“This coming March marks the date of the most unique, relevant and extraordinary wine assessment and awards event – ever.” Ever! Since the Big Bang! Nothing like it in the frigging history of the universe!!!!!

With this breathless hyperventilation, the producers of the latest get-rich-quick “wine awards” gimmick announce yet another effort to “democratize” wine assessment by taking it away from — gasp! — evil experts like me and handing it over to that ever-popular bastion of populism — the Consumer!

We’re seeing these “consumer-judged wine competitions” multiply like e coli in a petrie dish in this post-recessionary day and age. It’s kind of like the People’s Choice Awards, which lets the great unwashed booboisie (thank you, H.L. Mencken) give the bird to the elitists at the Oscars, Emmies, Tonies, Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild by letting “The People” choose their own favorites, thank you, instead of having it crammed down their throats (interesting metaphor) by “experts.”

Irruptions (as opposed to eruptions) of democratic populism usually arise when democracy is being taken away by the powers who decide how much democracy the American people ought to be allowed. It’s understandable that people should want a say over things; hence the new crop of “democratic” wine competitions. It’s equally understandable that, when there’s a demand for something, entrepreneurs will seek to supply it. In fact, the smartest entrepreneur will convince the public they need something they didn’t even know they lacked. (Which is why hair conditioner was invented.)

Do you think most wine consumers missed being able to vote for wine? I don’t. They didn’t think about it one way or the other. That was before Social Media arose and told everyone far and wide that the age of “the people” had finally arrived. At long last, humankind will shake off the oppression of authority and govern itself through pure, unbridled democracy. Why take the word of a parlauzeroffrob (neologism: ParkerLaubeTanzerHeimoffRobinson) when “the people” can collectively make its own determinations? It’s especially good when a businessman can make a few bucks by organizing the circus.

So I am announcing my new “Voice of the People Worldwide Wine Awards Competition” via this site. It will be the greatest, most comprehensive, trustworthy, fabulous, most objective, fairest, most amazing, glorious, spectacular, praiseworthy, etc. etc. event in History. (Well, with the possible exception of the invention of bacon.) And you, The People, can star! Just send me a check for $10 and on the back of the check write down your favorite wine. I will personally tally the results and announce them here. One check per nomination, please. If you wish to nominate a magnum it’s $20. But a half-bottle will only cost you $5.

Brave new world! Who cares if print is dead? Long live The People! I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank!

Over the weekend, I finished a story on Cabernet Sauvignon that will appear in an upcoming issue of Wine Enthusiast. I found myself typing these words: Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is pretty much as good as it can get — at least, it’s hard to see where it goes from here.

It’s not a thought I’ve entertained consciously before, at least, not in those precise terms. As so often happens with writers, when you’re on roll, pecking away at the keyboard (or even using a rustic old pen and paper), the thoughts just seem to come from outer space, and you sometimes find yourself writing the damndest things. Of course, every reporter has (or should have) a built-in alarm system warning him if he’s written something unsupportable or just plain stupid. So when I wrote this, I sat back, re-read it, re-re-read it again, and wondered:

1. What prompted me to write that in the first place?
2. Should I allow it to live and see the published light of day?

Because, let’s face it, it’s a controversial statement.

Napa Valley is royalty. It’s America’s Bordeaux and Burgundy, rolled into one. And a commoner doesn’t criticize royalty, not unless he’s prepared to be taken to the Tower of London and have his head chopped off. So what do I mean by saying that Napa Cabernet is as good as it can get?

Background: When I first started interviewing winemakers whose wines I had given very high scores to, one of my favorite questions was, “How much better can your [fill in the blank wine] get?” I mean, if a Cabernet earns a 95 or higher, it is, more or less by definition, a perfect wine, and there’s nothing more perfect than perfection, is there?

And yet the entire premise of Napa Valley Cabernet is, and always has been, better and better.

Well, these certainly are wines that have become spectacular in recent years. You really do have to wonder where their evolution will take them. I know some people who don’t like the Napa cult style, which is based on super-mature grapes (with consequent low acidity) and generous dollops of new oak. They’re entitled to their opinion; I happen to like it.

But when you’re on top, you never dare stay still, for fear of being shoved aside by a competitor. Mercedes-Benz doesn’t rest on its laurels but builds better cars all the time. The New York Yankees don’t rest on their laurels. The United States of America doesn’t rest on its laurels, but endeavors to become “a more perfect union” with each passing day. So if you’re Harlan, Shafer, Joseph Phelps, Spotteswoode, you have to be thinking ahead.

These extraordinary wines don’t seem to have a way to get better, only worse (say, from a bad vintage or some hideous mistake in the winery). I guess some people might say the way to make them better is to achieve ripeness at lower brix levels, which is a magic bullet that could be resolved with new strains of yeast and, I suppose, better clone-rootstock matching. Still, the theoretical destination of “ripeness with moderate alcohol” is a bit of an illusion. California isn’t Bordeaux and never will be. These are always going to be big, rich, juicy wines.

So to my second question: Should I allow this statement to live? Well, I just did, didn’t I, by publishing it here. If anybody in Napa gets all sniffy poo about this, I hope they’ll enlighten me, because I really am not seeing where these wines go from here. Is Bordeaux better than it was in 1961 or 1928 or 1874? It’s probably less tannic but an argument can be made that, no, it’s not “better,” just different. Somehow the Bordealais have managed to keep their image vital and coveted even though their product hasn’t really changed much over the years. That’s Napa’s challenge: As things stay the same there, but improve in other regions, they’re going to have to constantly re-persuade the public that they’re special and different and still worth the premium they request. No easy task, especially in this economy.

Act 1

Scene: A wine magazine or newsletter (not Wine Enthusiast).

Disclosure page: “All wines are tasted blind, unless otherwise indicated”

Taster: Hello. Welcome to the Wine _________. Today we’re tasting 12 wines. As you can see, they’re in paper bags. This is what’s called a “blind tasting.” We know very little about the wines, except that they’re all reds from Bordeaux, and the vintage is 2005. (If we knew nothing at all about the wines, it would be called a “double blind tasting.”) By tasting the wines blind, we ensure that no psychological factors, such as bias for or against the producer, can affect the score.

[The taster proceeds to taste through the wines. He sniffs, swirls and tastes each in turn, spitting the wine out afterward in order to remain sober.]

We spit, because it’s not a good idea for a professional wine critic to become drunk while reviewing wines, although it has been known to happen!

As you can see, after tasting every wine, I make notes on this piece of paper, which I call my “tasting notes.” At this stage, these notes are roughly drafted, and even illegible to anyone but me, but the substance of my impressions is here. Later on, I will craft them into final form, but the essence and truth of my impressions will remain constant. As you can also see [holds piece of paper up], I also write down my score at this time. For instance, you can see that for wine #1, my score is 84 points. That is not a particularly good score, but then, it was not a particularly good wine.

[Fade to black.]

Act 2

Scene: A TV studio. The taster is being interviewed by a well-known celebrity video journalist.

Celebrity Journalist: So you say you taste everything blind?

Taster: Oh, yes. That is our bond, our guarantee to our readers.

CJ: It is nice to have a bond, a guarantee with your fans. I have one with mine, you know. They love me!

T: Without that bond, that guarantee, you are nothing. Just a piece of flotsam and jetsam on the erratic tide of life.

CJ: How true. Without a bond, a guarantee, you cannot be a brand. You cannot sell yourself without that credibility.

T: Indeed. It is vital for one’s credibility to retain that bond, that guarantee.

CJ: Amen, brother! [both smile, bump fists.]

Act 3

Scene: Later that night, in the Taster’s private home office.

[The room is entirely dark except for the bluish glow of the computer monitor, which casts an eerie, demonic glow on the Taster’s face. From over his shoulder you can see the screen, and hear the rapid pecking of his fingers on the keyboard. We see the Taster access Wine #1 -- the one he gave 84 points. We now see it is Chateau Lafite-Rothschild. The Taster drags the cursor to the score area, deletes the 84 rating, and substitutes it with a 96 rating. New camera angle: Closeup on the Taster’s face. He looks directly into the camera. His eyes glitter in the blue light. It is impossible to know just what they are saying.]

Voiceover: Ladies  and Gentlemen, you have just witnessed another episode of [drumroll, dramatic synthesizer music]… The Adjustment.

Note: Any similarity between this Internet play and any real magazine or newsletter is strictly coincidental.

Was at the Napa Valley ranch of a friend’s parents, for their annual celebration of all things Portuguese (the sopa was sooo good), and ran into K-J’s (Jackson Family’s) top PR and marketing people. Despite my friend’s injunction that this was not a day to talk shop, that’s exactly what we did, and of course shop topic #1 with them was Murphy-Goode. I wondered “Where do you go from here” or, put another way, is there another rabbit to pull out of that hat?

From what I can tell, “A Really Goode Job” was a case of lightning striking (millions in free publicity), and as we’ve been told, lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. Now, that’s not true. But it does seem to me less likely to strike in the same place than to strike someplace else. What Jess Jackson and his team are calculating is that, now that M-G has at least got on the map, they can keep the conversation going by having entertaining, stimulating, smart dialogue with untold numbers of people through social media, thereby making all those Twitter followers and Facebook friends “brand ambassadors.” It’s not that they think people like me — print critics — or paper-based magazines like Wine Enthusiast are going away anytime soon, or losing our clout in any significant way. No. Instead, they feel that the circle of influential voices has widened, and that word-of-mouth, spread digitally and virally through the Internet, will continue to grow both in volume and in impact, so that Liar’s Dice Zinfandel, for example, will see a boost in popularity, carried forward on a wave of social media-generated buzz.

This is, of course, the Holy Grail of the theory of social media as marketing, PR and sales tool. It’s the democratized “let a thousand flowers bloom” equivalent of Chairman Mao’s 1957 invitation to China’s chattering classes to weigh in on the artistic, scientific and cultural issues then dominant in China (although, of course, just ten years later, Mao, realizing that the “liberal bourgeois elements” he himself had unleashed now had to be controlled, rounded them up and crushed them). There is perhaps a lesson to be learned: be careful what you wish for, lest ye get it.

Anyway, the crux of the social-media-as-marketing-tool theory eludes me. Yes, I completely understand its mechanics — the way it’s supposed to work. I “get” the fact that Millennials would rather text message or tweet than watch TV or read a magazine. I understand the power of Twitter, and also the sense of empowerment that young people (and some not so young; Gov. Schwarzenegger supposedly lives on Twitter) feel when they see and hear everywhere that they are driving the future forward through their preferences and behavior. That is heady stuff. Baby Boomers experienced roughly the same sense of specialness in the 1960s, when we felt that the entire burden and joy of the future was being borne upon our eager shoulders.

What I don’t get is the belief that all the Twitterers and Facebookers are going to be “brand ambassadors” for some winery smart enough to organize them. For one thing, it flies in the face of their vaunted independence and dislike of being manipulated — values we saw riotously illustrated just a year ago during the Rodney Strong “Rockaway” brouhaha. I think that social media can drive the popularity of a rock band, or a political candidate (Gavin Newsom comes to mind, although he’s not doing too well in the polls), or a social-revolutionary movement (the disputed Iranian election and Neda’s martyrdom). CNN can invite viewers to weigh in via Twitter and they will, while A YouTube like “Dancing Wedding” can spread across the planet, and a fun conversation like #whostillwears can be the #1 trending topic on Twitter, covering everything from oversized thug clothing to the unpopularity of New Balance. But is there any evidence, anywhere, that social media ever have driven the sales of a wine, beyond perhaps a temporary spike, the way, say, a Parker 100 does (or for that matter a #1 on a Wine Enthusiast annual list)?

Call me a revanchist if you want. It’s a common charge against someone who dares to question whether social media is all its most ardent supporters claim it to be. The question is not, I think, What is the ROI for a social media sales campaign so much as this: Can social media sell anything but itself?

From time to time I’m reminded that sometimes we don’t always see things as they might appear from someone else’s point of view. In my line of work, wine writing, this can cause misunderstandings, because writing is all about communication, and if communication is muddled, it doesn’t help clarify the message.

Well, this long-winded intro is a way for me to let P.R. people, winery execs and others whose job it is to promote their winery know how best to work with me, to help me do my job so I can help you do yours. In an ideal world — and why should ours not be ideal? — P.R. and wine writing both would benefit.

1. You can call me. I’m amazed at how many people think they can’t. They think they’re pissing me off or something. You can! I answer my own phone. (My secretary, Rose Mary Woods, retired many years ago…badda bing!) I ask only that you keep your pitch brief, know what you want to say and say it. What gets me impatient is when someone calls, and 10 minutes later they’ve just gotten to the year 1987 and I’m like ZZzzzzzzzzz…. If I say at some point, “Thanks, but it’s not really working for me,” please don’t argue with me or ask whoever else they can talk to at the magazine. And please don’t feel like I’ve been rude. I’m a polite, courteous, sensitive guy, but I do have a job.

2. If I visit you at the winery, let’s both relax and enjoy it. You have a message to deliver, of course, and I’m there to hear it. But you don’t have to be on message all the time, just as I don’t have to be “Steve the wine critic” all the time. Before I was “Steve the wine critic” I was “just Steve,” and I still like being “just Steve” even as I assume you like to be “just whoever you are.”

I realize we can’t take the “friendship thing” too far, in most cases. In the end, this is business. But there’s business that feels sticky and awkward, and business that feels warm and fun — even when we’re not drinking!

3. Ask me questions about my tasting process. It shouldn’t be a mystery. I’m very transparent. I have well-formed opinions on tasting and scoring, and am glad to share them with others. Above all, if I’m tasting with you, let me know what your desires are concerning my thoughts. If you want me to be blunt, tell me. If you don’t say, “Steve, be honest, warts and all,” then I’ll assume you don’t want real feedback, and I’ll just make nebulous remarks. You’re the host — we’re playing by your rules — so make them clear. I’m not a mind reader.

4. There are certain things that make me feel weird. They won’t affect my reviews — I mean, we’re talking about my integrity — but it does make me wonder. For example, if we’re in your office and I see Spectator magazines and plaques all around, but not Enthusiasts, it’s like, WTF? Elementary courtesy and common sense. Nothing like ‘em.

5. Know that I don’t typically review at the winery. There are exceptions, but in general I subscribe to what Wine Enthusiast’s tasting director, Joe Czerwinski, calls “tasting room bias.” That’s where the wine tastes better at the winery than in your office or home. But even though I won’t be formally reviewing the wine with you, I’m happy to talk — and talk — and talk about it with you. That’s what we both love, right? Drinking wine and talking about it. But know this, too: the published score has a fair probability of being lower than you might have thought based on my remarks at the winery. Why? Tasting room bias.

I’d be interested in hearing from other people, especially reviewers, if you’ve experienced tasting room bias. Do you believe in it, and if so, how do you counter it?