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.”

Sleep deprived, recovering from a surfeit of wine and food, I fly home to sunny California in a few hours to refuel and refresh myself after a long, grinding but glorious few days in the events prior to, during and after Wine Enthusiast’s Wine Star Awards ceremony, held last Monday night at the 42nd Street Public Library in midtown Manhattan (which was having eerily mild weather). I will say what a great success it was. To be nominated for a Wine Star Award is one of the highest honors that can come to anyone in the wine and food industries. To actually win must be a very great and memorable experience for those lucky enough to know it. I sat at the table of the Jackson family: Barbara Banke (the late, great and immortal Jess Jackson’s widow), her children Chris, Katie and Julia (such lovely, sweet people), Don Hartford (the proprietor of Hartford Court, who must be the world’s greatest dinner companion) and various friends and fiancés. Barbara had asked me to be at her table, which honored me to no end. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have sat with Bob Cabral, Wiliams Selyem’s great winemaker, whom I had nominated as Winemaker of the Year; of course, he won. Bob gave an amazing speech, and was crying at the end. He is fundamentally a little boy from a hardscrabble Central Valley family who cannot believe how blessed his life has turned out to be, and gives credit at every stretch to his parents and family.

On Tuesday, the magazine’s staff all could have used another 14 hours of sleep, but there was important work to be done, so we gathered early at the office and did all the things that need to be done to produce a successful magazine, one that counts in the industry and that people look forward to reading. That was all day long; then it was off to a well-oiled dinner. Back at the hotel, of course, the traveling editors and staff did not go straight to bed. No, we gathered in one of our rooms, with a couple bottles of wine, and extended the fun, recapping the days events and having plenty of laughs. I can truly say how lucky I feel not only to respect my co-workers but to like and even love them. The great Roger Voss, from Bordeaux, Monica Larner, who so brilliantly covers Italy from her perch in Rome, and our two “sales ladies,” Denise Valenza and my old buddy, Allison Langhoff. They keep me sane.

And so back to California. I will return in full force Thursday. Be well.

I came across this YouTube the other day of Michael Mondavi being interviewed by a guy in Italy about wine blogs. Among other things, Michael said: “… my daughter and her friends do not look at Wine Spectator, Decanter. They get emails from friends…they go to the blog…it’s interactive…and they trust the blogs more than they trust the critics and magazines.”

It’s nice to see a guy of Michael’s age give props to the blogs. It’s not always easy for a Baby Boomer to “get it.” But then, Michael is the eldest son of Robert Mondavi, and nobody in the history of wine better understood just how the intricate mechanisms of marketing, P.R. and technology mesh than Bob. I don’t know how much Robert Mondavi knew about the Internet before he died, in 2008 at the age of 94. He’d been in failing health for some time. But I suspect that, had he been physically able, Bob would have been deeply involved online today, especially in videos. He was deeply photogenic, even into old age, and he had a playful, natural way of interacting with the camera, as this YouTube shows. Michael, in his welcoming video on the website of his Folio Fine Wine Partners, seems a bit more self-conscious compared to his father’s effortless ease. Michael’s younger brother, Tim, shows more of his father’s geniality in videos; check out this YouTube as an example. At any rate, it’s probably unfair to compare the sons to the father. Robert was, literally, incomparable.

What Robert got, and what Michael was referring to, was the importance to a vintner of establishing a personal relationship with his customers. Of course, that relationship isn’t really “personal” the way I have personal relationships with my family, friends and neighbors. You don’t really “meet” anyone through the media. My 2,500 Facebook “friends” are friends only in a strictly defined sense of the word. But Robert Mondavi knew that a bottle of wine that has a face, place and personality associated with it will stand a better chance of being bought than one that floats anonymously in a vast sea of bottles. So much the better once a name becomes branded, and no name in the history of American wine has been more potently or successfully branded than that of “Robert Mondavi.” That the company over-extended its brand, leading ultimately to its demise, takes nothing away either from Robert Mondavi’s astuteness (or our appreciation of it), or from his legacy, which teaches us that branding is the essential cornerstone of business success. It’s not possible, obviously, for every winery to have a face as iconic as Robert Mondavi’s; and I suspect that most winery principles would not want their faces out there, the way Robert’s was. Robert was, in some respects, a performer. He used to remind me of a Vaudevillian, an old trooper whose philosophy could be expressed as “The show must go on.” No matter how he was feeling, when it came time for him (and his wife, Margrit) to go onstage, they squared their shoulders and rose to the occasion.

With all the talk nowadays about whether and how much a winery person should tweet, Facebook, blog and all the rest, I wonder why more winery owners and winemakers don’t become the face of their brands. We humans are above all a visual species; before we had invented reading and writing, we used our eyes to scan what was in front of us, telling friend from foe, truth teller from liar. Humans have not changed, only technology. Which California winemakers are doing the best job of getting their faces out there and symbolizing their brands? I’d like to hear your suggestions.

I’ll be in New York as you read this, at our big, annual Wine Star Awards ceremony, held at the historic Public Library on 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan. Wine Enthusiast announced the winners late last Fall. I’ll be introducing the one nominee I argued for who won this year: Bob Cabral, for winemaker of the year. I doubt if I have to tell anyone who reads my blog who Bob is, or why he so deserves this honor. But just in case, Bob is now the veteran (I think we can call him that) winemaker at Williams Selyem. That alone puts him in pretty rarified company, but the fact that he makes so many great wines is what makes him special.

Each of the editors at Wine Enthusiast has her or his own special area of coverage, and we nominate these people and argue for them to be the winner. I don’t nominate in each category. For example, I don’t know a whole lot about cocktails, so I wouldn’t weigh in on Mixologist of the Year. Nor do I know much about importers, so I leave that category to my betters. It’s fun to learn about these people when they deliver their acceptance speeches and also when we show the videos they prepared in advance. It makes me realize how huge the world of wine, beer and spirits is.

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I want to apologize to Rick Bakas. He had just been hired as St. Supery’s Social Media Director back in July, 2009, when I reported that his salary would be $90,000 a year. I can’t remember where I came across that number–whether it had been officially announced or somebody I trusted told me. At any rate, Rick commented on a post I wrote last week: “…you lost my trust in 2009 when you inaccurately publicly shared my salary at St. Supéry…”. It was the first time I learned that he’d been upset after all those years. If his salary was not public knowledge, I had no right to make it so; and if the number was incorrect, then I misrepresented a fact. Either or both ways, I’m sorry that I lost Rick’s trust, and I hope to earn it back.

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Maybe I shouldn’t admit it, but I’m a fan of The Bachelor. I probably would never have even heard of it, but last year, I did a little story about Ben Flajnik, who is this year’s Bachelor, because he was then a contestant on ABC-TV’s “The Bachelorette.” Ben is a partner in a Sonoma County winery, Envolve, which made it a wine cum celebrity story, the kind that can be fun to write every once in a while for a hardcore wine guy like me. Anyway, I’m not much of a reality TV fan (with the exception of Project Runway), but once I got to know Ben, it was hard not to watch the shows. It was like, Hey, I know that guy! And once I started watching them, I quickly got addicted.

Who’s gonna “get” Ben? Monica seems to have the inside track, but you never know. And who knows how much of this reality show is “real” and how much is made up by the writers and producers? Anyway, if any of the ladies ends up marrying Ben, she’s lucky: she’s not only getting a great guy, she’ll be living in beautiful Sonoma County (or, possibly, San Francisco, which is where Ben hangs his hat for now), and living the wine life. Nothing wrong with that!