Wines & Vines Magazine (which is edited by my former boss at Wine Spectator, Jim Gordon, who in turn used to blog for Wine Enthusiast’s unreserved — it’s a small world out there!) has an interesting new article, Pros to Teach Tasting Room Management, explaining how Sonoma State University’s Wine Business Program is teaching a new class for tasting room staff. It will bestow on them what I believe is the nation’s first Tasting Room Management (TRM) Certificate.

Now, I’ve never been big on these certification programs. There’s too many of them. Whether it’s a mail-order divinity license that lets you marry people, or some fancy-pants piece of paper you get from taking a two-week course in wine appreciation, they make it too easy for somebody to become an instant expert. It’s like when the Wizard of Oz gave the Scarecrow a diploma, proving that he had a brain. But Sonoma State’s certification program is one I fully support, for the simple reason that tasting rooms — which have become vital customer centers for wineries — all too often have abysmal staffs. My biggest gripe is when a tasting room person can’t answer a simple question about the wine, such as where the grapes are from.

I do have one apprehension about the Sonoma State course: I hope they’ll let the tasting room employees be themselves and remain warm, friendly human beings, instead of over-educating them to become little marketing managers who see walk-ins as nothing more than dollars on legs.

As part of the Sonoma State program, Jean Arnold, president of Hanzell, will teach a course on “Marketing Wine as a Luxury Product,” which Hanzell certainly is. I’m of two minds on the wine-as-luxury thing. Part of me hates the elitism and snobbery that can accompany it. The other part of me totally relates to it. (So I’m vinously bipolar.) Sit me down to dinner and serve me up ‘61 Latour and I’m impressed! A course on “wine as luxury” flirts with the danger that it reinforces the notion you have to be rich and wearing black tie to enjoy wine, but Jean Arnold is the perfect person to teach it. She’s solid and down-to-earth, as has been everyone I’ve ever met who worked at Hanzell.

Incidentally, a Master of Wine by the name of Sheri Sauter Morano, who’s a spokesperson for the Wines of France campaign, is running a poll on her blog called “Which Wine Will You Open on Election Night?” Speaking for myself, next Tuesday I’ll have a bottle of Roederer Estate 2002 L’Ermitage in the fridge. Here’s what I hope and expect will happen. Shortly after the polls close in California, the national news outlets will declare Barack Obama the winner by a considerable margin. (I’m predicting a minimum of 340 electoral votes.) That’s when I’ll pop the cork, lift the glass high, and shout out L’Chaim! to toast President-elect Obama.

Please vote tomorrow, if you haven’t already. And if you live in California, vote against Prop 8, a vicious, mean-spirited and misguided attempt to deny civil rights to thousands of people. As Bob Dylan wrote, in Slow Train Coming:

But the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency
All non-believers and men stealers talking in the name of religion
And there’s a slow, there’s a slow train coming up around the bend.

Hacks? Flacks? Floozies? The negative descriptors were flying in comments made by readers after my Oct. 27 post, So what did I learn at the Wine Bloggers Conference?, on my Wine Enthusiast blog. I didn’t even mention public relations, but midway through the extensive comments (26 and counting) the drift turned toward PR, and some controversial attitudes were revealed.

It started with Lenndeavors’ remark that the WBC was “a  bit too PR heavy.” I, too, had noticed the presence of a large number of PR people at the conference, both self-employed and those working for big wine corporations, but my reaction wasn’t a negative one. Instead, it didn’t surprise me at all. Any PR professional who could have gone to the WBC, but didn’t, isn’t performing her job very well.

“Joel” rose to PR’s defense by pointing out the same thing: PR people need to understand what the blogosphere is, and so they come to events like the WBC to see it up close and personal. Jo Diaz, who runs her own PR firm in Sonoma County (and who also blogs), agreed. Jo self-deprecatingly used the term “hack.” [From the German; related to our word “hook.” Colloquially, a person hired to do routine, dull writing, which you'll never find here!] After that, things headed south. Mia Malm (who, last I knew, did PR for Robert Mondavi) felt it necessary to defend her profession. So did Tia Butts, who I believe also works for Mondavi. (Mia and Tia, forgive me if I’m wrong.)

I did get the impression, both at the WBC and in its aftermath, that there was unease among some bloggers at how many PR people came to the event. If this was true, it must have been largely restricted to younger bloggers, who may not understand the role that PR professionals play. In fact, PR people are a vital part of the gigantic machine that rolls the wine industry forward every day. Don’t get me wrong: as I said in my Credibility seminar (and have said many times elsewhere), PR people will use us writers if they can, and if we let them. But then, we writers use wineries and winemakers for our needs, don’t we? I’ve never blamed PR people for what they do, and I rather admire them. It’s their job to get publicity for their clients, and if they’re good, they’ll devise ways of doing it that are aboveboard and intellectually defensible.

Yes, there are times I’ve been frustrated with the way some of them just spin and spin, like the Republican attack machine against Obama. And yet, PR people can be a writer/critic’s best friend. They’ve been enormously helpful to me in all sorts of ways, without ever expecting any favoritism when it comes to scores or reviews for their clients. (In fact, one of the most important things PR people do is explain to their clients how the industry works, which in turn makes writers’ jobs easier.) I couldn’t imagine the wine industry without PR people, and I’m happy to let them do what they’re paid to do: Pitch stories to me. So let’s be kind to PR people. Far from being flacks, hacks or floozies, they’re true professionals with a big job, often working under trying circumstances.

Here’s a list of some top winery PR companies. I’ve worked with most of them.

P.S. I blogged the other day about The 800 Pound Gorilla in China’s Wine Industry. Now, check out this blog post from someone who defends Chinese wine against charges of adulteration and deception.

There were so many issues swarming around the WBC that it’s going to take time to sort through them all or even identify them with specificity.

One way to figure out the emergent issues is to read the posts that the bloggers themselves put up, to see what they’re talking about. I like this one from Wilma’s World. Her observations are right on, including that some wine bloggers have grey hair (ahem) while others are young and edgy. “Nearly all would also like to make money from their blog but few will actually do so,” she writes, echoing my belief. She adds, “Blogging isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes a commitment and it can NOT be a transparent attempt to sell a product,” which are points I stressed in my breakout session on credibility.

I also liked the Napa Valley Wine Blog and especially the point that some heavy hitters (Gallo, K-J, Ste. Michelle and — at my table — Brown-Forman) attended “to observe and find out just what influence bloggers might have on the wine industry.” Nobody knows if wine blogging is a temporary blip on the radar, the future of wine writing and criticism, both, neither, or will mutate to something unpredictable. But the smart people understand they’d better be on the train if it somehow decides to barrel out of the station.

Then there was this blog from Caveman Wines, run by a guy who works for a well-known California winery P.R. company. He attended my credibility breakout session, and I’m glad he pointed out that “After this summer’s kerfuffle over Rockaway-gate, I was expecting things to get ugly, but they actually remained very civil.” (I had similar fears.) My buddy Lenn Thompson, from Lenndeavors, has commented (in a comment he made to my Wine Enthusiast blog) that I “held my punches” and “played nice” co-moderating the credibility seminar, but I think The Caveman understands the value of civility in an uncivil world.

Credibility, civility, making money, commitment, the role of blogging vis a vis the biggest wineries in America — clearly the WBC opened a Pandora’s box of gigantic issues, whose repercussions are far from being understood.

Oh, I also have a new fiction story, immediately below. Enjoy.

Last month the International Herald Tribune headlined China could become the wine industry’s next Chile in an article predicting that “China could become…a font of quality and affordable wines.”

I even blogged on this. But now comes some truly distressing news, in the form of a blog entry entitled Doubts about the wine label from a guy named Tim Johnson on the China Media Blog. In it, he writes that “80 percent [of all Chinese wine] is imported junk wine,” frequently from Chile, Australia and Argentina. So bad is its quality that Johnson likens it to “second-hand suits imported from Japan and Korea…”. The imported plonk then is “remixed” with Chinese wine that, itself, may be nothing more than “sugar water with some food coloring, alcohol and grape juice thrown in.”

Chinese producers certainly have no problem finding bulk wine on the Internet. Someone on a Chinese wine bulletin board recently wrote: “We are looking for large volumme [sic] of imported red wine…
1. Packing : barrels
2. 30,000 Litre per month
3. Stable supply and quality”

and received a slew of replies, including these:

“We can offer you bulk wine from Frace [sic]/Italy/Chile/Argentina/Spain etc.
you can direct import wine in bulk stably from winemakers.”

“Hi, my name is ___ and I work for an Italian exporter of typical Italian wines. We can supply you with white and red wines form [sic] different parts of Italy.”

“WE export over 30 million litres of bulk wine from Australia – South Africa – Argentina, Chile each year. Winery need to be able to receive 24,000l tankers”

“We’re a Chilean Winery, we can provide you the following Varieties : Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Malbec”

And on and on.

It sounds like an ocean of wine is being tanked to China for “remixing.” This is bad news for China’s emerging wine industry. Coming on the heels of the country’s tainted milk and eggs, lead-in-childrens’- toys and other consumer product scandals, it should make consumers agree with Johnson’s sorry conclusion: “…never, ever drink Chinese wine.”

Two recent events that occurred on opposite sides of the world demonstrate that when it comes to the clash between pro- and anti-alcohol sentiments, common sense can result in compromises everyone can live with.

Over in El Dorado County, in the Sierra Foothills, they’ve been having a battle for years between wineries that stage tourist-attracting events, and resident neighbors who object to the increased noise and traffic. As I blogged here just the other day, wine tourism contributes billions of dollars to the California economy every year, and so ought to be encouraged. However, as a resident on a busy street in the inner city, I know full well the annoyance of constant noise and vehicular traffic. So the people who live near the wineries have rights, too. Read this description of a new draft agreement between the wineries and their neighbors in El Dorado. It may not have made anyone completely happy, but it’s a good compromise that lets everyone feel they got something.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Thailand, a similar drama played itself out, as the country’s Public Health Minister backed off a ridiculous proposal to ban the sale and consumption of alcohol on religious holidays and even over the New Year holiday. “[u]nrealistic” and unenforceable, thundered the bangkokpost.com. After the public outcry reached a crescendo, the minister withdrew his proposal, and the good citizens and tourists of Thailand will continue to be able to enjoy a glass of wine or beer in peace.

Both of these are instances where extremists tried but failed to impose their will on everybody else. I have a feeling the outcome will be the same here in the U.S., come Election Day.

Two more examples of how not everybody shares equally in intelligence.

Stupid Idea #1

In North Carolina, they have 80 wineries that bring in more than $800 million a year to the economy. It’s become America’s tenth-biggest producer. So important is the industry that the state’s Department of Commerce commissioned a study earlier this year about wine tourism; among its findings were that by far the majority of people visit wineries for 2 reasons: to taste wine, and to buy wine.

So you’d think it’d be a no-brainer that when the North Carolina State Fair is held in Raleigh this week, wineries would be allowed to sell wine to the 850,000-plus visitors expected to attend. But no! The state’s Republican Agriculture Commissioner, Steve Troxler, says over his dead body. (For a report on the story in the Winston-Salem Journal, click here.)

Steve “No Wine” Troxler

I Googled Mr. Troxler’s name and found out a few facts about him.

- He’s North Carolina’s first Republican Ag Commish.

- He rode a tractor to his swearing in.

- He’s a tobacco grower. (Way to go, Steve. Alcohol’s bad – tobacco’s good. Huh?)

- Last year, Mr. Troxler and someone named Jeremy Troxler (son? brother? dad?) went to a “Convocation & Pastors’ School” event at Duke, where they presided over a seminar called “Growing in Grace in Rural Communities.” Hmm. I wonder if Jesus would have a word or two for tobacco growers whose products kill millions of people every year.

Stupid Idea #2

Now we’re in England, whose neoprohibitionists are as weird as ours. The government is considering forcing alcohol buyers in stores to use “alcohol-only checkouts which would be operated by specially-trained staff.” The purpose, according to The Telegraph:

“It is hoped it would put shoppers off from buying excessive amounts of alcohol under the scrutiny of fellow customers…”.

Oh, great. Picture it. You stop by Sainsbury’s for a nice bottle of Pommard for dinner, and endure the Perp Walk of Shame while the “normal” shoppers raise their eyebrows and tsk-tsk.

Who’s pushing for this insulting law? An ambitious young MP named Nigel Evans.

Mags & Nige

The Right Hon. Mr. Evans is (you guessed it) a Conservative, Britain’s equivalent of a Republican. Google tells us that Mr. Evans believes that sunspots, not carbon emissions, are the cause of global warming, and declared himself as among those “who don’t like being spoonfed by Al Gore.”

Good lord, why is it always the idiots?