — is getting tired.

(And before anyone points out the irony, let me admit that, yes, today’s blog is about blogging!)

Blogging about blogging is like print wine writers writing about wine writing instead of wine. Imagine if Hugh Johnson had written, not “The Story of Wine,” but “The Story of Wine Writing.” Not as many people would have bought it.

This is a natural and welcome phase for bloggers. They no longer have to prove their worth as a new medium. Instead, they need to sustain their readership, capture new readers, break new ground and show that they have something to say.

One thing that should help lift wine blogging to higher ground is the indisputable fact that more wineries are reaching out to bloggers, including sending them samples. This will give the bloggers more interesting things to write about, including more frequent and in-depth wine reviews. There’s nothing like real tasting and reporting, which is hard work, to take your mind off yourself and give you a wider perspective.

Speaking of work, one aspect of this that hasn’t been written about much is that, when it’s done diligently, blogging is work. I think bloggers know you can’t just throw something up there once or twice a week in a slapdash manner. If a blog deserves to be read, it seems to me it should be well-researched, substantive and informative.

Another interesting and welcome aspect of this new phase is that you can actually suggest social media may not be the be-all and end-all without the bloggers jumping on you like a nest of angry hornets. Jamie Goode (a major blogger himself) recently did, in his post, called “Social media – let’s not over-sell it.” If I’d said that a year ago, I would have had death threats and my name would have been mud all over Twitter. (Well, it probably will be, anyway.)

One of the best wine bloggers, Joe Roberts of 1WineDude, a few days ago quoted himself from an interview he gave Tom Wark at Fermentation:

Tom: Do you believe wine blogs have made any marked impact on the wine industry or wine culture?

Joe: I think as a whole bloggers need to move on from this topic, actually. If this topic was a play, it would be written by Pinter and would involve the lead characters doing a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, Old Testament style.  And furrowed brows – a lot of furrowed brows…

I infer that Joe himself thinks it’s time to move beyond blogging about blogging and get on with it. In fairness, most of the blogs I read seem to be on surer footing than they were a year or so ago. Of course, navel-gazing will probably remain part of wine blogging culture for some time to come, because blogging is such a fascinating development. Even the mainstream print media likes, on occasion, to put itself on the couch and analyze itself.

People talk about Blogging 2.0 in all manner of ways. I think the real meaning of Blogging 2.0 is that bloggers are rolling up their sleeves and getting down to the hard work of coming up with good content.

I was reading Asimov’s blog the other day at The Pour where he talked about a story he’d read in Wine Spectator (you can find the link on his blog) about how one rich collector-investor is suing another rich collector-investor over something or other. (Decanter actually wrote about it too.)

The more I read it, the more I thought, Who cares? And suddenly it hit me:

I AM SOooo OVER COLLECTOR-INVESTORS!!!

I used to cover them for the Spectator back in the day. There was the über-rich Palestinian from La Jolla, the Texan with one of the country’s most massive collections (he eventually became a born-again Christian and gave up drinking), the Chicago medical tool manufacturer who kept his own stash at Fleur de Lys, a clutch of wealthy Memphisites (Mephistos?), the Bay Area dentist who spent $30,000 on a party for his wine-drinking friends, the Central Coast guy who had every vintage of Mouton-Rothschild made in the last 150 years, the University of California professor who gave America’s greatest tastings, the Hollywood producer who shacked up with a major star, and so on. These guys loved getting their names and, better yet, their pictures in the Spectator, so they gave me access.

I respected their knowledge and passion, and most of them actually were very nice people. But when I left Spectator for Wine Enthusiast, they stopped returning my phone calls — literally overnight. I realized that whatever relationships I’d thought we’d had were fantasies on my part. They had no use for me once I couldn’t get them into W.S. They were, in the truest sense, snobs.

Those vestigial memories were resurrected, unpleasantly, when I read Eric’s blog. But something else left a sour taste in my mouth, and it was this: Not only am I over collectors, but the very notion of collecting for investment seems somehow anachronistic and vulgar to our times and sensibility. And so does covering collecting, in the journalistic sense, with those awful charts about auction bottle prices, as if wine were pork bellies. Maybe some people get off on that stuff, but I think most people read wine magazines to read about wines, winemakers, wine regions and so on.

Who cares what Lafite went for at the latest Christie’s auction? Have you ever bought Lafite at an auction? Neither have I. Do you think you ever will? Neither do I. Do you know anyone who has? Neither do I. I’m glad Christie’s and all the others exist and provide jobs for people, but the whole notion of wine as an investment commodity, which is repugnant enough, is made all the more distasteful for the state of the economy, when so many people are hurting. I’m sure conspicuous consumption will always exist, but why give it attention and even praise? These “collectors” are marginalized outliers, and the results of their venal activities need not concern the true wine lover.

Look: Collecting wine for the sake of properly aging it is a beautiful thing. Everybody should do it, to the extent they have the space and can afford to. But collecting for the sake of trading at auction isn’t really collecting; it’s hoarding.

Anyway, forgive the rant. Had to get that off my chest. Tomorrow, a more pleasant topic.