At first I was surprised that such old-line, conservative organizations (not conservative in the political sense, but in the business sense) as Wine Institute and California Association of Winegrape Growers would host something geared to bloggers and the twitterati, but when I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Sooner or later, everybody understands that the wine biz has to market to those pesky Millennials, and social media seems to be the way to do it.

So I went up to Sausalito’s beautiful Fort Baker, where the event was held, practically under the Golden Gate Bridge’s inspiring span, and with a dazzling view of white, crystaline San Francisco across a sparkling Bay. The first two sessions — “The Next Generation: Passing the Torch” and “Evolving California Wine Styles” didn’t live up to their billing (memo to Wine Institute: allow more time next year), while the third, “Eco-Friendly Growing and Winemaking,” was the one I skipped altogether, to shmooze in the tasting room (I wanted to go but…just…..couldn’t).

But it was the fourth session, “Hip and Trendy Marketing,” that I most looked forward to, and it really was a good one. Hosted by Courtney Cochran, the mind behind Hip Tastes (whom I blogged about more than a year ago), it was an exciting, unscripted and thought-provoking roundtable on the whys and wherefores of winery involvement in social media.

Courtney Cochran

I took notes and want to present the dialogue pretty much as it happened. (This is obviously abbreviated but I tried to capture the most interesting remarks.)

Courtney began by apologizing for the moniker “hip and trendy,” which was Wine Institute’s idea, not hers. “As soon as you’re called ‘hip and trendy,’” she smiled, “you’re not.” She continued: “What is the magic bullet in terms of new media marketing? You still have to do everything you did before, plus social media. So we’re all working harder than ever.”

Nicholas Miller (from Bien Nacido/Solomon Hills/French Camp Vineyards): “What’s hip and trendy these days is value. You don’t want to show up at a friend’s house with a new $200 wine.”

Courtney: “So value is the new black.”

Nicholas: “And blogging and talking in the social media sphere. A more personal form of communication [than print].”

Judd Finkelstein (winemaker, Judd’s Hill): “We use Twitter, Facebook [and others]. What’s cool is if we’re traveling I can say I’ll be appearing someplace, and people actually show up. It’s valuable. We expose ourselves to a lot of new people.”

Cane Vanderhoof (vintner, Miramonte Winery/Celebration Cellars): “I communicate regularly with people on a one-on-one through tweets. I’ll put something up and get an immediate response.”

Cheryl Murphy Durzy (V.P. and proprietor, Clos LaChance Winery): “Social media has made it easier for us to connect with our customers. And it’s not just one-on-one. It generates brand loyalty, which is very important.”

Judd: “Our ‘Judd’s Enormous Wine Show’ videos bring visitors.”

Courtney: “So social media drives product and brand development from the ground up?”

Cheryl: “Well, Clos LaChance held a contest to name our new estate vineyard. But our distributors were afraid that the winning name would be too weird, so we decided to call it simply ‘Estate.’ That offended some of our readers [who had nominated names] and we actually lost customers!”

Cane: “So you want to get people involved, but too many chiefs, too many problems! You have to maintain control.”

Courtney: “How will your marketing strategy change as bloggers become mainstream instead of hobbyists?”

Nicholas: “We measure how much media exposure something gets. Blogging offers us immediate gratification.”

Judd: “Bloggers are wielding more influence. It’s not just one person’s palate anymore; others weigh in. But I don’t know how to adjust our marketing to that. Send them samples? Invite them to visit? I don’t know.”

Cheryl: “We’ve added bloggers to the traditional media for samples, but it’s wrong to say the two are different, as Steve [Heimoff] demonstrates.”

Cane: “I don’t see social media as the end-all and be-all, but it’s a powerful moment in communication.”

Question from audience: “Are you seeing an uptick in sales from social media?”

[mixed reaction]

Nicholas: “No. It’s too early to tell.”

Cane: “Yes. But it’s hard to know exactly what works.”

Cheryl: “We can see click-throughs through Facebook and Twitter.”

Judd: “We have a pretty good mailing list, and from there, social media sends us off into the universe.”

[This is Steve again] I asked the combined group this question: “So will the successful wineries of the future be those that are most adept at using social media, even if they’re making bad wine?”

But time was up and we were not able to explore this topic. Courtney: “That’s next year’s session.”

I held off commenting on those two Journal of Wine Economics studies that were written up so sensationally in the Wall Street Journal the other day because, after all, I’m the poster child for the “’expert’ wine sipper” (TIME’s snarky words and punctuation) whose “hype” and “illusion” (WSJ’s words) are taking “us all for suckers” (TIME again), and I needed time to think about it.
Well, it’s time for me to have my say.

It all started with a series of research papers by a guy named Robert Hodgson that were published in the (subscription) Journal of Wine Economics. One, in Fall 2008, was “An Examination of Judge Reliability at a major U.S. Wine Competition.” The other, from Spring 2009, was “An analysis of the Concordance Among 13 U.S. Wine Competitions.” (I couldn’t find direct links to the papers, but you can easily PDF them by Googling “Robert Hodgson, wine.” They were the first two hits on my search.)

In the first paper, Hodgson gave “expert judges…a flight of 30 wines imbedded [sic] with triplicate samples poured from the same bottle.” This is of course precisely the revenge fantasy envisioned so often by critics of wine critics, but in this case Hodgson actually pulled it off, with the cooperation of the California State Fair Wine Competition, apparently by promising that the results would not be made public. Never mind that they were; Hodgson found “judge inconsistency, lack of concordance — or both.” (I like the ominous tension of that double hyphen.)

In the second paper, which sought to reinforce the conclusions of the first, Hodgson statistically analyzed “over 4000 wines entered in 13 U.S. wine competitions” and again found “little concordance among the venues in awarding Gold medals.” His most trenchant discovery was that, although “47 percent received Gold medals…84 percent of those same wines also received no award in another competition.” This would be a little like holding the 2008 Presidential election twice in two days and having Obama win big one day and McCain the next. That would surely cast doubt on the sanity of the electorate, and Hodgson surely meant to cast doubt on — if not critics’ sanity — then on their methods and conclusions.

The Wall Street Journal coverage (which was not written by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher) had the sub-headline, “They pour, sip and, with passion and snobbery, glorify or doom wines,” thereby alerting us, via the word “snobbery”, to the writer’s (Leonard Mlodinow, a professor of randomness at CalTech) attitude toward critics (although to be fair, Mlodinow may not have written either the header or the sub-head; those creative tasks often are done by editors). That sub-head, by the way, also compared ratings and reviews to “a coin toss,” the implication being that the next time you have to decide between a 100-point Heimoff wine or a 67-point Laube wine, you might as well toss a coin because either way it doesn’t matter.

Here’s my response. Yes, Hodgson’s papers (and the ensuing near-hysteria they prompted in the media) are a little “hard to swallow” for critics (as this article put it), not because we’re unaware of a certain inconsistency in wine reviewing (I’ve never denied it), but because these types of papers paint all critics and all wine criticism with the same brush and make it sound as though all wine criticism is sheer bunkum.

Joe Roberts, at 1WineDude, hit the nail on the head with his deconstruction of one of Hodgson’s papers by pointing out that Hodgson’s implication that all wine criticism is flawed is, itself, a flawed conclusion. (Joe called it “probably total bullsh*t.”) And even if Hodgson were to say that not all wine criticism is flawed, surely he must have known that his papers would be perceived as saying so and would empower the chatterazzi who love to bash wine critics.

Part of the problem is group wine judgings, which are subject to so many problems I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with politics and personalities and then descend to contrasting and possibly suspect levels of qualification and the fact that committee scores tend to skew toward the median. Group tasting includes the phenomenon of peer pressure, which is the opposite of the kind of solipsism that characterizes individual tasting of the kind I do. I’ve seen tasters in groups get so weary of negotiating and being attacked by the majority that they simple crumple and agree to change their scores so everybody can get on with it. Besides, tasters in a group tend to consume more wine than a single taster will by himself, because as the group discusses and negotiates its findings, re-sipping becomes necessary, leading to the possibility of marred senses.

Hodgson’s paper on triplicate samples poured from the same bottle seems on the surface to provide more ammunition to the critic bashers, but on closer examination it can be explained. Hodgson writes that “When possible, triplicate samples of all four wines were served in the second flight of the day.” As I understand it, this means that the critics had tasted no fewer than 30 wines, and possibly as many as 60 wines, when they reviewed the doubles and triples; this raises questions about palate fatigue. Hodgson himself also recognized that judges may vary in competence. This is why I tend not to put much stock in wine competition findings, but lots of Americans do, and I have no problem with that.

It can’t be said enough: a wine review is a particular person’s impression of a wine at a particular moment in time. Readers are free to attach their trust in a wine review to their trust in the wine reviewer.

I don’t often express outrage on this blog, but reading this made my jaw drop and my eyes bulge in sheer consternation: Jamie Oliver’s Australian wine expert has defended himself against criticism for not tasting some of the vintages he recommends.

Seems that Matt Skinner, the Australian wine “expert” who runs the wine operations for celebrity chef Oliver’s Australian restaurants, rated certain wines he never tasted, in his annual guide to wine, “The Juice.”

On “The Juice”’s webpage Skinner describes it as “a beginners guide to wine – a guide that is designed to inspire and encourage those that know little about the subject to feel more confident, more knowledgeable, and more enthusiastic about wine.”

Well, I don’t know how “confident” his readers will feel when they find out they’re reading reviews of wines Skinner never tasted.

(Skinner also has reviewed wine and restaurants for periodicals including GQ Australia, and Gourmet Traveler Wine.)

The original report that Skinner had not tasted all the wines he reviewed appeared in an Australian publication, according to Decanter. Decanter.com, on Nov. 13, wrote that Skinner “has admitted to not tasting several wines that he recommends in his latest book.” After the scandal broke, Skinner defended himself on his website, explaining that “It is imperative that I taste all the wines that I recommend however [sic] there are some releases that are consistent from year to year, and as popular, good value and accessible wines I want to include them because I know that my readers will appreciate them.” In other words, Skinner made the decision that just because a particular wine performed well for several years in a row, he can recommend that his readers buy it for the new vintage, which he hasn’t yet tasted!

Mitchell Beazley, the publisher of The Juice 2010, also issued a statement on Skinner’s website in response to the brouhaha. “One small category of wine in Matt’s selection regularly comprises wines which he rates worthwhile buying and drinking as soon as the most recent vintage comes on to the market. For these few wines, Matt’s [sic] has always based his recommendations on the qualities a particular wine has regularly achieved.” In other words, Skinner reviews — or let us more accurately say previews — wines of the new vintage, which he hasn’t tasted, so that his readers can rush out to buy them before they sell out.

Besides, Beazley is saying, Skinner only does this for a “few wines” in “a small category,” so it’s not like he’s committing massive fraud.

Look, here’s the truth. Just because a winery has a track record of excellence doesn’t mean it can’t make a dog. A wine critic simply is not allowed to review a wine he hasn’t tried!!! It’s irresponsible to the highest degree. This insults my profession and feeds into the perception that we’re all sleazebags. Skinner could have written, in a transparent way, “Here are some wines I haven’t had yet, but they always perform well, so I can recommend them.” But apparently (Decanter again) he didn’t.

I can’t conceive of myself writing about a wine I haven’t had. It’s just beyond the pale. I can’t imagine what Skinner was thinking, or how Mitchell Beazley thinks they can blow this off by calling it a “few wines” in “a small category.” That’s like saying to the police, “I only stole one Rembrandt from the museum, not the whole collection, so let me off.”

There is one implication to be had here, and that concerns the reputation and quality of annual handbooks on wine. I have always had concerns that some of them, like Hugh Johnson’s, are cranked out like cans of soup, rather than thoughtfully re-written each year. And I can tell you, personally, that I was asked to write the California section on one very well-known pocket guide published under the name of a famous wine writer. When I asked to be given written credit as a contributing editor (he was going to pay me anyway), the famous wine writer summarily fired me. (This was about six years ago.) His pocket guide went out under his name, misleading readers into thinking he’d written the actual reviews when I knew for a fact he hadn’t. Now Skinner’s annual guide casts further doubt on the accuracy of these annual guides. I won’t go so far as to say Skinner should lose his job. But he, and Beazley, need to come up with something more heartfelt and confessional to explain this egregious lapse of ethical standards.

Bringing it all back home in Monterey

The year was 1979. I’d just moved to San Francisco, and bam! got bit by the wine bug, bad. Embarked on a wine education self-tutorial that’s still going on. At that time, generic wines (faux Burgundy, Chablis, etc.) still out-sold varietal wines in America. Having learned that varietal wines were better than generics, I decided to go out and find some.

It needs to be said I was broke. Seriously broke. Barely enough to pay the rent, but not electricity: that first winter I lived in a rented apartment in the Ingleside whose only heat (and source of cooking) was a hot plate. I’d read enough of the local experts (Bob Thompson, Andy Blue, Harvey Steinem, Charlie Olken, others) to know that Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay were the red and white wines of California, respectively. But I couldn’t afford both. So I got a bottle of Cabernet and instead of Chardonnay I bought Wente Brothers Grey Riesling, which was cheaper.

Those were the first two varietal wines I ever consciously bought and paid attention to. I remember really liking that Grey Riesling and turning a friend onto it, with the explanation (which must have sounded totally pompous) that it was a varietal wine, mind you, which made it honest and authentic. I doubt if my lesson had any impact whatsoever on my friend, but I never forgot that wine. You never forget your first.

Or, in my case, your second, for that Cabernet was also a very important wine to me. It was from Almaden and the label said Monterey County. That was the first wine I ever took notes on, red or white. I sat down in my freezing cold “living room” with a notebook and recorded my impressions. I remember liking it a great deal, so five or eight years later, when the critics (this was before I was one) were all complaining about “the Monterey veggies,” I thought, “Gee, maybe there are some vegetal red wines down there in the Salinas Valley, but that Almaden was pretty good.”

I say all this for a reason. This past weekend I was down in Monterey where I had the privilege of hosting (on behalf of Wine Enthusiast Magazine) the Founding Fathers Dinner for the Monterey County Vintners & Growers Association’s Great Wine Escape Weekend, which the magazine hosts every year. I found myself seated with the Founding Fathers of Monterey wine, who included, right across from me, Eric Wente, whom I’ve known for a long time, and, to my left, a man I’d never met before. Al Scheid is the owner and founder of Scheid Vineyards, which is in the far south of the Salinas Valley, on the 101 Freeway.

I’d temporarily forgotten about the Cabernet and the Grey Riesling until Al Scheid began telling me his story. He’d gotten into wine laterally (he started as an investment banker) by planting vineyards for others. He actually planted (or oversaw the planting of) the grapes for Almaden — the grapes for the Cabernet I’d so enjoyed. As soon as he said the name, that Cabernet came rushing back into my memory, and right alongside it, so did the Wente Grey Riesling.

So my first two loved wines — my first two varietals that I will remember always — both were associated with two of the people I was sitting with. It kind of blew me away. I had thoughts like “It’s a small world” and “what goes around comes around” and other clichés (including the Dylan rip-off in the headline) that try, however feebly, to express our astonishment when synchronicity strikes with such agreeable force.

It also made me think how far Monterey County’s grape and wine industry has come. Forty years ago it barely existed. Even thirty years ago, pretty much nobody knew what they were doing. The Founding Fathers — in addition to Eric and Al they were Phil Franscioni (Muirwood), Steve McIntyre (McIntyre Vineyards) and Rich Smith (Paraiso Winery) — were trying hard, but they were a century behind Napa/Sonoma (and even behind Santa Barbara County), and it’s no disparagement to say they barely had a clue what they were doing.

What they did have, though, was passion, a commitment to hard work, and spouses who understood and supported them. They also had (if they didn’t know it then they do now) some very good terroir, such as a cool climate, well-drained soils and (a fact often overlooked by wine-loving consumers) lots of water for irrigation, courtesy of the Salinas River aquifer. So here we are in 2009, with the Santa Lucia Highlands a certifiable superstar for Burgundian varieties (and, possibly, Syrah), the Arroyo Seco producing wonderfully pure, crisp white wines as well as — a new discovery for me — pretty darned good red Bordeaux wines (in sheltered places), the Pinnacles offering terrific values, and the warm south, in the Hames Valley and San Lucas appellations, getting its arms around Cabernet and Merlot. What a long way Monterey has come in so short a time. There’s no story like it in California.

Lifting a glass of Beaujolais to Beaujolais

This Thursday, Nov. 19, is Beaujolais Nouveau Day, that annual event — always the third Thursday in November — when retailers and restaurateurs release the latest vintage (in this case, the 2009) to great fanfare all over the world.

I remember in the 1980s when Beaujolais Nouveau was a huge deal. Even though wine critics routinely bashed the just-released wines as functionally undrinkable, the fun and festivity were what counted. Kermit Lynch always held a Beaujolais Nouveau party in their Berkeley parking lot, with grilled sausages (actually a fine pairing with the spicy, grapey wine) and fresh baguettes from the bakery next door. And it was fun to think that people were doing exactly the same thing in New York, Paris and London.

Beaujolais Nouveau has lost some luster since then, although the French still try to market it for all it’s worth, putting it right up there with the Tour de France, Cannes Film Festival and Paris Gay Pride Day as one of the year’s top events. FIAF, the French Institute Alliance Francaise, in mid-town Manhattan, will hold their Beaujolais Nouveau party with the French consul-general, LVMH’s New York Chairman and Macy’s Fashion Director, thereby putting the right spin of culture, politics, fashion and frivolity on the event (complete with charcuterie and paté). Across the continent, Kermit Lynch once again will have his parking lot party. And down the block from me, Whole Foods will have their own BN label with a wine from the Maestro of Beaujolais himself, Georges duBoeuf. Across the Bay (let’s hope the Bridge is open) restaurants hope to recover from this dismal year by hosting Beaujolais Nouveau parties, such as this one at the Sofitel luxury hotel.

Beaujolais Nouveau is all rather silly but that’s exactly why people love it — if not the wine, then the fun surrounding it. It’s one day of the year when wine’s simple, unassuming nature is allowed to shine — when we forget about cults and point scores and rarity and simply eat, drink, laugh and get a little red in the nose.

The line between tourism and agriculture has long been an exceedingly fine one in Napa Valley, which depends on the kindness of strangers opening their wallets to pay for things like police and fire services and teachers. But ever lurking on the horizon for the valley’s (and county’s) guardians is the fearful vision of lurid neon signs, crass motels, shopping malls, chain restaurants, theme parks (“Ride the Gigantic Zin-Coaster! Thrill to the Chard-’O-Death Wine Cup Slosher!”), wax museums (Gee, looks just like Mr. Mondavi), and the inevitable gridlock that would choke not only Highway 29 but the Silverado Trail and all cross-roads between, only to result in public clamor for more roads, wider thoroughfares, perhaps an overpass here and there… Has anyone thought of broadening the Napa River and setting up a ferry service?

Well, you get the idea. That’s what Napa wants to avoid, and who could blame them? It’s in this context (the St. Helena Star reports) that “Recently, a hospitality industry proposal came before county supervisors to loosen some of the restrictions imposed on wineries.” Those restrictions date to the so-called Winery Definition Ordinance (WDO), drafted in 1990 by the Napa County Board of Supervisors, which (more or less severely) limited the types of commercial development allowable in most of Napa Valley, whose highest use was defined as “agricultural land.” The WDO represented a compromise between the valley’s pro- and anti-growth forces. One victim of the compromise was the marketing and hosting of non-wine-related events at wineries, such as weddings, corporate retreats, family reunions and the like. This sort of thing wasn’t so important in the 1990s and early 2000s, when the economy was flying high, but nowadays tourism (even eco-tourism) is off, and some wineries would love to be able to make a few extra bucks by letting Chevron or Bank of America come up for the weekend, or hosting the extended family for Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary.

All sorts of third rails run through this debate, which consists in equal parts of environmental, economic, philosophical and political elements. So great is the potential for explosion that the Napa Valley Vintners asked the county Board of Supervisors to postpone tackling the issue until an unprecedented coalition of four major interests could attempt to resolve it. The Napa Valley Grapegrowers, Napa County Farm Bureau, Napa Winegrowers and Napa Valley Vintners now have until Jan. 31 “to come up with a plan that balances various competing interests,” in the Star’s words.

Most of the people I know who live and work in Napa Valley are passionately committed to preserving its rural nature. Andy Beckstoffer and Bill Harlan often speak of the valley’s heritage, and credit Robert Mondavi as one of their inspirations. That’s all fine, but let’s remember also that Mr. Mondavi’s eponymous winery is probably the most highly-visited in the valley, and if there ever were a Disney-fied winery it would likely resemble the Robert Mondavi Winery with its arch and campanile and Bufano’s St. Francis. Then too, Mr. Mondavi co-created COPIA, but as that is in downtown Napa city — hardly an ag preserve — we can forgive him for it.

The bar to development perhaps was lowered when the Napa Valley Wine Train was first approved, and then again when St. Helena permitted it to pass through to that town which is the most winey-touristy-charming in all of California. And with Petrified Forests, balloon rides, Vintage 1870 and Calistoga’s mudbaths and geysers drawing in the tourists, it’s not exactly as if the valley is entirely free of commercial taint. I expect the Big Four will come up with something that will let Grandma and Gramps do their 50th while putting some cosmetic limits on attendance, hours and such. It won’t be so bad; it’s not a slippery slope.