A friend had kindly given me a bottle of 1979 Sanford & Benedict Pinot Noir in advance of my get-together with Richard Sanford last week. He and I might have shared it, but we didn’t do a lot of serious tasting on that cool, early morning; my motive was primarily to talk with Richard and learn what he’s up to, not to drink. So I brought the bottle home to have it in a more proper setting where I, and others, could appreciate it the way wine is meant to be had: with food, over the pleasures of the table.

An old bottle of wine is the complete opposite of a young bottle. Assuming it’s still sound (and you never know until you pop the cork), an old wine is like an old person: meant to be treated with respect and courtesy. You don’t go out for a 5-mile run with an old bottle, the way you might with a young friend; instead, you sit around the living room, talking quietly and letting the old wine reminisce. Young wines shout; old wines have conversations.

I brought it to Maxine and Keith’s for dinner, down in San Mateo. The first decision was whether or not it would go with her paella, which she made in the classic Spanish style, with clams, shrimp, chicken and chorizo and, of course, a dash of saffron. I figured the match would be fine.

To decant or not? I wished Richard had been there; he would have known. In the event, I waited until about 30 minutes before Maxine put the paella pot on the table. But first the bottle had to be opened. With a 31-year old cork, you never know. I used a waiter’s screwtop, probably not the best idea (an Ah-So would have been better). The cork broke in half, with the top impaled on the screw and the bottom stuck deep down in the neck. But the cork smelled clean. Sometimes old corks break; it’s not the worst thing in the world. Since I couldn’t extract the bottom half, I just shoved it down into the wine. A proper sommelier, I expect, would have filtered and decanted the wine. I did neither.

The color was pale, of course; a heavy sediment clearly had gathered into the bottom of the bottle. The wine wasn’t quite brown, but a sort of russet, the color the maple leaves turn in November just before they fall to the sidewalk in front of my house. A good, rich, natural color, but fading. Then the all-important act of sniffing. Ahhh. Clean, sound, attractive. Just a bit maderized — like a fino sherry. Not unusual in so old a wine. Not a problem. Inviting; not a trace of senescence. Gave it a few quick swirls, and out came the cherries, shy at first, like a little girl in her first ballet costume. Pretty and demure.

Before I could sip Keith asked for the glass. I normally don’t like to tell others what I’m experiencing because I know it can color their own expectations, but I did say, “The fruit’s pretty much gone. But it’s really nice.” As Keith sniffed I could see a certain disappointment. He likes young wines, like most people, because he’s used to young wines. So I went into teacher mode and told him something like this:

With wines this old, you look for different things than fruit. You ask the wine to give you its best, but you in turn must give it yours. Begin with respect. This wine is nearly 31 years old. It is still vibrant — still alive — more than alive. Alert, intelligent, with much to say. (It’s impossible not to anthropomorphize such wines.) There is no sickness unto death here. There is a halting quality; the wine is a shadow of its former self, but it is not a feeble shadow. A noble one, proud of its past. (I tried, unsuccessfully, to make an analogy with the aging Willie Mays, but gave up.) By then I had tasted the wine, and fallen in love. Through the maderization, still some sweet, refined fruit and spice. The more you think about such wines, the more you discover in them. It’s as if they are telling you their long autobiography, one memory at a time. There is a memory of climate. “This fresh acidity you appreciate,” the wine says, “is from the wind and the fog that loved me when I was grapes on vines.” Although the label on the bottle says, in those pre-AVA days, “Lompoc, California,” this was after all the same Santa Rita Hills that today is windswept and foggy; the Sanford & Benedict Vineyard still spills down the slopes to Santa Rosa Road (and Richard Sanford’s La Encantada Vineyard is right next door).

With the paella the wine was a dream. For comparison’s sake I opened a 2006 Siduri Cargasacchi Pinot. (If I’d had a recent Sanford & Benedict that would have been better but I didn’t.). You can see Cargasacchi right across Santa Rosa Road, so the two wines shared the same, or nearly the same, terroir. The Siduri is a wonderful wine — I scored it 92 points for Wine Enthusiast — but the minute Keith tried it, right after the old S&B, he pouted and said, “It tastes horrible!” No, it wasn’t horrible, it is a very good Pinot Noir, but everything is relative; and perhaps nothing in our sensory experience is as relative as when, and under what circumstances, you taste wine. The 3-1/2 year old tannins in the Siduri were hard as nails, after the silk of the S&B. The Siduri’s fruit was too bold, too aggressive, compared to the older wine’s discretion; it was like (and I’ve made this analogy before) the late Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup: garish. The S&B by contrast was evanescent as a ghost. Not a scary, chain-rattling ghost, but a friendly familiar. A spirit. An angel.

All of which, of course, leads to the big question: Will today’s Pinot Noirs, which routinely top 14% of alcohol and frequently are more than 15%, age like that ‘79 S&B? Its alcohol was 13.2% (and there’s no reason at all to think that number was not accurate, the way I routinely doubt today’s official alcohol readings on labels). I have no way of knowing. Keith asked why a higher alcohol Pinot might not age as well and, once more, I wished Richard had been there, for he would have given us the answer. I murmured something about balance. In complex systems, the slightest inherent imbalance, no matter how barely noticeable early on, may sometimes lead to gigantic consequences, like a space satellite spinning out of orbit. Maybe the winemakers who craft these modern-style Pinot Noirs will weigh in with their opinions. Will these 2007s and 2008s be as beautiful in 31 years as that old S&B?

And this just in:

The case of the mysterious mailing list deaths

This is a true story about one of the most terrible and horrendous events in the history of the wine industry. It is a tale of murder, greed and covetuousness — and the lengths to which humans will go in order to satisfy their unnatural lusts.

It began on a dark, stormy night in December, 2008, in the Hollywood Hills, where the well-known movie producer (“Cheaper by the Dozen 2,” “All About Steve”), James Schnorrer, was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool. His body was discovered by his housekeeper, who called police. The Los Angeles coroner eventually determined that the cause of death was accidental drowning. Schnorrer’s blood was found to contain traces of marijuana, alcohol, cocaine and prescription drugs. The presumption was that he had gotten high, gone for a swim, and passed out in the water. Case closed.

Two weeks later, in Boca Raton, Florida, in the upscale Highland Beach neighborhood, Jay Silverbring, a wealthy importer of East Asian antiques, similarly was found dead in his home. His wife, Lisa, had been shopping. On her return, she discovered Silverbring face-down on the livingroom floor. There were no signs of violence, no marks on the body, nothing to indicate that a crime had been committed. The coroner determined that Silverbring had died from a massive coronary thrombosis, although he had been in excellent health. His age at the time of his death was 54.

Over the next six months, which is to say through the summer of 2009, more than sixty men and women, all in upper income brackets, were found dead, of various causes: heart attacks. Strokes. Drownings. Car accidents. Falls down staircases and off cliffs. Nine were determined to have committed suicide: five by hanging, three by slicing their wrists, and one by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. By the beginning of 2010, the number has grown to 111. That is when a private detective by the name of Maury Saperstein became involved, and eventually solved the mystery.

Saperstein had been hired by the widow of one of the dead men, a Silicon Valley millionaire who had developed a new high-speed processor, whose patent he had sold to Cisco for $45 million. Claude Recluser — that was his name — had taken his fortune and decided to live a Larry Ellison-type lifestyle. He climbed mountains, including K-2. He sailed a 32-foot schooner from La Jolla to Melbourne, alone. He practiced hang-gliding, flew his own small jet, and kayacked whitewater rivers from New Zealand to Ireland. It was Recluser who had jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He was only 37 years old at the time, was 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighed 150 pounds, and had 2.4% bodyfat. His overall health, including his mental health, had been perfect. His widow described him as “as happy as a man could be, living his dream.” He had had no reason to kill himself, which is why the widow — Katherine Recluser — hired Saperstein. She wanted to know why her husband had killed himself, or rather, she wanted to know why someone had pushed him off the Golden Gate Bridge, making it appear that he had killed himself. For she knew, in her heart, that he hadn’t.

Saperstein worked all the usual angles. Was there another woman? Multiple women? Nothing. Claude had been, seemingly, the perfect family man, devoted to Katherine and to their two young children. Had Recluser been involved in anything shady that might have cost him his life? No; there was no evidence of anything like that at all. Did he have enemies? Had he cheated someone out of a fortune, stolen an idea, caused an enemy to be fired, wrecked someone’s business? Again, nothing. Could he have been suffering from a deep depression that not even his wife had noted? Possibly, but Saperstein interviewed all Recluser’s friends — and he had hundreds of friends — and all testified to his happiness, his balance, his overall joy in life. He had accomplished everything he had set out to do, and now was enjoying the fruits of his labors. In fact, several of his friends noted, Claude had some new ideas about technology, and was even considering getting back into the business.

Saperstein was at a dead end when one of those serendipitous things happened that so often opens a door when all options seem shut. A wine fan himself, Saperstein happened to overhear a conversation at a wine bar in downtown San Francisco. It seemed that the owner of a famous cult winery, Babbling Buzzard, which had received a 100 point review from Robert Parker, had been complaining that his mailing list — the people to whom his coveted wine was offered, on a first-come, first-serve basis each year — had diminished rapidly and mysteriously. Even granted the effects of the recession, hundreds of his mailing list customers had allowed their subscriptions to run out, and simply disappeared.

Saperstein called Mrs. Recluser. Had Claude been on the Babbling Buzzard mailing list? Why yes, Mrs. Recluser replied; he had. In fact, she had just sold off a consignment of older vintages, since she, herself, was not a fan of wine.

Saperstein did his research. He obtained from the owner of Babbling Buzzard a list of the names of former members who had allowed their subscriptions to lapse over the previous 18 months. There was a total of 177 names. Saperstein further ascertained that, of that 177, 123, or nearly 70 percent — including Claude Recluser — had died under mysterious circumstances. The victims included James Schnorrer and Jay Silverbring. All were wealthy, all lived in good neighborhoods, and all had died tragically (or allegedly had killed themselves). This was an important enough discovery by Saperstein, the kind a private detective might work through an entire career without stumbling across, but what is even more amazing is how Saperstein determined that there was a single killer, a woman who had waited for more than 5 years to get onto Babbling Buzzard’s mailing list, unsuccessfully, and who then had determined that, rather than wait for the actual mailing list customers to die or voluntarily quit so that she could be admitted, she would help them along, by killing them, one by one. How Saperstein eventually discovered the killer will be the subject of a future blog.

1.

I was not surprised to hear yesterday that someone is taking on the New World (Australia, Chile, California) for global wine dominance in the value tier. After all, we’re in a recessionary time when all the cards are being reshuffled and recut, and who knows who will emerge on top. Nor was it surprising to learn who the potential usurper is: France’s Languedoc-Roussillon! All the 2,700 winemakers in that huge district — which covers 35% of France’s vineyard acreage — will now be able “to label their wine for the first time with the grape variety, vintage and location.” That will enable them to compete in the New World, where consumers look for wines with varietal names, like Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. That’s why a top Languedoc official said, “It will help us a lot with the American market.”

That’s hundreds and hundreds of millions of bottles of wine, and a lot of it is going to cost under $10, giving stern competition to inexpensive California brands and New World imports.

Let’s back up and get philosophical. Since the recession began, we’ve assumed that the most expensive wines are in trouble. They are, but that doesn’t mean the bottom of the market is safe. You have only to look at Australia to see that. Nobody knows if and when the recession will lift and recovery return. But we know this: this announcement from the Languedoc-Roussillon is a shot across California’s bow, a warning signal that powerful interests in the European Union are moving in for their share of the loot.

2.

Announcing the first ever Wine Bloggers Conference on Wine Writing

The world already has a Wine Bloggers Conference and a Wine Writers Conference, but what we don’t have is a Wine Bloggers Conference on Wine Writing (or WBCoWW, pronounced “web-cow”). I’m not sure how this ended up falling between the cracks, but it did. Probably because everybody’s so darned busy blogging, tweeting and monetizing, not to mention going to conferences, that nobody noticed.

Why a Wine Bloggers Conference on Wine Writing? Why now? And why me? Answers:

1. Because it’s needed.
2. If not now, when?
3. It’s my karma, which was never all that great.

I doubt if we can get Meadowood again — too pricey, and besides, the proctologists have it booked the third week of July (I checked), which is the only time I can make it. Even if we could afford a little room, I wouldn’t want to be sharing that Meadowood campus at night on those dark, creepy paths with a bunch of probing ass doctors, especially if I’ve been drinking, which I will. There are several AAA-approved motels in the Vallejo/AmCan area we could probably afford. And speakers. We need speakers. 1WineDude, are you free the week of July 15? I know you’re crazy busy, and we’ll need to book you months in advance. Have your people get in touch with mine. Alder Yarrow, any chance you’ll chair the panel on “How to chair a panel”? There may be a syndication deal. I think I can get you Jancis Robinson, or, at least, a Jancis lookalike (I know one from San Francisco). Parker said nyah, nyah, but he didn’t say nyah, nyah, nyah your mother wears combat boots, so maybe he’ll come. (Memo to Morton Leslie: please prepare for me a draft of winery-media relations as they have developed from the late 18th century into the digital age.) There’s some hope the Coppolas will come. Every wine conference needs a little glamor, which is why God created Karen MacNeil.

For our breakout session I suggest a rousing game of Truth or Dare, libations to be provided by whichever winery underwrites web-cow with the most funding. In this game, players ask embarrassing questions of each other, and challenge each other to do embarrassing things. For example, Heather John might dare Charlie Olken to lapdance in a bikini with Eric Asimov while blind tasting without spilling a drop onto Eric’s khakis, and The Hosemaster (should he attend the festivities, which is not at all clear) might raise the ante by daring all the bloggers to rate CO’s performance on a 100-point scale, or else risk having Charlie lapdance on them. (Try not to visualize.) It’s great fun, and could give new meaning to the word “Gewurztraminer.” By this time we should all be relaxed and harmonized enough to attend our second panel, which Jim Laube has graciously agreed to come out of hiding and chair. (Memo to self: Does he still look like his old WS picture? Find out.) It is entitled, “What would happen to the 100-point system if all the 100-point critics in the world suddenly disappeared, the way all the women did in Philip Wylie’s 1951 novel, ‘The Disappearance’”? When Jim proposed this topic, I thought it was a little un-P.C., but it does win the award for the world’s longest panel title, and should garner lots of media coverage, especially in Cigar Aficienado. It also raises the issue of: If Tish were armed with weapons of mass destruction, would he use them and, if so, upon whom? My personal opinion is that the 100 point system will not die with the death of its critics, but will long outlive them; and, in fact, numerically rate their demises. As long as I’m still here to participate in the debate, I’m content.

First, I apologize to readers. This site was down most of yesterday, due to issues at my web hosting company.

* * *

It’s already been widely reported that California’s 2009 grape harvest was the second largest ever — 4.9 million tons, more than any other harvest except 2005, which “crushed” all previous records. (To put this number into context, that is 44% more grapes than were crushed in 1988.) Conventional analysis suggests that high-end wineries will take a hit, since “[I]n the coastal areas, there really is too much [product] at this point,” according to the well-known grape broker, Bill Turrentine, who added, “high end wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties suffer [from] a glut of fine wines almost no one thinks they can afford to buy.”

This is not particularly good news for “cult” wines or those just below cult status that aspire to super-ultrapremium prices. For the last 1-1/2 years (which is to say, since the economy collapsed), I’ve been astounded by the quantity of $50 and above wines that continue to pour in to me for review. “Who are all these people, and how are they staying in business?” I asked myself. Now, there’s additional pressure on them: the grape and wine glut from 2009.

What wine and region comes to mind when someone is predicting difficulties for “high end wineries?” Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is the correct answer (those of you who guessed right win a free lifetime subscription to this blog). So let’s drill down and see just how much trouble N.V.C.S. is in.

Statewide, the ‘09 Cabernet crush (441,563 tons) was up 35% over 2008, which was not a small crop by historical measures. Of that, 55,000 tons, or about 12.5%, was grown in District 4, which is Napa County — more than any California region except for District 11 (the northern San Joaquin Valley, but we don’t care about Central Valley Cab, do we?). That means Napa Valley is going to be churning out an ocean of 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, starting in about a year and continuing (for late releasers) through 2013.

In the just-issued, official “Grape Crush Report” (preliminary) for the 2009 California crop is a section that’s always worth reading: “Base Price Paid to Growers.” It essentially summarizes individual dollar deals from growers to producers who buy grapes. While there were some pretty cheap transactions ($350 a ton for District 4 Cabernet? I wonder where those grapes came from?), most of the grapes went for between $6,000-$11,000 a ton. The official “weighted average” for Napa Cabernet was only $4,743 per ton, but that average is skewed low by the cheap grapes, which will end up in inexpensive bottlings that have little impact on high-end Cab. By contrast, the weighted average for District 3 Pinot Noir (which includes Russian River Valley and Sonoma Coast) was just $3,039 — and we know how expensive those bottles are.

Now, my good friend, Pierce Carson, wrote in last week’s St. Helena Star that, due to “grape prices holding their own,” even this large harvest won’t significantly lower bottle prices. Pierce interviewed Vic Motto, a grape and wine finance guy whom reporters like me have turned to for many years as a source of information. Vic’s prediction was nonchalant. “(A recession) is never permanent. The wine we’re making today will be sold tomorrow — we’ll see what tomorrow brings.” He was, if anything, optimistic about Cabernet’s future.

I’m not so sure. I have a feeling deep down in my gut, as Turrentine seems also to, that these high prices cannot hold. And if cult Napa Cabernet begins to tumble (which, in fact, it already has), how long will it take before the downward pressure hits Sonoma County, Paso Robles, even Santa Barbara County?  “[T]he economics of the wine business are still much better than most industries,” Pierce quotes Motto as saying. That may be true, in the sense that owners (many of them wealthy to begin with) are able to tread water, so they’re not in the dire straits of, say, the auto industry. But what about consumers? They are in dire straits. Even a multi-millionaire owner can’t afford to absorb big losses year after year.

My feeling is that, by this summer, we’ll have a greater understanding of how much damage was, or wasn’t, caused to Napa Cabernet by the Recession and, now, 2009’s big crop. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn of more bankruptcies, more sales, more dumping at Costco or wherever. Also, consider the fickleness of the consumer, who’s always looking for the latest critical darling. As I look over my highest-scoring Napa Valley Cabs since last Fall, I see brands such as Hestan, Redmon, Napa Angel, Knights Bridge, Piña and Sabina. These are not exactly household names. In other words, there’s a whole new crop of new (or relatively new) producers chasing, or should we say threatening, the more traditional boutique brands. Is there room for everybody? Not in my opinion, and not in reality. As MSNBC online reported just yesterday, “Napa Valley is facing the worst wine downturn since the early 1980s. Premium wines priced between $50 and $125 were ‘a dead zone’ in 2009, according to Silicon Valley Bank’s annual wine market report…”. I can’t see that changing in 2010. Something’s gotta give.

And this just in:

Where will Hardy land? That’s been the question over the ultimate job destination of Mr. Wallace, who won Murphy-Goode’s Really Goode Job. We now know: “I am passing along a press release to your email that announces Michel-Schlumberger’s unique partnership with the winner of the Really Goode Job, Hardy Wallace. He is moving into our winery where he will be writing about his experience living at a winery in addition to his other pursuits…”. That’s the word from Jim Morris, who works for Schlumberger. Same job, different location. Is the pay still ten grand a month? Enquiring minds want to know!

And this too

I’ll be doing a really nice, different kind of wine tasting at Old Crow Tattoo, in my neighborhood, on Sat. Feb. 20, starting at 8 p.m. The address is 362 Grand Ave. Stop by. I’d love to see you!

I love it. The 2009 Bordeaux vintage is “spectacular,” “brilliant,” “superb, rich, powerful, sexy beasts,” “sublime.” As a result, the wines “won’t be cheap.”

In advertising this is known as “selling the sizzle.” In modern kulturspeak it’s “creating buzz.” And no one, anywhere, is better at creating buzz than those maestros of the art, the Bordeaux wine trade.

The quotes above are taken straight from an email press release I received yesterday from Berry Bros. & Rudd, the British wine merchant. BBR knows something about creating vintage anticipation. After all, that’s their job. Can you imagine if, here in California, Gavin Newsom’s PlumpJack wine stores told customers to “turn off the heating and sell the car to save up and sign up with us for the rollercoaster ride that will be Bordeaux 2009,” only substituting “Napa Valley 2009” for “Bordeaux 2009”? Dah Mayor would be laughed out of office, chased by angry mobs with pitchforks for taunting them in their economic misery.

How does Bored Dough get away with it?

It’s not just wine merchants who are spinning 2009, it’s the Bordealais themselves. “Nature has been extremely generous, it is sumptuous,” said Denis Dubourdieu, director of the Bordeaux Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences, adding, “you have to go back to the climatology of the 40s to find, perhaps, comparable conditions.” Remarks like this are bloody chum to the sharks who swim in Wine Spectator’s online site. “…the talk is already starting. Comparing the vintage to 1947?” someone wrote.

Over at the Wall Street Journal, when their writer, Will Lyons, recently reported on the ‘09s, he wrote, “Bordeaux does hyperbole well.” Indeed, they do. Of course, few people have actually tasted the wines at this point. But who cares? When they do, they’ll be dazzled. I guarantee it.

How many times have the Bordelais trumpeted a vintage of the century? About every 4 or 5 years, if not more frequently than that. And the market continues to let them get away with it.

Well, I’m not blaming Bordeaux. They know how to brand and market themselves; nothing wrong with that. Why can’t we in California play the same game?

To some extent, we have. I’ve written about the great 2005 Cabernets and the 2007 Pinot Noirs. So have other wine writers. But for some reason, California’s vintage assessments don’t have the weight or importance that Bordeaux’s have. Why is that? Is California somehow a victim of its once-proclaimed boast that “Every year is a vintage year”? Yes, once upon a time that was California’s mantra, its proud declaration to the world that shoppers need not fear buying a California wine from any year, because they’re all great. Of course, that’s not exactly true — especially since California’s winegrowing areas have spread far beyond Napa Valley, and even within Napa itself viticulture has crept up off the valley floor into the mountains. But maybe there’s still a residue of that “every year a vintage year” mantra, which robs proclamations of vintage greatness of their power.

But I think it’s more than that. Bordeaux has bragged about vintages of the century for so long, and so implausibly, that we kind of expect it of them. It’s part of the Bordeaux personality: oversized, glitzy, shamelessly self-promoting, egotistical, supremely confident if not arrogant. (California by contrast is self-doubting, introspective, ironic.) If Bordeaux did not boast, it wouldn’t be Bored Dough. And we — collectors, consumers, just-plain vanilla wine folks — wouldn’t line up to taste the sublime 2009s, if somebody just gives us the opportunity.

Two articles recently caught my eye. Although they were not apparently related, I saw an underlying connection that speaks, perhaps, to the future of social media.

The first, on the front page of last Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle, was headlined “Cafe asks customers to turn off laptops and start talking.” It seems there’s a coffee shop right here in Oakland whose owner “is asking customers to leave their laptops at home and actually speak to each other.” Anyone who’s ever been in a free wi-fi environment like Starbucks is familiar with the situation: people hunkered down at tables, nursing a $3 latte for hours while surfing the web. “I don’t have anything against technology,” said the cafe’s owner, a young, hip-looking guy with a goatee (i.e. not some dinosaur Boomer who “doesn’t get it”), “but it’s not the same as looking someone in the eye and pressing the flesh.”

I’ve expressed some negative feelings in this blog over the last year about the way laptops and other personal digital devices, like cell phones, are intruding into the social contract. That contract is an old one, understood pretty much by everyone, and it relates to how we behave in shared social situations. In a crowded elevator, for example, most people will be silent and avoid making eye contact with strangers. On an airplane flight, passengers understand the concept of personal space, which includes audio space: don’t let your arms stick over into your neighbor’s area, don’t make unnecessary noise, etc.

What technology is doing to us is destroying the traditional social contract. Now, that person next to you in the elevator is just as likely to be yakking into a Bluetooth. The other day at my gym, a woman was screaming at the top of her lungs into her cell phone for a good half-hour, while the rest of us had to endure her drama. With laptops in cafes, it’s just the opposite: where ten years ago patrons might have been debating about politics, gossiping, or playing chess, today they’re absorbed in their own little worlds. They might as well be on the Space Shuttle as in a crowded room with other human beings. “It’s now socially acceptable to text during dinner parties or stand alone at a party and check email,” the Chronicle article acidly observed.

Not at my dinner parties!

The second article was sent to me by Ron Washam, the famous Hosemaster of Wine. It is an excerpt from a new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” by a Harpers Magazine writer, Jason Lanier. Lanier deconstructs many myths surrounding social media in a way I strongly agree with. His underlying message is that social media is not only not bringing us closer and making us better, more dextrous communicators, but in fact is achieving exactly the opposite. “I know quite a few people, most of them young adults, who are proud to say that they have accumulated thousands of friends on Facebook. Obviously, their statements can be true only if the idea of friendship is diminished,” Lanier writes, in a devastatingly pinpoint j’accuse whose truth is hard to deny. Lanier also demolishes one of the more persistent myths of social media: that its “hive mind” nature, in which thousands or millions of individual human minds are collectivized digitally, is somehow superior to a mere “organic human.” This is the assumption made by those entrepreneurs (and I’ve recently written about them) who are launching all these new “people’s wine tastings,” in which the collective wisdom of the crowd is said to be more trustworthy than the judgment of an individual expert. “The most tiresome claim of the reigning digital philosophy is that crowds working for free do a better job at some things than antediluvian paid experts,” Lanier writes. Tiresome, indeed.

The connection between the two articles is that there is a backlash setting in against social media. In the first case, real people, such as the cafe owner, are starting to understand how divisive technology can be (and it’s interesting that their customers are beginning to agree with them). In the second case, academics are questioning the metaphysics of social media, not just analyzing it, but peering into its destructive potential. So we have two prongs moving together in a pincer movement: normal people on the ground and the philosophers of the academy. That is now movements form, and generate momentum.