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.”

“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.

It was on this day, Dec. 26, exactly 31 years ago that I fell in love with wine.

It happened in the Safeway store in the little town of Benicia, some 30 miles northeast of San Francisco. I’d just made one of the biggest, riskiest moves in my life–coming to California from the East Coast, to go to graduate school. (That’s a whole different story I might tell one of these days.) My cousin, Maxine, and her husband, Keith, had invited me to live with them until I got settled. I’d flown west out of Logan Airport in a blizzard, only to arrive in sunny San Francisco where the mild temperature, leafy trees and flower-choked gardens blew my mind. I mean, roses and magnolias in late December? I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto!

We drove to Benicia. I was shown my new room. Then someone suggested barbecue for dinner. Maxine went out into the garden to pick lettuce (another mindblow) for a salad, and then we drove up Main Street, past the little park with the gazebo, to the Safeway. Threw a couple steaks and potatoes into the shopping cart. Then we headed over to the wine aisle. This is where “the incident” occurred.

Maxine’s steering the cart slowly down the aisle. I’m trailing after her. I don’t remember Keith in the picture; maybe he’d stayed at home, starting the fire. Maxine picks up a bottle of wine, examines the front label, turns it around, examines the back label. Puts it back on the shelf. Picks up a second bottle and goes through the same ritual. Then a third bottle. And a fourth.

Me: “What are you doing? Just grab a bottle and let’s go.” [I was sooo New York in those days.]

Her: [arching an eyebrow of disapproval] “You don’t just grab a bottle of wine. You think about it.”

What? I can remember my reaction as if it were yesterday. What is she talking about? I know my cousin has her “ways,” but she is, for the most part, a sensible, rational human being, not subject to whims or emotional fancy. I simply could not understand why buying a bottle of wine was any different from buying a can of peas. They were all the same, weren’t they?

Things happened very quickly after that. I needed to understand. Not wanted; needed, as if understanding were as important as breathing. I bought a couple wine guides: Bob Thompson’s “Pocket Encyclopedia of California Wines” and Olken, Singer & Roby’s “Connoisseurs’ Handbook of California Wines.” I started haunting wine shops.  For sure, I didn’t have much money to spend, but I remember the pride I felt when I bought my first varietal wine: Wente’s Grey Riesling (or was it spelled Gray?). Shortly afterward, I moved out on my own, to Concord, where I shared a house with a young Diablo Valley College kid, Tim. I shared with him my passion for wine, which he quickly adopted. Together we would go to wine shops, looking for suitable bargains to drink with the dinners we cooked. That’s when I began my career as a wine educator, teaching Timmy: as long as I knew a little more than he did, I was mentor, he mentee.

I’ve thought often of Maxine examining those wine bottles. I observe the same behavior today, when I loiter in the wine departments at Cost Plus or BevMo, watching people. They’re so confused, most of the time, so apprehensive, so clueless. I don’t say that judgmentally, just objectively. Lord only knows what’s going on in their heads. I am reading now the 1950 article, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” by the great computer pioneer, Alan Turing, who came up with the concept of the “Turing test,” in which a human observor (you or me) has a “conversation” with an unseen interlocutor [in, say, another room], through a teletype screen or similar digital device. The idea is for the observor to determine whether the unseen interlocutor is another human, or a machine [computer]. The theory is that, if the computer were programmed sufficiently well, this determination would be impossible. It was Turing’s conjecture that someday computers could be programmed so that there would be no way of telling the difference. All theories of artificial intelligence begin, and end, with Alan Turing.

Watching those wine shoppers, I try to imagine what’s happening in their brains. I can’t, in that particular situation, because I know too much about wine to be confused in a wine aisle. But I get confused in many other situations: for example, anything that involves mechanics defeats me. So I can recall my confusion when dealing with automobiles and imagine it inside the head of the Cost Plus wine shopper, and I feel empathy. Could a machine ever feel empathy? Is that what makes humans different from machines? I don’t think that’s the case, because I can imagine a computer behaving in such a way as to simulate empathy; and since I can’t crawl into the computer’s brain, any more than I can crawl into yours, I would just have to assume, based on its behavior, that the computer actually was empathic.

I would have loved to ask Turing, who died in 1954, if a Turing test could ever determine if a computer liked wine. Actually, he anticipated such a question in his article. Can a computer “enjoy strawberries and cream?…Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic.” That’s how Turing dismissed the idea of programming a computer to have esthetic or hedonistic preferences: that it would be “idiotic” to do so, presumably because the effort involved would be vast, whereas the payoff would be meaningless. Why not use the same effort to program a computer to find a cure for cancer?

Maybe it’s idiotic for us humans to fall in love with anything–strawberries and cream, wine, each other. Yet Mother Nature gave us that capacity. It happened to me on that long ago winter day, and you know what? I’m still in love with wine.

Following the news last week that Robert Lawrence Balzer had died, there’s been a flurry of obits in the media. I never knew Balzer, although I’d certainly heard of him. His heyday was before my time, and in my considerable library of wine books I have none by him, for some reason; I certainly never avoided buying them.

Then yesterday I was reading the New York Times and came across Frank Prial’s obituary of Balzer, in which Frank wrote, concerning Balzer’s stint as the Los Angeles Times’ wine columnist [a post Frank held at the Grey Lady before Eric Asimov took over], “His own newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, mildly criticized him at one point for being too close to the people whose wines he judged.”

Suddenly the memories came back. I vaguely recalled the L.A. Times firing a wine columnist for being too cozy with winemakers, demanding expensive wines from them at expensive restaurants…but, no, that wasn’t Balzer, it was Nate Chroman, whom the late reporter David Shaw wrote about in the L.A. Times more than 24 years ago, in his six-part series, “Wine Critics: Influence of Writers Can Be Heady.” It brought back pleasant memories of David, whom I knew briefly in L.A., when he’d invited me to his home in (I think) Silver Lake, where he had just installed a wonderful wine cellar.

I read all six parts of the series, which covered Robert Parker, Robert Finigan (whom I also hanged with back in the day; we were part of the little group that helped Gavin Newsom put together the wines to sell at his first PlumpJack store), The Wine Spectator, Connoisseur’s Guide to California Wine (hello, Charlie Olken!), and Gerald Asher, then still at Gourmet. (I fancied that, had David written his article a few years later, I might have crashed the party.)

All the young bloggers should read this series. It’s the best analysis of the impact of wine writing that’s ever been done by a journalist, and the fact that David wrote it 24 years ago makes it even more remarkable. The same things we obsess with today–ethics, pay to play, accepting freebies, the abuse of power, conflicts of interest, the relationship between writers, editors and publishers–make appearances in David’s series; like the Ghosts of Christmases Past, the flit across the stage, each more disfigured than the last. One cannot read this thing without coming to the realization that some things never change, because the world remains essentially the same place it’s always been.

David, who died at the age of 62 in 2005, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his coverage of a sexual abuse scandal at a California preschool that turned out to be a witch hunt. David was a helluva writer: careful, observant, intrepid, passionate. Unlike some today, he got his facts straight (helped, no doubt, by the L.A. Times’ fact checkers), but even if it hadn’t been for fact checkers, I’m sure his many articles would have been correct anyway, because David placed that demand on himself. He was proud of his Pulitzer, but he also was proud of his series on wine writers. He was a wine guy, bigtime–food, too–and re-reading the series, after all these years, leaves me breathless that David had the instincts to write it. Twenty four years ago, nobody spoke of such things as the ethics of wine writers. It wasn’t considered important. David realized there was something going on; he spent a long time researching his series, talking to everyone from Randall Grahm to Harvey Posert, then Mondavi’s mouthpiece, now with Fred Franzia, at Bronco. He put together a splendid tale that raised more issues than it answered, issues that we’re still talking about today, and that still have not been answered. Was it legit for Chroman and his wife to accept a junket to France, Italy, Germany and Spain? Unclear; Chroman was a freelancer, not an employee of the L.A. Times, which in any case had no policy about freebies at that time. Was it inappropriate for Chroman, who’d been asked to lunch by a wine importer, to demand the importer bring him to Scandia (the most expensive L.A. restaurant back then) and also bring along $1,000 worth of Burgundy? That seems like a stretch to me, but letting somebody who wants to get to know you pay for your lunch, I have no problem with that. I do it, not because I need another fancy lunch (I’m trying to lose weight, not gain it), but because it’s important for me, as a Wine Enthusiast editor, to form good relationships throughout the industry.

So you see, we’re still struggling with the same issues David highlighted in 1987.

After last week’s brouhaha over Jay Miller I decided to double check what Robert Parker says about blind tasting. From “The Wine Advocate Rating System” page on his site:

“When possible all of my tastings are done in peer-group, single-blind conditions.”

You can see that the loophole here is “when possible,” but how big a loophole is it? So small you can barely squeeze a pinky? Or big enough to drive an 18-wheeler through? Well, here’s Parker on his own “exceptions to this policy”, followed by my comments:

(1) all barrel tastings

That’s cool. I’m down with that.

(2) all specific appellation tastings where at least 25 of the best estates will not submit samples for group tastings

I had to read this a couple times to understand it. I would guess this means, for example, Napa Valley Cabernet. I, personally, am never sent the wines of more than 25 Napa Cabs (Colgin, Araujo, Staglin, Screaming Eagle, etc.), and I would guess Parker isn’t, either. Perhaps he buys them, but my educated guess is that Parker actually travels to the wineries, or to local third party venues, to taste (of course, from now on it will be Galloni), and that these tastings are open. If you roll in other “specific appellations” (Bordeaux, the Northern Rhône, Burgundy), and if you assume that lots of the wineries there “will not submit samples” (do the First Growths or DRC?), then you have to also assume that Parker’s Rule #2 gives him ample leeway to taste openly, pretty much whenever he wants to.

Sodden thought: Who determines what are “the best estates”? And if you know you’re tasting one of “the best estates” wouldn’t that bias your perception of that wine?

(3) for all wines under $25

This is a pretty weird “exception to this policy.” Why should wines under $25 be held to a different standard than wines over $25? Parker doesn’t make this clear. It’s especially difficult to understand, given this statement, from his “Wine Advocate Writer Standards” page:

“In a tasting, a $10 bottle of petite chateau Pauillac should have as much of a chance as a $200 bottle of Lafite Rothschild or Latour.”

Truer words never were spoken! But how can that $10 petite chateau wine have “as much of a chance” if it’s tasted openly? Why not sneak it into a blind tasting against Second, Third and Fourth Growths? That would be giving it “as much of a chance” to earn a high score. If Parker (or anybody else) is staring at the label (and, even worse, at the tech sheet)–and particularly, if he’s sitting down to an open tasting of petite chateau wines–isn’t it possible, and even likely, that his mind is being influenced by knowledge of what he’s tasting? I should think so. “These are just petite chateaux, so they can’t possibly be very good. Everybody knows that,” is how the mentation would go.

Okay, back to blind tasting. Here’s Parker’s guideline (on the Writer Standards page) for “The Other Wine Advocate / eRobertParker.com Wine Critics”:

“All tastings…are done under both blind and non-blind conditions…”.

It’s curious that on this very long page, which is practically an essay, this is the only mention of blind tasting. You would think Parker would focus much more deeply and candidly on this topic, since it’s really at the heart of everything he (and we) do. But no–just this slapdash little reference. And even it is unsatisfactory. “Both blind and non-blind”….How? When? Why? Under what circumstances? So this looks to me like another loophole, as big as the “when possible” loophole mentioned above.

Loopholes are funny things. Everybody uses them. Most of the time, it doesn’t really matter. We give ourselves just enough wriggle room so that, if we have to break a promise, we can say, “Well, I didn’t swear on a stack of Bibles, did I?” But sometimes it does matter. I should think in the case of a wine writer it would be obligatory to have a little note beside every review indicating how the wine was reviewed, and where. In a blind, big regional tasting? Individually and openly, at the winery, with the proprietor? These things matter. People have the right to know. We’ll never do away with loopholes, but we can make them so tiny that only a pinky can fit through.

I know that Jay Miller’s resignation from The Wine Advocate will have a younger generation cheering that the blogosphere just outed another lying, cheating sleazebag, and that the old order is crumbling faster than a chocolate chip cookie at an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. But somebody has to put this into perspective.

I tried to begin that the other day, when I said we didn’t have enough information to come to any conclusions, even though plenty of people were. Today, we know more, mainly from the Baltimore Sun’s coverage. To me, here’s the salient point, taken from the Sun article:

“Campo said in that exchange he wasn’t arranging a visit by Miller to any wineries, but rather that he was negotiating fees for Miller to host a seminar….The speaking engagement — not Miller’s first — had nothing to do with The Wine Advocate, and the governing body for the local wine region, not any wineries, paid for it.”

If this is true, and there’s no reason to think it isn’t, then Miller’s critics are saying that Miller shouldn’t be allowed to make extra money through speaking fees, beyond whatever remuneration he got from Parker. That’s my reading, anyway. But on what basis do the critics make this charge? Does Roger Ebert ever make money from speaking engagements? I’m sure he does (or did, before his stroke). I don’t hear anyone getting all steamed about that. I, personally, don’t see anything wrong with Miller, or any other writer, taking fees for speaking before groups that’ve invited him.

Now, if the wineries who indirectly pay for these speaking engagements believe their wines are going to get higher scores from Miller in exchange for the fee, that’s their problem. I would hope Miller made it abundantly clear that wasn’t the case and could never be.

In another version of the same article, which you can read here, Miller said, “What I write is totally based on what’s in the bottle.” Again, is there any reason not to believe that? I’ve said the same thing over and over again. It doesn’t matter what a winery does to me or for me: My reviews are totally based on what’s in the bottle. Not, I hasten to add, that I speak very much for a fee–it only happens a few times a year, Wine Enthusiast‘s policy is for the fee to be paid by third parties, not wineries, and the fee is never anywhere close to Miller’s purported $26,000 for a two day trip. (I should live so long!) But if that’s Miller’s market value, then he has a right to accept it, if someone is willing to pay.

I still don’t understand all the details of the relationship between Miller and this Campo fellow, but from my reading, there doesn’t seem to be anything lurid or particularly scandalous about it. Campo runs a wine organization; he occasionally arranges local events for Miller, and perhaps he [Campo] even makes a little extra money off Miller. Nothing wrong with that.

This blogger, Jim Budd, who busted Miller, came up with the clever phrase, “No Pay, No Jay,” implying that unless wineries forked over big money to Miller, he wouldn’t review their wines. I don’t believe that for a minute. Is anyone suggesting Miller refused to review a Spanish wine because the winery didn’t pay him? Or that Miller lowered a score because the winery wouldn’t fork over money?  No.

The more subtle implication Mr. Budd is making is “The reason why producers and their [organizations] were prepared to pay these sums was because Miller was going to review and rate their wines for The Wine Advocate.” According to this view, Miller would never have been in a position to charge money for a private visit, unless he was the famous Spanish reviewer for Robert Parker.

Well, duh! Do bears crap in the forest? That’s just reality. Name me a famous wine critic and I’ll show you somebody making money beyond his or her paycheck from the company, from speaking engagements, consulting, book writing, etc. We even have critics who own wineries: Robert Parker and Beaux-Frères! Does anybody not think that Beaux-Frères (which retails in the $60-$80 neighborhood) has cachet because of Parker’s part-ownership? If you do, there’s a bridge in San Francisco I’d like to sell you.

Now, we can have a discussion about the various lines that separate a true conflict of interest from the appearance of a conflict of interest. We can say, “No wine critic such as Miller should ever be allowed to make a penny from private arrangements, because a blogger says that would ‘fail to pass the sniff test.’” But that, quite honestly, is to let some bloggers dictate to professionals how they should run their businesses. A blogger has the right to his opinion, of course, and that applies to Mr. Budd. But from everything I’ve read, I just don’t see what Miller did that’s so wrong. And it’s soooo easy these days to stir up a shitstorm on the blogosphere.

Maybe I’m wrong. I know that my brilliant readers will show me the light, if I’ve misinterpreted this. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly do a mea culpa.

Here’s the bottom line: there is absolutely no way to convince doubters of a wine critic’s objectivity, or that he’s being as honest as he can. Naysayers will always find something to criticize, and in this business, being accused of accepting money for reviews is like being asked “When did you stop beating your wife?” There’s no answer that can possibly satisfy the questioner, and no matter what the critic replies, he ends up looking guilty, even when he’s not.

Still, for all my misgivings about the Jay Miller case, I’m glad it arose, because we always need to talk about these important issues, instead of letting them fester.