The British blogger Jamie Goode has some very fine credentials when it comes to observations about wine writing. You can check out his resume here.

He certainly has enough experience under his belt to know what he’s talking about when he expresses meta-views on the state of–and threats to–wine journalism, which is why his post from the other days, “The coming wine war,” merits your attention. It is a sobering, informed and highly relevant take on the “clash of cultures in the world of fine wine.”

Jamie’s post is about Bordeaux in particular, but it could by analogy be extended to any fine wine region in the world and, in fact, to all of them, for they all are similar in the sort of behavior Jamie targets. Hear him: “Bordeaux will seek to protect its place – and wealth – by bringing its influence to bear where it can. Already it holds leading journalists close, through quite lavish hospitality and access to rare older vintages for the privileged few.” Sound familiar? He continues: “Some journalists have spotted where the money is, and for this reason have chosen to write extensively about Bordeaux. The top Châteaux’ sizeable advertising spend ensures that consumer wine magazines have a strong focus on the region. Perhaps these magazines will be discretely avoid giving coverage to the profoundly interesting (yet cash poor) terroiriste and natural wines, which come with zero advertising spend.”

Now, I can’t agree with all of what Jamie says. His devotion to “the emerging terroiriste/natural wine movement,” while romantic, is a little ideological, especially considering how difficult it is to identify who is a “terroiriste/natural” winemaker and who isn’t. I have repeatedly expressed my skepticism over those who make gushing, sighing sounds of passion for an ill-defined natural wine movement.

But Jamie is entirely correct to raise a jaundiced eyebrow when it comes to what seems like the increasing influence coming to bear on wine periodicals from the “haves” of the wine world–those with money to spend on advertising–as opposed to the have-nots. Good wine periodicals, and the good reporters who write for them, must forever be on guard to make sure the firewall that has traditionally existed between editorial and advertising remains wide and clear. If that firewall ever disappears, then Jamie’s fear could come true: “It would be a terrible shame, but it is not inconceivable that journalists may be forced to choose between writing what they would like to write, and following the money.”

Here in California, I’m less worried than Jamie about “lavish hospitality and access to rare older vintages” influencing wine writers in ways that would make them biased, or would persuade them to write about well-endowed cult wineries at the expense of a middle-class struggling winery that could not afford to put the writer up for the night in a “guest house” four times the size of my condo. California wine writers are a pretty wizened bunch. They’ve been around the block and aren’t about to be impressed by such glittering hospitality. Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh, California’s late Speaker of the State Assembly, once famously remarked concerning lobbyists, “If you can’t take their money, drink their liquor, f**k their women, and then come in here the next day and vote against them, you don’t belong here,” i.e. the Legislature. I think any good wine writer feels the same way toward wealthy winery proprietors.

What I do worry about is newbies, who might be swept off their feet with bedazzlement at being wined and dined by the high and mighty. I’ve seen this a little bit among our own up and coming writers, including bloggers, but I think it’s far more prevalent among the Chinese wine writers who find themselves on Air France, on their way to Bordeaux, courtesy of Lafite or Bordeaux.com or whoever it is that pays for such junkets.

Finally, I share Jamie’s concern that rich wine companies, who underwrite wine education organizations with “generous sponsorship…could seek to influence what is being taught to students of wine.” Such sponsorship could come “with implicit ‘strings’ attached” that persuade a cash-starved organization to slant their curriculum toward the donors. It’s not so far-fetched to imagine the Wines of Bordeaux (or of Napa Valley for that matter) forming alliances with educational bodies like WSET or the IMW and then expecting something in return for their generosity. As Jamie points out, this is less likely to become a major problem due to the rise of the wine blogosphere. But “eternal vigilence is the price of liberty” (Thomas Paine).

The Holy Grail of wineries, especially small wineries, is direct-to-consumer shipping, where the winery sends product to the end user, without having to go through a middleman.

Usually that middleman is the distributor, and as we all know, the distribution system has been getting tighter and tighter, as companies consolidate and the majors dominate their regions. Because the major distributors are interested mainly in selling to large retailers, like Costco, Wal-Mart and big supermarket chains, they tend to take on large production wine companies, such as Gallo, Constellation, The Wine Group, Bronco and others. This has resulted in good deals for the average American consumer. Indeed, it’s safe to say that this is the best market the consumer has ever known. There’s an ocean of wine available that’s clean and well made and quaffable, and prices are being kept down by the Recession.

It’s a win-win situation for everyone, except the small producers. These mom and pop businesses, which account for the majority of winery bonds, find it difficult to get into the distribution chain. They’re just too small to matter to the big distributors. This isn’t a case of who’s wrong and who’s right; it’s simply a fact. Unable to get distribution, the small producers are left to their own devices, which means, in effect, that they have to figure out how to sell their wine all by themselves.

Traditionally, the best way for a small family winery to sell direct to the consumer was through the tasting room. It’s still a good way, but with limitations: if you’re not on a well-traveled route, it can be hard. This is why so many of the wineries in the Sierra Foothills traditionally have sold huge quantities of wine through the tasting room: all those tourists driving up and down Highway 49, visiting gold country, or on their way to a Civil War re-enactment in Murphys, or traveling through to Tahoe and Reno. Some Foothills wineries sell up to 80% of their wine “through the screen door,” as the saying goes.

Club memberships have always been an important way for wineries to sell direct. Older wineries, like Mayacamas, depended heavily on selling to their members. But again, this is of limited value, since nowadays there are so many wineries, and they can’t all succeed with their wine clubs.

Enter direct to consumer selling through the Internet. I first started hearing about it in the 1990s. As the 2000s dawned it turned out not to be the magic bullet everybody was hoping for. Too many hassles: you needed extra staff, and fulfillment houses, and there were all those pesky state laws to comply with. But the smaller wineries plodded on, tackling issues when they could, making incremental progress.

The effort has now paid off. Our good friends at Wines & Vines Magazine are reporting today that “the winery direct shipping market…is in full recovery, with 11.5% overall gains in both volume and sales over the 12 months ending April 2011.” During that period, volume exceeded 2.75 million cases worth more than $1.2 billion. The magazine’s editor (and my former editor from back in the day), Jim Gordon, said, “With the overall retail market pegged at $30 billion, direct-to-consumer shipments of wine now represent 4% of the American retail wine market.”

The devil, however, is in the details. According to ShipCompliant, whose data were used in the study:

• Napa Valley did even better than the average, with DTC volume up 19%.
• Sonoma County was up a less impressive 5%.
• However, “mid-sized wineries dominate direct shipping sector while boutique wineries falter.” More than half of all DTC shipments were from 5,000-50,000 case wineries. The most alarming sentence in the entire report is this: “the ‘boutique’ wineries increased their average bottle price by a whopping 52% in the past 12 months yet saw a 40% decrease in volume going through the direct shipping channel”!!!

How it has been possible for boutique wineries (defined in the report as producing under 1,000 cases annually) to raise their prices 52% in this economic environment is beyond me, although it’s not surprising that they saw an immediate reduction in DTC sales as a result. I know who these boutique wineries are. I cannot believe they’re immune to the Recession’s effects. I know that restaurants they formerly depended on are telling them they can’t sustain that pricing. I know that proprietors know this, and are wondering by how much they ought to lower the prices, a tricky business because a lot of snobs determine the quality of a wine by its price. There’s no hint in the report, then, as to why this “whopping” 52% rise in pricing is happening, if indeed it is. If anybody out there has a theory, let me know.

This ridiculous weather has everyone scratching their heads. As I write on Tuesday morning, a major storm is moving into the North Bay, with up to 1-1/2 inches of rainfall expected. They’re even predicting thunderstorms in Napa tonight. Precipitation will be less the further south you go, with a 20 percent chance of showers along the Central Coast. Today will be the fourth day in June that California has had rainfall. Beyond that, temperatures will be up to 20 degrees below average. But a big warmup later this week, as a ridge builds in and temps in wine country get back to the 90s.

The weather hasn’t been that bad the last two weeks, which is why most of us were hoping that our hideous Spring-that-wasn’t was over. Apparently not. I personally think it’s due to climate change, but the deniers out there will still be denying when the midwest boils away and the oceans flood New York and Miami.

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No writer can write for everyone. We’re a tribal nation now. Each group gravitates toward its favorites, be it the older, white, rich collectors who favor Parker, or the younger independents who look for their voice in the blogosphere.

It’s hard for any individual critic to span all worlds. The elitists are not going to waste their time (in their view) on anything that doesn’t have a famous name and cost an arm and a leg. I recently ran into a rich Napa winery owner who said, basically, that anything under $30 sucks. That was his cut-off point, and his vast cellar–which he proudly showed off to me–was crammed with priceless treasures, more than anyone could ever drink in a lifetime. I explained to him that the U.S. wine industry is a pyramid. At the tiniest tippy top, he exists; without a broad base beneath the top, the wine industry would come crashing down. I don’t think he heard my message, but that’s all right.

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Nice summary of Napa’s various climate zones in this snippet from the Napa Valley Register. It explains how the county’s weather changes fairly dramatically from Zone 17, the coolest area around Carneros, to Zone 14, the Coast Warm area, which is the floor of the valley. I’ve been studying Napa’s climate for 30 years and I still discover new stuff everytime I turn my attention to it.

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Yesterday I reviewed the new PharoahMoans, a Rhône-style red blend from the westside of Paso Robles. It was the fourth vintage I have reviewed it since 2005, and I swear the wine is getting richer and more decadent every year. It is becoming a serious rival to the wines of Saxum, which I love, and which are (I thnk) the most expensive in Paso Robles. I first met Saxum’s proprietor/winemaker, young Justin Smith, when I profiled him for my book, New Classic Winemakers of California: Conversations with Steve Heimoff, which was recently republished in a new edition, with a new Intro by moi. Justin’s attitude toward high alcohol then, and now, was: If people don’t like it, they don’t have to drink my wines. Good for him. PharoahMoans’ winemaker, Guillaume Fabre (who studied with Michel Rolland), seems to have a similar philosophy. Yes, the 2009 is high in alcohol (15.9%), but it is really a deliriously heady, flamboyant wine.

I’ve been tasting a lot with winemakers lately, at their wineries. It’s such a different experience from tasting by myself, at home. In both cases, you’re doing the same things objectively: looking at the color, swirling, sniffing, sipping, rolling the wine around in your mouth, letting just the tiniest amount dribble down the throat so you can sense the aftertaste, then spitting most of the remainder out.

It’s what’s in the mind, however, that makes the two experiences utterly different.

When I’m tasting by myself my mind is largely empty. I mean, I’m obviously thinking about what I’m doing, coming to preliminary conclusions, correcting myself, anticipating what to do next. But I’m not thinking about anyone else. In this, my mental existence is more or less what Martin Buber called the I-it relationship: with an external object.

When I’m tasting with the winemaker, that mental existence moves into the more complicated territory of Buber’s I-thou: instead of interacting with an object, I’m interacting with another consciousness. The I-it relationship has bounds, but “Thou has no bounds,” Buber wrote.

This absence of bounds when tasting with the winemaker means that the objective act of of winetasting now shares center stage with the drama of a personal relationship with the winemaker. And, as we all know from our own experiences, personal relationships can be complex and uncertain, demanding of us whatever skills we possess to navigate through them. This is especially true when you don’t know the other person well, as is the case most of the time when a traveling wine writer sits down with a winemaker. I know some winemakers quite well, but with most of them, that’s not the case, and in many instances, we’re meeting each other for the first time.

First meetings are usually occasions for both sides to put their best foot forward. They’re generally pleasant, with informal chit-chat served up to break the ice and probe one another for areas of possible agreement, to find out where the boundaries are, and what sort of relationship might ensue.

When you’re a wine critic, however, this normally pleasant exercise becomes distorted in major ways. For you, there critic, are there to pass judgment on the created product of the other person–a product that may be as important to him, nearly, as his child, insofar as he’s put a huge amount of time, effort, ego and vision into producing it. The other person, the winemaker, may profess not to care what you say or think, but really, he wouldn’t have invited you to taste unless he did. You, meanwhile, know all this, and he knows you know, but there’s no getting inside either one’s head, so there’s a lot of guesswork going on. And when the tasting session extends over an hour or more, it can turn into an exquisite pas de deux, with full choreography.

I’ve had very successful tasting sessions with winemakers and some less successful, but I can truly say most of them are good. Getting a little buzzed helps both parties relax. For me, the best approach is to gain the other person’s trust and even affection by being myself, injecting a little humor into things, and not come across as too sanctimonious or conceited. Of course, there’s risk when you’re a wine critic. Part of you wants to show the winemaker that you know your stuff. You’re not just some boob off the bus, pretending to be the all-knowing guru but in actuality an idiot. I have enough self-doubt to prevent that from happening, but I also know what I know, or what I think I know, and sometimes, when what I know differs from what the winemaker knows (or thinks he knows), that can lead to tension. Tasting in Oakville the other day, there were two instances of this: one where I thought the less expensive wine was pretty much as good as the more expensive (although, after 20 minutes of airing, the latter proved itself), and one where a Bordeaux blend tasted surprisingly mute right out of the bottle. This, too, corrected itself after about 20 minutes, but I did share with the winemaker that, had I been power tasting (as many critics do), I might well have missed the beautiful nuances the wine showed once the air woke it up. I wondered if this statement indicted all wine critics, but I’ve found over my career that it’s helpful to share with winemakers my understanding of the (sometimes severe) limitations under which we work.

Napa Valley dominates this week’s list, with six Cabernet Sauvignons/Bordeaux blends and two Sauvignon Blancs. The remaining two wines are both from Paso Robles. As always, my full reviews and scores will appear in future issues of Wine Enthusiast. Today, I’m off on a trip I’ve been looking forward to: to tour the wineries of the eastern side of Oakville and figure out how the Cabernets differ from those grown on the western side, where the soils, light, fog and rainfall patterns are quite different. Have a great weekend!

Moone-Tsai 2008 Cor Leonis Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. $175, 220 cases, 14.5%. A terrific wine, made from fruit grown in Pritchard Hill and Coombsville.

Hestan 2007 Stephanie Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. $50, 1,600 cases, 14.9%. Flashy and rich.

Merryvale 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. $65, cases not revealed, 14.5%. Ripe, balanced and delicious.

Brander 2010 Mesa Verde Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc, Santa Ynez Valley. $22, 560 cases, 13.5%. Unoaked, but rich and fruity.

Nickel & Nickel 2008 Martin Stelling Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville. $140, 373 cases, 14.5%. Very tannic, per the house style, but massive in fruit. A wine to age.

Dominus 2008, Napa Valley. $149, 4,500 cases, 14.1%. A solid wine off the Yountville estate.

Fuse 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley. $22, 1,963 cases, 14.5%. Another great value from this brand.

Kiamie 2006 Kiamie Kuvée, Paso Robles. $38, 800 cases, 15%. An offbeat red blend, soft and rich.

Vina Robles 2010 White4, Paso Robles. $16, 3,910 cases, 14.2%. A dry, savory blend of several white varieties.

Cliff Lede 2010 Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley. $23, 6,552 cases, 14.7%. A fine example of a ripe, Napa style Sauvignon Blanc.