I came across this YouTube the other day of Michael Mondavi being interviewed by a guy in Italy about wine blogs. Among other things, Michael said: “… my daughter and her friends do not look at Wine Spectator, Decanter. They get emails from friends…they go to the blog…it’s interactive…and they trust the blogs more than they trust the critics and magazines.”

It’s nice to see a guy of Michael’s age give props to the blogs. It’s not always easy for a Baby Boomer to “get it.” But then, Michael is the eldest son of Robert Mondavi, and nobody in the history of wine better understood just how the intricate mechanisms of marketing, P.R. and technology mesh than Bob. I don’t know how much Robert Mondavi knew about the Internet before he died, in 2008 at the age of 94. He’d been in failing health for some time. But I suspect that, had he been physically able, Bob would have been deeply involved online today, especially in videos. He was deeply photogenic, even into old age, and he had a playful, natural way of interacting with the camera, as this YouTube shows. Michael, in his welcoming video on the website of his Folio Fine Wine Partners, seems a bit more self-conscious compared to his father’s effortless ease. Michael’s younger brother, Tim, shows more of his father’s geniality in videos; check out this YouTube as an example. At any rate, it’s probably unfair to compare the sons to the father. Robert was, literally, incomparable.

What Robert got, and what Michael was referring to, was the importance to a vintner of establishing a personal relationship with his customers. Of course, that relationship isn’t really “personal” the way I have personal relationships with my family, friends and neighbors. You don’t really “meet” anyone through the media. My 2,500 Facebook “friends” are friends only in a strictly defined sense of the word. But Robert Mondavi knew that a bottle of wine that has a face, place and personality associated with it will stand a better chance of being bought than one that floats anonymously in a vast sea of bottles. So much the better once a name becomes branded, and no name in the history of American wine has been more potently or successfully branded than that of “Robert Mondavi.” That the company over-extended its brand, leading ultimately to its demise, takes nothing away either from Robert Mondavi’s astuteness (or our appreciation of it), or from his legacy, which teaches us that branding is the essential cornerstone of business success. It’s not possible, obviously, for every winery to have a face as iconic as Robert Mondavi’s; and I suspect that most winery principles would not want their faces out there, the way Robert’s was. Robert was, in some respects, a performer. He used to remind me of a Vaudevillian, an old trooper whose philosophy could be expressed as “The show must go on.” No matter how he was feeling, when it came time for him (and his wife, Margrit) to go onstage, they squared their shoulders and rose to the occasion.

With all the talk nowadays about whether and how much a winery person should tweet, Facebook, blog and all the rest, I wonder why more winery owners and winemakers don’t become the face of their brands. We humans are above all a visual species; before we had invented reading and writing, we used our eyes to scan what was in front of us, telling friend from foe, truth teller from liar. Humans have not changed, only technology. Which California winemakers are doing the best job of getting their faces out there and symbolizing their brands? I’d like to hear your suggestions.

I’ll be in New York as you read this, at our big, annual Wine Star Awards ceremony, held at the historic Public Library on 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan. Wine Enthusiast announced the winners late last Fall. I’ll be introducing the one nominee I argued for who won this year: Bob Cabral, for winemaker of the year. I doubt if I have to tell anyone who reads my blog who Bob is, or why he so deserves this honor. But just in case, Bob is now the veteran (I think we can call him that) winemaker at Williams Selyem. That alone puts him in pretty rarified company, but the fact that he makes so many great wines is what makes him special.

Each of the editors at Wine Enthusiast has her or his own special area of coverage, and we nominate these people and argue for them to be the winner. I don’t nominate in each category. For example, I don’t know a whole lot about cocktails, so I wouldn’t weigh in on Mixologist of the Year. Nor do I know much about importers, so I leave that category to my betters. It’s fun to learn about these people when they deliver their acceptance speeches and also when we show the videos they prepared in advance. It makes me realize how huge the world of wine, beer and spirits is.

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I want to apologize to Rick Bakas. He had just been hired as St. Supery’s Social Media Director back in July, 2009, when I reported that his salary would be $90,000 a year. I can’t remember where I came across that number–whether it had been officially announced or somebody I trusted told me. At any rate, Rick commented on a post I wrote last week: “…you lost my trust in 2009 when you inaccurately publicly shared my salary at St. Supéry…”. It was the first time I learned that he’d been upset after all those years. If his salary was not public knowledge, I had no right to make it so; and if the number was incorrect, then I misrepresented a fact. Either or both ways, I’m sorry that I lost Rick’s trust, and I hope to earn it back.

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Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but I’m a fan of The Bachelor. I probably would never have even heard of it, but last year, I did a little story about Ben Flajnik, who is this year’s Bachelor, because he was then a contestant on ABC-TV’s “The Bachelorette.” Ben is a partner in a Sonoma County winery, Envolve, which made it a wine cum celebrity story, the kind that can be fun to write every once in a while for a hardcore wine guy like me. Anyway, I’m not much of a reality TV fan (with the exception of Project Runway), but once I got to know Ben, it was hard not to watch the shows. It was like, Hey, I know that guy! And once I started watching them, I quickly got addicted.

Who’s gonna “get” Ben? Monica seems to have the inside track, but you never know. And who knows how much of this reality show is “real” and how much is made up by the writers and producers? Anyway, if any of the ladies ends up marrying Ben, she’s lucky: she’s not only getting a great guy, she’ll be living in beautiful Sonoma County (or, possibly, San Francisco, which is where Ben hangs his hat for now), and living the wine life. Nothing wrong with that!

Lord knows I haven’t been a big fan of California Sauvignon Blanc over the years. I thought that, compared to white Bordeaux, Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé, and even Marlborough, my state has been a distant second, or third. The wines have tended to be either overly sweet, or green, or just plain thin and acidic.

But in the past year, I noticed I’m giving some pretty good scores to Sauv Blanc. I gave a little thought to blogging about it, but the moment never seemed right, until yesterday, when, by coincidence, two things happened. First, I got an email telling me I was mentioned in a Facebook post, so I clicked on the link, which took me to the feed page of a winery, Vellum, where the poster had written: “The 2010 VELLUM White was awarded 92 points from our friends at Wine Enthusiast Magazine. A wildly high score for a white Bordeaux blend!!” (The wine actually is 80% Sauvignon Blanc and 20% Semillon, and was raised in neutral oak.)

At the same time, I was about to review a bunch of Sauvignon Blancs that had come in from Flora Springs, Dutton Estate and J Ludlow. I enjoyed that flight very much, for the most part, and once again found myself giving out some pretty good scores.

I checked out Wine Enthusiast’s database for my highest scoring Sauv Blancs over the past 365 days and found about 40 that got between 90 and 93 points. The four 93 pointers were Trione 2010 River Road Ranch (Russian River Valley), Duckhorn 2010 (Napa Valley), Robert Mondavi 2008 I Block Fume Blanc (Oakville) and Hall 2010 T Bar T Ranch (Alexander Valley). Except for the Trione, the others are wines I’ve known and praised for years; Hall bought T Bar T from Iron Horse some years back. Iron Horse,  I believe, used to jazz their Sauv Blanc up with a little Viognier, to brighten it and give it some uplifted floral notes. I don’t know if Hall still does. And then, of course, Mondavi’s I Block always is triumphant. And by the way, that wine ages.

Anyway, people sometimes ask me why I don’t give Sauvignon Blanc scores as high as Chardonnay. For example, in the past year I’ve given two 96s, to Shafer 2009 Red Shoulder Ranch (Carneros) and Foxen 2010 Block UU Bien Nacido Vineyard (Santa Maria Valley). The answer probably won’t satisfy everyone. It’s simply that I don’t think Sauvignon Blanc–at least in its California incarnation–has the depth and richness of Chardonnay.

I admire Sauvignon Blanc more than I love it. I respect its dryness (when it is dry, which too often it isn’t), its acidity, its streamlined minerality, its spiciness, its exotic range of flavors, its palate-cleansing properties. Those are all good things, especially at the table. Sauvignon Blanc is probably the most food-friendly white table wine in California. But when I’m in the mood for a cold white wine, it’s almost never a Sauvignon Blanc that I grab, but Chardonnay. That’s why they call Chardonnay a “noble” variety, but not Sauvignon Blanc. Even in France, Sauvignon Blanc never elicited the profound excitement that white Burgundy, including Chablis, did and still does.

I am, as many of you know, something of a student of the history of wine, and of California wine in particular. I’ve always had a hankering for history–any era, any country–although I do have my favorites: World War II is one (I have almost as many books on that as I do on wine), and I also enjoy the history of science, especially of modern physics. But my wine education began with a study of California’s wine history, and it’s still going on. That’s the thing about history: it keeps on happening.

I’m mindful of this, because I’ve been thinking about how Francis Ford Coppola is engaged in restoring the historic Inglenook name, which really had been dreadfully mauled over the years, since it passed from the hands of the great John Daniel, Jr. to a series of corporate owners, including United Vintners, Heublein, Constellation and The Wine Group. No disrespect to any of those fine companies, but that’s a pretty sad track record for a winery that had been as great as Inglenook, which was founded in 1879 and therefore has a legacy as important as any winery in California.

When I first started learning about wine, Inglenook already was in its dog days. It was mainly known for the Inglenook Navalle bottling, which hardly was great wine. Those of us who knew history appreciated and respected Inglenook for what it had been, not what it was. We hoped that, someday, the glory that was Inglenook would be restored. But that seemed impossible. Even after Francis Ford Coppola successfully repatched together the original Inglenook estate vineyard, in Rutherford, with a series of purchases, the name “Inglenook” seemed deader than a doorknob. Coppola named his brand Rubicon, not Inglenook, because he didn’t own the rights.

That’s now changed, and is why it was so exciting to hear that Coppola had bought back the Inglenook name (from The Wine Group) and plans on resurrecting it for the wines that had been Rubicon Estate.

Inglenook was one of the Big Four that kept the reputation of Napa Valley for Cabernet Sauvignon going, post-Prohibition. The others were Louis M. Martini (now owned by Gallo), Beaulieu (Diageo) and Charles Krug, which thankfully remains in the hands of the Peter Mondavi, Sr. family. Each of these wineries is doing fine, although concerning Martini, I think the jury’s still out on precisely where the Gallos aim to take it. Beaulieu has been left marvelously intact by Diageo, who understands the truth of the old adage, If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it, and Charles Krug remains an outstanding exemplar of how good Napa wine can be at relatively affordable prices. Still, I think it’s fair to say that none of those three wineries has aspired to be the very best in Napa Valley.

Which leaves Rubicon/Inglenook. Can Coppola push it back to the top? I, personally, have always thought a great deal of Rubicon, the Bordeaux blend that was the Rubicon winery’s flagship wine. The old estate vineyard, west of Highway 29 on the Rutherford Bench, is one of the glories of Napa Valley, just beautifully situated. I’ve always given very high scores to Rubicon (culminating in 95 points for the 2008, which I reviewed last October), and I’ve also always enjoyed the Cask Cabernet Sauvignon, which is consciously modeled after Daniels’ Cabs, made during Inglenook’s glory days in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s. That Cask Cabernet, for my money, is pretty much right up there with Rubicon, although it’s a different kind of wine, more closed in youth and, overall, more elegant. But it’s also $100 less.

When I think back over Napa Valley’s amazing history, I’m grateful to those who came later, but advanced the cause. Robert Mondavi clearly stands out, head and shoulders above anyone else in the second half of the twentieth century, with the possible exception of André Tchelistcheff. But we don’t have to choose between them. I also give great credit to Bill Harlan. He came along at a point when pretty much everybody thought Napa Cabernet was as good as it can get, and then he made it better. Without Bill, I wonder if there would be Screaming Eagle, Araujo, Staglin, Hundred Acre, Colgin and all the rest of what we nowadays consider “cult wineries.” Bill Harlan showed that Napa could reinvent itself, even when nobody thought it needed reinventing.

Sodden thought: I wonder what Napa’s next reinvention will be, and who will lead it?

It must drive wineries crazy to read stuff like Joe Roberts’ post today at 1WineDude.

Winery owners are doing everything they can to keep afloat in this dour economy. Most of them are tinkering with social media to some extent; some of them even have dedicated employees for it, if they can afford it. Inbetween buying corks and capsules, hoping the bottling line doesn’t break down, filling out employee forms, patching up hoses, worrying about drought or swamps in the vineyard, pruning, staking, riding the mule around the vineyard, topping off, racking, tinkering with valves and dials and switches, deciding on blends, driving to the hardware store, going on the road to sell wine, meeting with distributors and wholesalers, having staff meetings, and, oh, trying to find an hour to spend with the wife and kiddies, here’s Joe telling them they need to “just start using that time on social media to connect with customers already.”

What time? You mean those few hours between midnight and dawn when everyone’s entitled to a little sleep?

I pity these poor vintners. Everybody’s telling them to do social media, “to reach younger wine consumers” through the Twitter machine, to check their Facebook feed every three minutes, to blog, to make YouTubes and put them up on Oinga-Boinga or Diddly-Squat or whatever the hot new social platform is that’s about to go public. And those vintners are just sitting there, like, What? What are you talking about? It’s easy for someone who doesn’t have a real job to tell them to hang out on social media all day long, as that will magically solve all their problems. It’s also easy for that same blogger to tell winemakers “But if I were a small-production winery, I’d be worrying a hell of a lot more about how to reach, engage, and keep customers I had (as well as engaging new ones) than trying to get a crazy-good review with critics.” Why would a blogger tell winemakers not to be concerned with the critics? That’s crazy talk. And it must drive winemakers nuts (like I said) to think that they’re not doing enough to “engage and keep” their customers. When you accuse a hard-working vintner of being lazy when it comes to engaging customers, it’s like asking a guy when he stopped beating his wife. There is no answer that’ll get him off the hook. If he admits he’s not reaching out enough to potential customers, he subjects himself to feelings of guilt and suffering, because he knows that, no matter what he does, it can never be enough.

I agree that winemakers or owners should play around with social media, if they want to and like it. I spend a lot of time at it myself. But I don’t think it’s helpful to tell them that they’re bad if they’re not living online. When Joe (whom I like a lot, I really do and he knows it) says, “Honestly, I’ve got no idea what producers (especially smaller wine producers) are waiting for when it comes to outreach,” he’s really doing a disservice to the people he says he’s trying to help. How does he presume to know that producers are “waiting for” something? He doesn’t know the myriad ways that each producer is reaching out and engaging, whether it’s through a wine club, or working the tasting room, or hitting the road for a winemaker dinner, or writing thank you notes to valued colleagues, or visiting Wine Enthusiast’s headquarters in New York and tasting with the staff. Winery people work really hard, long hours. Telling them they have to put social media at the top of the list of things they’re already overwhelmed with is really no help at all.