“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’s an old saw by now: Sonoma County winemakers lament that when they’re on the road, promoting their wines, people ask them, “Where in Napa Valley is Sonoma?”

It would be funny, if it weren’t so sad. Readers of this blog obviously know all about Sonoma County, and how it has 11 different American Viticultural Areas. But my readers are a special breed. The fact is that the majority of wine drinkers in America and abroad don’t know enough about our geography. That’s not their fault, of course. Why should they? Instead, it’s the responsibility of the Sonomans to engage in an educational campaign to let people know that Sonoma is not in Napa Valley and has nothing to do with Napa Valley (except that the two areas are next door to each other).

Now, it turns out that the Sonoma County Vintners is doing just that. The Santa Rosa Press Democract wrote yesterday that a coalition of some 50 “local wine industry leaders” from Sonoma worked together last year to come up with a plan. I’m not privy to the details, but the article says the committee “selected three words to define the wine region’s character: genuine, independent and adventurous.”

Educational campaigns of the sort the Sonomans are attempting are very difficult. You have to un-do the incorrect perceptions people have, which experience teaches us is extraordinarily hard, and then replace them with correct perceptions. You have to communicate to millions of people, which in a huge country like the U.S. is almost impossible and also terribly expensive, so fractured are our communities and media. And if you roll in foreign markets, the job’s even more challenging. It can be made a little easier by narrowing your focus, so instead of trying to talk to everyone, you zoom in on a select audience; call it the “cable TV approach.” It sounds like the Sonomans are doing just that: they will target “’experience seekers’ who enjoy traveling and dining out,” in other words, people with money in their pocket to pay premium Sonoma prices.

I wonder about that “genuine, independent and adventurous” thing. It sounds to me like it came out of a committee. Yet the devil’s in the details. “Genuine” is good: it implies that Sonoma wine comes from a real place that’s ideal for fine wine production, and made by real, passionate people, all of which is true. “Independent” is a little murky. Independent of what–big corporations? That’s not strictly true; Sonoma is no more “independent” than anyplace else, as far as I can tell. “Independent” is a nice word, but what is the message the Sonomans hope to communicate? Then there’s “adventurous.” I can practically hear the discussion that led up to that: “Let’s be the maverick to Napa Valley’s mainstream.” Since they can’t be Napa Valley, they can be the scrappy alternative, the choice of wine lovers who don’t want to go the predictable route. This is a little risky, since there’s always a downside involved in adventures. After all, some adventures go horribly awry. But in general, “adventurous” works in advertising, especially with a younger demographic that’s into taking chances and exploring new things.

I hope the new marketing approach works. Sonoma County has had this identity problem for years, compounded by a certain tension between the sub-appellations (Dry Creek Valley, Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, etc.),  individual wineries and the Mothership. It’s been hard for all the parties to work together in harmony; in this, Sonoma’s been a little behind some of the other wine counties in California. It will take time, but I do believe the Sonomans can make it work. It’s hard selling a phony message, but in this case, the message is true: Sonoma really does produce some of the greatest wine in California. And it’s not in Napa Valley.

If you go to the Calafia Cafe, in Palo Alto, you won’t have to wait for a server to take your order. Instead, you just call up the menu on the touch screen mobile pad on your table, look at hi-res digital images of the foods, and then punch in your selections. Let’s say it’s the clams and udon noodles for an appetizer, then the grilled hanger steak for the main course. Your friends do the same thing. Your orders go right to the kitchen. While you’re waiting for the food, you might play a social game on the same tablet; your table’s high scorer at trivia gets $1 off the cost of dessert. Of course, when your food is ready, a real live human being brings it to your table–the tablet can’t do that. But when the meal’s over, you can pay for it with a swipe of your credit card–no waiting for a busy waiter to have to notice you’re ready to leave. You can enter your email and get a digital receipt promptly sent. And, since the night is still young, you can browse the tablet and discover clubs, bars and so on that are right in the neighborhood.

The tablet is called a Presto, and it’s manufactured by E la Carte, which was started up in 2008 out of MIT, and now has offices in Silicon Valley, Boston, Chicago and New York. They’ve raised venture capital from angel investors, and Calafia isn’t the only restaurant that uses Presto and similar devices, both in this country (L.A.’s Umami Burger, for example) and overseas, in Japan and Europe. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that “chains across the country are signing on [to Presto]. Creator Rajat Suri expects that soon every mass-market, mid-range restaurant and bar – and even some independent operations – will start using the Presto or similar technology.”

Does it mean actual waiters will soon be anachronisms? It’s hard to envision a time when somebody won’t have to schlep the food from the kitchen to the table. But a busboy (or a robot, for that matter) could do that. And you wouldn’t have to tip a busboy (much less a robot) 20% of the tab just for carrying a few plates of food.

How about wine? Restaurants already are featuring touch screen devices for the wine list, instead of a dirty old booklet with everyone’s germs on it. Barbacco, a trendy trattoria in San Francisco’s Financial District, was the city’s first. “Diners…browse through [wine] selections on screen, and can store a number of possible choices. Ordering will still take place the old-fashioned way — through a real live human being,” the Chronicle’s Jon Bonné reported. But is it so hard to imagine a future generation of tablets that not only list all the wines, but interactively suggest pairings? Maybe you order Barbacco’s paccheri, a pork ragu with plenty of parmigiano reggiano. You’re not sure what to drink with it. But the tablet is. It may suggest a nine-year old Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, from Emidio Pepe, explaining that the wine’s tannins are resolved, and its acidity and extract will stand up to the food’s richness. You look at the price: $110. Ouch. You ask the tablet to suggest something less pricey. Back comes a 2006 Tuscan Sangiovese, from Querceto di Castellina, which the tablet tells you is similarly full-bodied and dry, with acidity to cut through the oiliness. And the price is a more reasonable $48.

Deal.

Is there any reason this can’t happen, thus eliminating the [sometimes uncomfortable] dance diners are forced to perform with sommeliers? The Chronicle article suggests it will. “Eventually, [Presto] will tell diners what kinds of wines they like based on a personality quiz.” That sounds kind of silly (“Are you the type that hates to ask for directions? Then choose a Pinot Noir”), but there already are rudimentary “computerized sommeliers” on the market. For example, at Hong Kong’s Landmark Oriental Mandarin Hotel, they advertise “a computerised sommelier that will recommend food and wine pairings by region, taste or price.” With advances in A.I. coming fast and furious, who’s to say that in a generation the human sommelier won’t be seen as an charming relic of a bygone era, like trolley conductors, gas lamp lighters and doctors who make house calls?

If you live in Northern California, it’s been topic #1 for the last 2 months: Cold nights, mild to warm days and barely a drop of rain. December was the second driest in modern times, and so far, January hasn’t seen a single drop of the wet stuff.

It’s been so dry that people are starting to use the “d” word, as in drought.

This comes on the heels of heavy rains last October, which had everybody fretting about the vintage, and worried about a repeat of the 2010-2011 winter, which was extraordinarily wet. No luck. In my vintage diary, I noted only two instances of precipation in December: once on the 12th (“very, very light”) and again on the 30th (“Light rain, less than 1/10th of an inch”). Other than that, nada.

This map from NOAA suggests visually how severe things have been, with all of Northern California north of the Central Coast in the red “Drought to persist or intensify” part.

It’s an increasingly important story, and scientists are starting to express something akin to alarm. The Sacramento Bee quoted California’s chief hydrologist: “It just hangs on and on and on,” he said, referring to the high pressure system that won’t budge, sending storms to the north and south of us. KQED-FM today featured a top NASA climatologist and an official from the California Department of Water Resources, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say you could hear extreme concern in their voices. The Water Resources lady reminded us that the absence of precipitation doesn’t mean only that reservoirs are under pressure; actually, they’re in pretty good shape, thanks to last year’s snowmelt from the Sierra. No, the immediate problem is in industries that rely on instant water from the sky, such as grazing. Cattle need to eat pasture grasses. With no rain, the winter grasses are drying up. Bloomberg News today reported “short-term Severe Drought” in parts of California, “as impacts to forage conditions in rangeland areas are significant.” Not only that: “Wildland fire awareness is increasing in California as well.”

Wildfires in January?

There are implications for grapes, too. “…if the warm, dry spell continues, it could cause an ‘early bloom’ on apple trees and grapevines, exposing the tender green plant tissue to possible frost damage,” the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported.

But change might finally be coming. Just yesterday, the weather people are saying the pattern could break by next week, with “significant changes in flow over the Eastern Pacific” that “should allow a series of storm systems to track across the North State.” That’s great news for crops and water supplies, and I know I should be glad. But in a way, I’m sad. It’s been so great enjoying the Springlike weather. In Oakland, when you get in a sunny place out of the wind around 2 p.m. (the warmest part of the day), it actually feels hot on your skin, like summer. Gus has been loving it. He doesn’t like rain. Neither do I. But we’ll be thankful when Old Man Winter returns.

Hey, I’m used to getting some tough reaction from wineries over my scores, but really, this is the most violent blowback I ever got. I’m not going to identify the emailer, but you can determine for yourself if it’s psycho talk. Read it, then I’ll continue with my remarks.

A Small Man in Many Ways

S-tupid, small minded
T-atooed like a fool
E-vil
V-ile
E-rectile inversion, get the pump
H-omosapien, poor excuse for one
E-xtra insincere
I-gnoramous, immature
M-ean, will someday meet his maker like all the rest of us but how will he explain the…
O-ff putting, odorous, bullshit he feeds people, his malicious intent reeks
F-oul  and…
F-ake

The sender followed this up with a long email the next day. It was laced with obscenities and sexual innuendo. Here’s a taste: “FUCK YOU, YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT.”

What happened was, I gave one of this winery’s wines a score they didn’t like (84). This evidently led to a situation with one of their distributors that was not in their favor. The writer also disliked the text part of my review. “The written portion of your reviews reveal your lack of tact, lack of poise and expose you as a bully,” she wrote.

I want to say something here about my written reviews. I taste a lot of wine that is mediocre and some that is outright bad. Long ago, I developed a philosophy I’ve hewed to for years. It goes something like this: If a wine is mediocre, give it the appropriate numerical rating, but write the review up in more positive terms, for the sake of compassion. There’s no sense kicking a man when he’s already down on the ground. There’s always a way to say something critical in a kind way, as opposed to being downright nasty.

Some other parts of the email:

Most of the wines submitted to you had received gold medals Do you expect me to be impressed that a wine got a gold medal someplace? Should that make me think twice about my impression of it?

[A friend] said:  Wow, what beef does he have with ___ Winery? I have no beef with any winery. Wine reviewing isn’t personal.

You’re one of those fame chasers, a popularity seeker Actually, it’s just the opposite. Ask around to find out how little I enjoy “fame.”

Your writing is mediocre at best. Now, that is below the belt! Give me credit at least for being a good writer, even if you don’t like what I say!

People are your ‘friends’ because they’re afraid of you I don’t know if she means my Facebook friends, or my actual friends. Anyway, if some people are afraid of me, there’s not a thing I can do about it. I tell them not to be. I hope no one is. I don’t know why they would be. I encourage people to call, email, whatever, and I tell them not to apologize for interrupting me, etc. When I’m on the road, I don’t throw any weight around. There’s no reason to be afraid of me. I try my best to let everyone know that I’m just this guy living in Oakland who’s paid to write about wine.

[You’re] just trying to get a free meal OMG! I hope all the winemakers and public relations people who know this isn’t true will write in! In the beginning, yes, I did accept every invitation to lunch or dinner. That was 20 years ago. The novelty wore off quickly. I go to about 10 lunches a year, max, and maybe half as many dinners. I do it for work, not because I want a free meal.

It’s funny how the writer uses the word “little” so much in both her emails. Yes, I’m short. So what? Do we have to resort to ad hominem attacks? She also called me “a trust fund type.” That’s a laugh, as my CPA will tell you. I’m “a bloodsucker.” An “oddity.” I “aspire to be accepted by the elitist pigs.” Really? Tell that to my friends in Occupy Oakland.

Okay, the emailer had to get it off her chest. I feel her pain. I need to vent, too, when stuff happens to me that I think is unfair. But really, have we descended so far down the etiquette chain that it’s now considered appropriate to send crap like this?

The blogger Fast Company yesterday ran this interview with Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who also was that newspaper’s first blogger. It’s a good read. I thought it would be interesting to take the interviewer’s questions and answer them myself. Of course, some of his questions wouldn’t be relevant to me, so I dropped them.

In your columns and online posts you encourage reader dialogue and response. What kind of responses do you get?

It depends on the particlar post. Some topics elicit a lot of response: anything about Parker, the 100 point system, blind tasting, social media, ethics. For some other topics, I won’t get more than a handful of comments. Some people have accused me of deliberately writing about provocative topics in order to generate heavy response, but that simply isn’t true. I really go by whatever I’m thinking about that day, or if there’s something in the news I have to write about. I often write about things knowing full well that I won’t get more than 3 or 4 comments.

How do you think about your social media interaction?

I love it. I don’t reply to every comment, because quite often, there’s really nothing to say, except maybe “thank you for writing.” Also, some bloggers reply to every comment because that doubles their number of comments, which in turn might move the blog higher up on some popularity lists. That’s a little phony, so I don’t do it. When I read a comment that really needs for me to reply, I know it.

Is this a revolutionary shift in journalism or a more natural progression?

Great question. The answer is: a little of both. There’s clearly something radically different about social media. People all over the world can talk to each other, more or less instantly. It’s very difficult to censure. You can do it on your cell phone or pad: you don’t even have to be sitting at your computer anymore. I think social media has turned out to be revolutionary in certain areas, such as politics, where we see regimes being toppled (Libya, Egypt) with the help of Twitter. In other areas, like sales and marketing (including wine), the jury’s out how “revolutionary” social media is. At this time, I’d call it more of a natural progression that combines aspects of the telephone, the U.S. mail, television and a town meeting. I haven’t yet seen anything in the wine industry being revolutionized by social media. Indeed, I can’t even envision what that would look like.

There’s a lot of debate about the role of social media in journalism, especially on the part of the major print news institutions. While [Wine Enthusiast] was developing strategies and policies, you just started doing it. Why?

Because I wanted to jump into this blog thing and explore its possibilities. I am a writer at heart. Few things in life give me more pleasure than pecking away at the old keyboard and watching my words magically appear onscreen. In May, 2008, Wine Enthusiast was going through their initial deliberations in blogging. I was just too impatient to wait.

Is there a more problematic side with the journalism in the digital age? Do you worry that citizen journalism diminishes overall credibility, for instance?

“Citizen journalism” has always been around. After all, journalists are citizens too. What’s different is the speed and access that people have to publish anything they want. And of course, this does raise issues of credibility. I don’t “worry” about it–there are too many more important things for me to worry about. But I do recognize it and have been stung by it on occasion, when irresponsible people make false charges. However, I take it in stride. And I will say that the positives of social media and “citizen journalism” far outweigh the negatives.

One of the other big changes in journalism we’ve seen in recent years is the rise of advocacy journalism. That’s different than what you do. Take Fox News for instance.

I don’t do “advocacy journalism” on my blog, if you take Fox and MSNBC as the prime examples today on TV. However, I can express my personal opinions a lot more candidly and colorfully in my blog than I can in the traditional journalism we practice at Wine Enthusiasm. That’s one of the pleasures of blogging. It’s on my Facebook page that I do true advocacy journalism. But I try to keep my politics out of my blog.

How do you negotiate the line between activism and journalism?

At the magazine, that line is kept rigorously bright by our New York-based editors, who impose strict journalistic standards that might be a little old-fashioned by today’s social media standards, but are very important nonetheless. Somebody has got to make sure that statements are based on fact and not just made up. On my blog, the standards are looser, I freely confess. However, there’s an enforcement mechanism that I would argue is every bit as powerful and effective as an editor: my credibility. If I was slinging unsubstantiated trash around on my blog, readers would long ago have lost respect for it.

The thing about point scoring that makes some people so angry (more on this later) is that they say it represents a form of mathematical or epistemological certainty, of which something as subjective as the enjoyment of  wine is incapable.

They have a point, if you assume that numbers in wine reviewing are used in the same way as in mathematics. However, when we critics–me, anyway–use numbers in wine reviewing, these numbers are employed in a different way. In math, numbers are nouns–treated as if they were real objects or concepts, corresponding to absolute equivalents in the Universe. In wine reviewing, however, numbers are used adjectively.

People use numbers adjectively all the time. “She’s a perfect ten,” a man will remark of a beautiful woman. “We’re number one!” fans of a sports team will chant. The Occupy people speak of “the 99 percent.” A political junkie will say a candidate’s odds of winning an election are “fifty-fifty.” Thomas Edison said “Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration.” Someone will says he’s “90 percent certain” of something. Running late for an appointment, a woman will call her friend and say she’ll be there “in thirty minutes.”

In none of these cases is the number in question meant to be taken literally or precisely. The speakers are speaking figuratively, trying to get a point across through the use of metaphor. In other words, these numbers are not nouns, referring to real entities in the world, the way, say, the number “32 degrees F” represents the freezing point of water. They’re adjectives, meant to communicate the approximation of a state of being that cannot be better or more accurately described. The person doing the communicating hopes and assumes that the person to whom he is communicating understands this metaphorical use of numbers. When he says he’s “90 percent certain” of something, he doesn’t expect to be grilled as to why he’s not 89 percent certain or 91 percent certain. He’s doing the best he can to express the quality of his belief, and he expects the other person to interpret it the way he means it.

That’s how I use numbers. If I rate something 94 points, I mean it’s around 94 points, meaning (I’m quoting from Wine Enthusiast guidelines): A classic wine. Truly superb. Highly refined. Superb harmony and balance. Great complexity. Great finesse and refinement. Memorable.

Could the 94 be a 92 or a 96 on another occasion? Certainly. I’ve been straightforward about that on my blog ever since I started writing it in 2008. The score can vary due to any number of reasons, bottle variation chief among them. Any critic who claims otherwise is in a state of denial, or simply fibbing. As I’ve said repeatedly, a wine review is that particular critic’s impression of that particular wine at that particular moment in time.

I don’t see what’s so difficult to accept about that. I think consumers get it. At the extreme are those critics of point scores who are so driven (consciously or not) by psychological factors, they fly into an ideological fury. It’s impossible to have a conversation with them, as it always is with ideologues, so I no longer try. But I do welcome legitimate conversations with people who are genuinely curious how my numbers come about. I hope this post has begun to explain it. Let me know, please, if you’d like more on this tomorrow, or if it’s getting stale.