I seldom name names on this blog; my readers know that. There’s very little point in antagonizing people who already have their knickers in a twist. So I won’t identify the name of the winery whose P.R. people complained about something I wrote that they claimed was incorrect. Fact is, I was right, they were wrong, end of story.

The particular issue was concerning what were the winery’s first releases, when they opened many decades ago. I had said one thing, basing my information on extensive published reporting as well as content on the winery’s own website. The P.R. people made a counter claim. Now, in the long scheme of things, it’s not the most vital thing in the world, but the P.R. people were pretty upset. They complained to my editor, who forwarded me their email for reply. So I hit the books, did my research and proved conclusively that what I had initially written was correct.

It’s not that I don’t get things wrong. Every reporter does. That’s why they invented the “corrections” section of major magazines and newspapers. There’s usually no shame in getting something wrong, although there obviously is a spectrum of mistakes. Misspelling somebody’s name is very minor. Getting somebody’s birth date wrong is minor. Misstating the name of a company that purchased the winery is a fairly major boo-boo [that’s not what I did, I’m just using it as an example]. Still, no reporter likes to get anything wrong, no matter how minor, which is why we research our facts until we’re pretty darned sure we’ve got them right. Then, and only then, do we hit the “send” button.

But the question in this case is, how could the P.R. people not have gotten it right? After all, they work at the winery. They should know what the facts are. Here’s my theory–and this most recent instance isn’t the only time this has happened. It is not infrequent.

It usually starts with a major figure in the winery [owner, GM, head of communications] who reads something he or she doesn’t like. That person then instructs the P.R. person to complain. The P.R. person, who more likely than not is young and inexperienced, dashes off a “correction” to the writer or the writer’s editor. The P.R. person doesn’t research the issue herself, or ask the owner if he or she is absolutely, positively true that the offending statement is untrue. Instead, the P.R. person does what most people do who want to protect their job and CYA: they complain to the writer or editor.

I once had a P.R. person complain to my editor that, in describing the wines of a particular region as “relatively expensive,” I had done that region a disservice–had, in fact, distorted the truth and insulted it. The letter was very angry. My editor demanded a reply. It took me hours of researching my database to determine that, on average, the region in question was expensive, just as I’d thought–not as dear as Napa Valley, but more on average than any other region in California. (The quality of the wines on average was also better.) So a whole lot of angst was raised, and time wasted, over something that never should have been an issue in the first place. (By the way, when that P.R. person eventually left his/her job, he/she confessed to me how guilty they felt [I know “they” is wrong in this case, but I’m getting tired of the “he/she” thing].)

The point is that sometimes P.R. people write and say dumb things. If it’s because they don’t know any better, then they’re in over their heads. If they do know better, but are afraid to stand up to their boss, then they’re bad hires. Part of P.R. is to speak truth to power, even when that power signs your paycheck.

Wineries, your P.R. people are your public face. It’s vital that you give them independence of thought and action. Your veracity is only as good as their public statements. And in this day and age, veracity–transparency–believability–call it what you will–counts more than ever.

While I was in New York, I had chats with several people who are going for their Master Sommelier and/or Master of Wine certifications. Being curious about what is entailed in these endeavors (neither of which I would ever attempt, nor do I desire to do so), I asked them about how they go about it. One of them said he’s drilled heavily by the M.S. examiners on the legal or technical aspects of wine, such as what percentage of [whatever] varieties are required to label a wine, in every wine country on earth, by an appellation of origin. I’m pretty good at that here in the U.S., but Greece? South Africa? Switzerland? Croatia? Wow. “What is the main variety of Amyndaio and what percent of it is required for the appellation?” (Answers: Xynómavro, 100%). The guy told he he studies off flash cards every chance he gets (even when he’s driving. Memo to self: Stay off the roads when this cat is out there!). I am incredibly impressed by, and respectful of, such prodigious feats of memory as are required to earn these high honors. I couldn’t do it. I have the memory of a doorknob. Going through security yesterday morning at JFK, I left my carry-on bag at the X-ray machine. Just put on my shoes and started walking away, when my companion reminded me, telling me I would have ended up with TSA shutting down the terminal if I didn’t retrieve it. In my defense, my companion was a beautiful woman and I was temporarily mesmerized…but I digress. The point is that my memory isn’t what it used to be, and if an M.S. can memorize megabits of information, I take my hat off to him or her. But I found my mind wandering back to my favorite wine writers, the likes of H. Warner Allen, Professor Saintsbury, even more modern types like Michael Broadbent and Gerald Asher, and I thought, “I don’t know if any of them could have told you the technical details of Hermitage, how many liters per hectare or whatever the metric equivalents are, how long Chianti Classico has to be aged, or even, in the case of a late 19th century or early 20th century writer, what the grape varieties were in Cheval Blanc, but what they wrote was classic and beautiful and wonderful.” Their words live forever, not in some flash book that’s here today and gone tomorrow, and their descriptions get the essence of the wines across more eloquently than anything I would imagine an M.S. or M.W. could ever write. There are exceptions, of course, but an M.S. or M.W., however impressive an achievement it is, is essentially a career move, like an M.B.A., rather than an amateur pursuit of knowledge. Amateur: from Latin via Old French: a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training.

I told the guy [a kid, really, just 24] I’d like to send him my copy of Notes on a Cellar-book, a third edition and one of the pride and joys of my wine library. (I made him promise not to spill coffee or wine on it!] I honestly don’t know if he’ll read it or, if he does, like it. It is not scintillating reading, if you’re into John Grisham. It was for me: when I first read in, in the 1980s, it was breathlessly. I knew who Professor Saintsbury was, but I also was familiar with his milieu [Oxford 1865, university don, highly educated, not aristocratic but of the intellectual English aristocracy], a time I could have related to.  He was a hedonist and a gourmand, and aside and apart from his expertise in French and English literature [with particular expertise in Dryden and Balzac], he turned to wine every chance he got. When I say “turned to” I mean it was with a passion and adoration most of us can only wonder at. Professor Saintsbury was not wealthy, but was lucky enough to live at time when claret, Port, Champagne, Hermitage and Burgundy didn’t cost an arm and a leg; and besides, he was an amusing conversationalist who frequently was invited to dine with wealthier men than he, who gladly pulled out 40 year old Lafite, 60 year old Yquem and 70 year old Vougeot. We should all be so lucky! (Memo to young bloggers: learn the gentle art of conversation, please. Ask others about themselves, instead of telling them about you.)

At any rate, my young M.S.-studying friend said to please send him the book, so I will, and I hope he enjoys it. More than that, I hope he reads it and goes “Wow.” Books and the well sculpted word can have a mystical impact on readers and can change attitudes forever. I hope my friend gets his M.S. and that his career path takes him where he wants to go and, maybe if he’s really lucky, to places he didn’t even know existed. But more than that, I hope he finds instilled in himself an aspiration for writing something far beyond “The Onomasía Proléfseos Anotéras Piótitos appellation is in Ioánnina Prefecture, its main wine is Zítsa, and 100% Debîna is required, with a maximum yield of 1,000 kilograms per stremma.”

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.

I like brie, that famously runny, aromatic cheese that comes from the Brie department of central France. Brie and Chablis wine, which hails from the Yonne department just to Brie’s south, have been a historic pairing for centuries (although Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher wrote, in the Wall Street Journal, “we wouldn’t say we’re crazy about the combination of Brie and Chablis”).

Yet “brie and Chablis” (or “wine and cheese”) has long been a derisory term for liberals, and no liberals in America arouse the wrath of the right more than San Franciscans. When did wine and cheese become the odious signifiers of those unpatriotic, deviant, nattering nabobs of negativity, the liberals?

I trace it back to the split between wine and beer cultures that Europe saw in the Middle Ages. Where winegrapes could be cultivated in the warmer Mediterranean south, people were Latinized: less warlike, fond of siestas, food, dancing, conversation, good living and lovemaking. In the north, where it was too cold for vitis vinifera to grow, people turned to beer; they were Continental tribes, descendants of Huns, Vikings and Slavs, a warrior society not keen on art or philosophy. They preferred drinking beer from the skulls of their enemies.

We see this split echoed today in America, where Dr. Vino last week wondered “…how did light beer come to be the choice of NFL viewers?” Simple. The NFL reflects the Prussianized, warlike, hyper-masculinized psyche many American males believe themselves to embody (or wish they did). Wine is more the beverage of effete people who go to the Opera.

Wine and cheese receptions have been a mainstay of politics on both sides for a century. When the Harvard Crimson wrote about a Stuart Udall fundraiser in 1976 (Udall, a Democratic Arizona Congressman, was running in the primaries against Jimmy Carter), the writer described an event he went to as “a typical wine-and-cheese gathering.” Nothing Republican or Democratic about it, just bipartisanly political. But by 1980, the phrase somehow had become anti-Democrat, although when “cheese” was replaced by “brie” and “wine” by “chablis,” I will leave to future historians to figure out. When John Anderson, a Republican congressman from Illinois who was a sort of Ross Perot-style maverick, was running for President, he was portrayed by the right as not conservative enough. A columnist for the Washington Post, Mark Shields [himself a moderate Democrat], wrote: “For John Anderson to be a true challenger for the presidency, he cannot be either a ‘spoiler’ or simply the favorite of the brie-and-chablis set.” Did Shields pluck that phrase out from the ether? Undoubtedly it had antecedents. Some think that Leonard Bernstein’s famous party for the Black Panthers, in 1966, was the prototype; that fête was endlessly parodied by Republicans as bleeding heart “limousine liberal” pretension, and, after all, Lenny (the ultimate liberal Democrat), was a Jew, plus he was bisexual, and his beautiful foreign-born wife, Felicia, the quintessential Upper West Side hostess, served wine and “Little Roquefort cheese morsels rolled in crushed nuts,” according to Tom Wolfe, who wrote about it.

Little Roquefort cheese morsels! It was perhaps understandable that the right confused roquefort for brie, which may have been easier for them to spell. How easy for pretzel and beer loving Republicans to satirize that citified appetizer (and with crushed nuts, to boot). By 1982, “the wine and cheese crowd” had entered the political lexicon as a metaphor for Democrats: here’s The Texas Monthly describing “the hatred that the Okies from Muskogee feel for the wine-and-cheese” crowd” to explain Texas’s transition from FDR stronghold to Reagan country.

They’re still doing it. Yesterday, as the world famously knows, the San Francisco Forty Niners played the New York Giants for the NFC championship. Just before the game, a New York Daily News columnist, Filip Bondy, wrote that Niner fans are “overrated,” likening them to “Strange, exotic plants”, “not fat enough” and “softer” than Giants fans–in other words, San Franciscans are insufficiently brutal. Bondy was making a funny, of course, but the tweak was enough to prompt the San Francisco Chroncle’s sportswriter, Scott Ostler, to pen in response, “49ers fans’ courage not measured by Brie and wine,” he headlined, although Bondy used neither of those terms. But then, you can’t blame San Franciscans for being a little defensive after decades of getting their butts kicked by the right. As recently as 2008, Pat Buchanan (who knows something about demonizing his political opponents) still was ranting about “the chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco,” even though by then, the characterization was shopworn. Incidentally, being “brie-and-chablis San Franciscans” didn’t seem to hurt the 2010 Giants or, for that matter, five Super Bowl-winning San Francisco 49er teams (1981, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1994).

Yes, San Francisco lost last night. They played like mensches, and I hope after the game they went wherever they went and enjoyed some well-deserved wine and cheese.

“Web 1.0 was the first stage of the World Wide Web linking webpages with hyperlinks,” says Wikipedia. That’s when everyone was wondering what the web’s “killer app” would be.

“Web 2.0 was the Age of Interactivity…where people who may not have had a voice before could publish whatever they want…Add the ability to comment on stories and then share them through social media” and that was Web 2.0. This is from Read Write Web, a tech blog that offers interesting daily analysis of the industry.

And now, here’s Web 3.0. It’s “the age of Expertise,” in which people who don’t know what they’re talking about will be winnowed out of the hyper-democratized blogosphere, which will be reshaped as “an interactive discussion engine of experts.” That’s from Jason Calacanis, an L.A. blogger, web startup guy, and entrepreneur, whose Facebook page lists Gary Vaynerchuk–a kindred soul–as one of his friends. More to the point is Jason’s take on how “Blogging is largely dead…There are a lot of stupid people out there .. and stupid people shouldn’t write.”

Far be it from me to resurrect the blog wars of 2008-2009, so I’ll leave it to Jason to fight that fight for me. “There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people,” he told writer Dan Rowinski in the Read Write Web Q&A. “You have to have a deep understanding to be a blogger…It is not enough to be a writer. You need to be a writer and an expert.”

I said the same thing 3-1/2 years ago and everyone jumped on me for being an elitist who was trying to prevent a new generation from horning in on the monopoly I, and other aging Baby Boomers, had imposed on the genteel field of wine writing. When I suggested that the ability to say anything you wanted, no matter how vapid, and then self-publish on the Internet was not a great step forward for the concept of expertise, I was lacerated for being a paranoid dinosaur, protecting his turf like a mother weasel snarling in her lair. (Apologies for the mixed speciological metaphors.) “People and their blogs will continue,” Calacanis predicts. “Yet, that doesn’t mean that anybody will be paying attention.”

Indeed, when I mull over the current state of the wine blogosphere, it seems to be just on the line between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. There are still 1,000 wine blogs, and while there’s nothing prohibiting people from blogging for as long as they like, we are seeing an illustration of the old saying, Many are called but few are chosen. More and more blogs are going defunct, or publish only intermittently, because they fail to attract readership, which makes their authors dejected. The top wine blogs have peaked in readership [mine included], to judge by various metrics. I don’t know how Web 3.0 will affect wine blog traffic–if it will stimulate it in one direction or another. But I do welcome it, if for no other reason than that it will sharpen the research and writing abilities of the bloggers who remain, making the wine blogosphere a more professional platform. If wine blogs are to have a future in Web 3.0, it will be because the best ones take it to the next level: accurate reporting and intelligent analysis, and above all good writing, with more color and personality than traditional journalism has allowed.

I somehow found myself once again in the crosshairs over at Dr. Vino’s blog the other day (and what a great job Tyler Colman is doing there). Tyler was writing about “wine score inflation” (his term, not mine, and I’m not sure those words even refer to anything in the real world). Citing the writings of others, Tyler suggested that scores from the best known critics have been on the upswing, a fact (if true) he finds worthy of investigation. He didn’t exactly accuse the critics of anything nefarious, but the smell of “something’s rotten in Denmark” wafted over his post, as if from a nearby swamp.

I wrote in: “…if scores are rising for certain categories of wine, it’s because quality is improving. Critics are simply perceiving that increased quality, and rewarding it with higher scores.”

That seemed pretty innocuous to me, a statement so logical on its face, no one would even bother to dispute it.

But, wham! It hit the fan. The insults, I’m used to, especially from the usual tedious suspects. What did interest me, though, were some more thoughtful remarks that raised interesting questions. For example, Keith Levenberg (I don’t know who he is) wrote: “Steve Heimoff’s claim that ‘if scores are rising for certain categories of wine, it’s because quality is improving’ and ‘[c]ritics are simply perceiving that increased quality’ has also been Parker’s refrain for years, and it’s a complete fallacy.” Keith bases this statement on an assumption that seems highly questionable: that “critics are the worst-situated of any of us to make the determination whether quality is in fact improving, because the wines they are tasting are deliberately made to elicit their approval.”

I replied: “Are a thousand wineries in California deliberately ‘tinkering’ with their wines to match my ‘personal preferences’? I think not. That’s real conspiracy theory stuff. Instead, wineries are crafting their wines to what they perceive is a genuine shift in the consumers’ palate, of which I’m just one little part.”

The claim that winemakers are deliberately appealing to certain critics’ palates has been around for a long time. I suppose it’s true, in a way, but what’s so strange about that? A winery is a business, just like the movies or automobiles. Spielberg makes the kinds of films he believes Americans want to see. Detroit makes the kinds of cars they think Americans want to drive. If a winemaker decides to go counter to prevailing consumer preferences, chances are he’ll go bankrupt. The reason I have an impact in the sale of wine is because I reflect the general consumer preference in America. I don’t manufacture it and I don’t lead it. I like these wines because they’re good, made in a style to appeal to the wine-loving American, which includes me. When they succeed, they deserve the high scores I give them.

Then Daniel wrote (I don’t know him either): “Steve, Is every wine that you have reviewed 95 points better than every wine that you have reviewed 94 points?” I answered: “Yes.” Short and simple. Daniel replied: “So, a 97 point, $50 Calif PN, is a better wine than a $300 95 point Napa Cab?” Again, I replied: “Yes.” But,  slightly troubled by something, I added, “’better’ is a complicated concept. I may blog on this soon, to better understand it myself.”

Is a 97 point $50 California Pinot Noir “better” than a $300 95 point Napa Cab? To begin with, let’s forget about the prices. They’re irrelevant. In what respect is a 97 point wine (at any price) “better” than a 95 point wine  (at any price)? After all, it earned two points higher; it had to do something for those extra points, no?

This is a great question, raising profound issues that, frankly, haven’t been thoroughly explored by any critic I know of, including me (which is why I said to “better understand it myself”). For some reason, a lot more people these days care about these things than used to be the case–which may be due to an Internet generation coming of age that demands the utmost transparency and explanation. So I thank Daniel for asking this question. In tomorrow’s post, I’ll attempt to answer it, and if readers seem interested enough, perhaps the conversation will last through the week.