I finally finished Allen Meadows’s The Pearl of the Côte: The Great Wines of Vosnes-Romanée. I took my time, as I do with things of great pleasure I don’t want to end.

I highly recommend it. Even if you’re not a Burgundy lover, or able to afford these wines (who is?), you’ll learn a lot. It’s not every book that has so many things in it that make you think. This one is rich in provocative statements, such as this one, right near the end. Allen is recounting a tasting of 1945 Romanée-Conti, the only wine he’s ever given 100 points to. He wonders, “Had I been transported to another emotional dimension because of something in me, in the wine, or a combination of the two?”

What is striking about this isn’t that Allen was transported “to another emotional dimension.” Anyone who loves wine has probably had that experience. It doesn’t occur often in one’s life; it may never occur, but when it does, you remember it. No, what hit me was that Allen allowed as to how “something in me” might have been responsible, or equally responsible, for whatever the experience of that wine did to him.

To me, the question–which Allen doesn’t directly answer, but I think his conclusion was that it really was “a combination of the two”--implies something I think we all know, but tend to overlook. Our experience of wine isn’t limited only to its hedonistic qualities, “hedonistic” in this case meaning the way it presents itself to the five senses. There is a sixth sense–call it esthetic, spiritual or emotional–we don’t understand well, because it’s not measurable, or even explainable, in common physiological terms. It is, in fact, the thing that makes up happy, that lifts our spirits, that makes us simply thankful it exists. Now, wine may be a feeble vehicle in which to arrive at such peak experiences. Other human beings, a painting or a poem, the sight of a puppy or kitten napping, hearing the speech of Dr. King may send us there far more frequently than a sip of wine. But when wine does it, it remains seared into the memory.

Writing this makes me think about the 100-point system, about rating wines, about blind tasting. The critics of all these things point out, with some justification, that in order to truly appreciate a wine, you must drink it in the full knowledge of what it is. That is the way Allen tasted the ‘45 Romanée-Conti and is in fact the way he tastes most of the wines he reviews. My own inclination, at this point in my career, is to taste wines blind, but still, I do wonder. Question: If you read the transcript of Dr. King’s I have a dream speech, would it have the same impact as hearing it? Put another way, do you think that if Allen had tasted the ‘45 Romanée-Conti blind, in a flight of old Burgundies, he would have given it the only 100 point score in his career? I don’t think so.

Allen–an intellectually honest man–recognizes that his experience with the ‘45 Romanée-Conti raises the question of consistency, which he calls “the greatest of all attributes for a critic.” Readers want to be reassured that a wine review from a trusted critic hews closely to, if it is not identical with, a second review of the same wine, by the same critic, written within a similar time period. It would serve the consumer poorly if, on one occasion, the critic gave the wine 84 points, and then on another occasion scored it 94 points. Readers would rightfully question that critic’s credentials.

But here’s another reflection Allen makes on that ‘45 Romanée-Conti. “Peak experiences require a certain moment in time, under just the right circumstances, with a certain knowledge, experience, and emotional state. Rarely can those circumstances be replicated.”

Think about that. Allen is basically saying that the wine tasting experience is not replicable! Granted, his proviso is for “peak experiences,” such as the ‘45 Romanée-Cont. But it’s not clear to me why those parameters should not apply to one’s experience of every wine, whether it’s a Napa cult Cabernet or Two Buck Chuck.

This is a conundrum I think about all the time: Since “just the right circumstances…and emotional state” are so variable over time, then why should we expect any consistency from wine critics? I suppose the answer is at once simple and complex, like most things. It’s simple, because if a wine is, say, horribly flawed, we would expect the critic to pan it regardless of how his own personal circumstance varies over time. Similarly, if a wine is absolutely fabulous (to that critic), then we should expect him to praise it every time, although it would be unreasonable for us to demand that he score it precisely the same. (I personally think a range of 4 points is perfectly acceptable for repeat tastings, given bottle variation and things of that sort.)

But then there are all the wines in the middle: neither horrible nor fabulous. That’s the neighborhood where most wines live. The truth is, they’re the hardest to score consistently, precisely because, as Allen says, no “moment in time” is ever quite the same as another. It’s these middle wines that can score the most inconsistently in repeated blind tastings. They have positive and negative qualities: and depending on where the taster is at that moment, the positive qualities may outweigh the negatives, or vice versa. That’s the subjective side of wine reviewing.

Does this irresolution make the reviewer’s job irrelevant or, worse, useless? I don’t think so. The one conclusion the reader should take away from every review is that, while the review may not have been carved in stone and handed down from the Deity to the critic, still, the reliable critic has tasted lots and lots of wines over time, and is in a better position than most people to make a pronouncement. In other words, the “truth” of a review is never absolute, but only relative. And that’s better than no truth at all.

I have a great article coming up in a summer issue of Wine Enthusiast on Nick Gislason, the young (29) winemaker at Screaming Eagle. The following is an outtake–it’s too long to make it into the article, but it’s a really cool story that I wanted to share without having it die on what used to be called the cuttting-room floor. The back story concerns how Nick got hired as an assistant winemaker at Harlan, prior to his Screaming Eagle gig. He cold-called Harlan and was invited in for a “chat.”

SH: So [Harlan winemaker] Cory [Empting] interviews you.

NG: Exactly. So I go over to Harlan Estate to meet with Cory, and very first thing, right in the door, he says, “All right, so here’s the beginning of your interview,” and there’s a long wooden table in the middle of the room.

I know that table well.

And there’s 20 glasses of wine on the table, and they’re marked 1 through 20 on the glass, and a pad of yellow paper sitting in the middle, with a pencil, and he says, “All right, to start your interview, I’d like you to sit down and evaluate all 20 of these wines, and then I want you to pick out the top three, and then you’re going to come in the other room and tell all of us about it.”

Who was all of us?

Uhh, Paul Roberts [M.S., estate manager], Cory, and the assistant winemaker.

Bob Levy?

Bob Levy wasn’t there that day.

Bill Harlan?

Bill Harlan wasn’t there that day. So I said, All right, I’m ready to do that!

Were you nervous?

Oh, maybe for a couple seconds. But then, I settled down and remembered, this is exactly what I do, I’ve done it for years, this is just another day in the life of.

You had no idea what you were having?

He told me nothing. They were red wines.

Could have been Harlan, might not have been Harlan.

Might not have been Harlan. Could have been anything at all.

So when you go through there, what’s your thinking process?

So I had a funny feeling that it might have been some sort of winemaking trial. That would make sense. If you’re hiring someone for the cellar, you want them to be able to pick out various aspects of the wines: maybe defects–

So these would be like barrel samples?

Maybe. Yeah. So I’m sitting down and that’s my preconceived idea. And they wanted me to find what’s the defect, what’s the problem, what’s the sulfur levels, or whatever. Some technical aspect of the wines. I was going into it thinking it was a test, like that, but at the same time, didn’t really know. Could be anything. So I sit down and start going through the wines and taking my notes as fast as I can, and then Cory pops his head back into the room after about 3 or 4 minutes. He says, “Okay, are you done yet?” I said, “Oh, I need just a couple more minutes, if I could. It’s 20 wines.” And he says, “Okay, well I’ll give you five more minutes.”

And you’re taking notes, too.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, because he wants me to go through, evaluate everything, every wine, and then pick out the top three and explain why I picked those. So I said, Okay, that’s good, I’ll go through it. So, going through the wines, it seemed to me like a dichotomous group. There were some that seemed more Old World to me, more like Bordeaux in particular, oyster shell character, a little leaner, little more taut than I would expect in Napa. And then there’s definitely some Napa in there, big, rich fruit, larger tannin, this type of thing. But I had no idea. It could have been anything in the world. So, to make a long story short, went through the wines, they were all very good, picked out the top three for me, went into the next room, and he says, “Okay, so what do you think was number one?” I said, “Well, it was #16, and I thought it was the best because of x, y and z.” And they were all on the table in bags. So number one, he pulls out, is Futo, which is their neighboring property. So he sets it on the table with sort of a grim look on his face. He kind of purses his lips and says, “Okay, well, what was number two?” I said, “Well, okay, I thought this was second best, because of x, y, z, very gorgeous wine, a little different from number one, but I liked it because of this.” He pulls it out of the bag, it was Bryant Family. And he knew I had also applied up there, and one of his premises about hiring someone for the cellar is they needed to be very passionate about Harlan wine to work there. So suddenly, the pressure’s on. And when he sets the Bryant Family on the table, he shakes his head, and with a very serious look on his face, he says, “You’re not doing so well, son.” I thought, Oh, okay, here we go. He says, “All right, well, what’s number three?” And I said, “Well, number three, very different from the first two, I liked it very much for structure, this, that and the other. I felt it was number three for me.” Pulled it out of the bag, and it was the Harlan Estate.

Whew!

Exactly! He says, “All right, I guess top three will work.”

EPILOGUE: Later that same day, I [Steve] ran into Cory Empting and asked him about Nick’s interview. He grinned and said, “Very expensive tasting!” Half the wines indeed had been top Bordeaux, as Nick had divined.

I did my annual tasting and presentation last night at the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business Wine Industry Club. This is a group of students, numbering about 60, with an interest in wine.

This is always one of my favorite things to do all year. I like being in the company of smart, young, curious people, and Lord knows the MBA students at Haas are smart. Diverse, too. You always expect diversity in the Bay Area, but U.C. Berkeley is like a miniature United Nations. The only question I have is, where are the African-American MBA candidates? Maybe they’re just not into wine, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Black student in my four years of doing these classes.

They’re so curious, these young people, most of who seem to be in their twenties. They ask all the right questions: How do I taste? How do I decide on a rating? How do I keep my palate from being jaded? Do I feel badly when I give a mediocre score? One student in particular grilled me on why Wine Enthusiast won’t publish scores below 80. Don’t we have a responsibility, he asked, to warn consumers against flawed wines? (I told him I can see it both ways.) They wanted to know if I’m influenced by other critics, how I separate my own personal tastes from a wine’s objective qualities, about the relative merits of blind tasting vs. open tasting, about how many wines I can review at a time without tiring (I told them about Galloni doing 150 at a stretch), about whether my scores would be consistent if I reviewed the same wine over time, about reviewing wines that advertise in the magazine, about the merits of being a generalist versus a specialist taster.

In other words, they asked about all the things that this blog routinely deals with!

That was just the Q&A part. The actual content of the tasting was that the club’s chairman, who will graduate this Spring and go on to work at Deloitte, had asked that I talk about “What is the difference between an 80 pt wine, 90 pts, 95, 100?” So I got five wines, at five different score points, that we tasted through. They were:

80 points: Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon (California)
85 points: Louis M. Martini 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (Alexander Valley)
90 points: Rodney Strong 2008 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon (Alexander Valley)
95 points: St. Supery 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon (Rutherford)
100 points: 2006 Cardinale (Napa Valley)

It was most interesting revisiting the Cardinale. In the tasting I actually liked all the wines more than when I had first reviewed them, i.e., I would have scored them all a little higher (except,obviously, for the Cardinale). I was honest with the students and told them. They wanted to know how that could be, and I explained that most wineries rush me (and other critics) their wines almost immediately on release, whereas the wines really would benefit from sitting for another 3-6 months or even longer to settle down. But most wineries can’t afford to sit on inventory for that long. So it didn’t surprise me that, for example, the Woodbridge seemed more complete and wholesome than when I first tasted it, six months ago. Plus, last night’s Woodbridge was in magnum, whereas the wine I tasted last October was in a standard bottle. So these things–age and bottle format–make a difference.

I told the students that I have no control over when wineries send me wine, so, if I hold them all to the same standard and taste their wines when they get to me, I can sleep at night knowing I’ve done my best to be fair. They seemed to understand that.

The students had their own opinions, of course. One guy, from India, found the Rodney Strong (whose alcohol is 15%) “porty.” I explained that, yes, I’m well aware that some people with “European” palates might experience that, but that I have a California palate, thank goodness, as it would be pretty odd if I didn’t like the ripe, expressive style of some California wines.

The St. Supery really stunned me. The students asked me a lot of questions about how I come up with my descriptive vocabulary (fruits, flowers,  etc.) and I told them that organoleptic terms are fine, as far as they go, but at some point with a great wine, you have to elevate your vocabulary beyond metaphors and enter into a conceptual realm, such as elegance, balance, classicism, even emotional impact. I told them the story of how Napoleon allegedly used to make his troops bow down as they marched past the Clos de Vougeot. That, I said, was a form of wine description that captures, in a single gesture, what the wine is like, or what it means to the taster.

And then there was the Cardinale. I must say everyone liked it, although the club’s president warned them that they were no doubt being influenced by what they knew of its price and reputation. Perhaps. This elicited a discussion of how a taster must separate himself from external bias to the greatest extent possible. For myself, the Cardinale was everything I remembered from when I reviewed it, at the Napa Valley Vintners, 2-1/2 years ago. It had perhaps closed down a bit, entering that funny middle period when a wine is no longer quite as fat and gorgeous as it is in youth, but has not yet approached anything resembling secondary bottle development. In my review, I had written it would improve for at least eight years. Last night, I told the students that I would now extend my window of prognostication out to 2022. That, in turn, elicited a conversation about ageability: How does a critic know? I replied that, as in all things, particularly the economic field into which these students are embarking on careers, there are known unknowns; and ageability is one of those.

So smart, these Berkeley students. So international in outlook. Next time you get depressed about the state of things, go hang out with some smart kids. Works for me everytime.

I was chatting with Bill Harlan yesterday and he made two comments (among many others) I thought were particularly interesting:

1. Napa Valley is basically all planted out. Remaining land is too steep or otherwise geologically inappropriate for grapes, or else the local laws prohibit it from development.

2. The slump in demand for high-end Napa wine has pretty near bottomed out. Within a year, demand will begin to soar again. This is being helped by interest in export markets, particularly Asian.

Concerning #1, it had never occurred to me to ask anyone if Napa is all planted out, until Bill said so (and if anyone should know, it’s this man, whose eye constantly ranges over the Napa landscape, looking for things no one else sees). Strange; it’s such a basic question. I guess I took one look at all that empty space (well, not really “empty,” as it’s filled with forests) in the Mayacamas, and those less-forested slopes of the Vacas, and figured anyone with enough moolah could move in and plant it.

But no. Bill disabused me of that notion. So let’s accept the fact that what we see in Napa Valley, in terms of vineyard acreage, is pretty much what we’re going to see 10, 20, 50 years from now.

What’s the implication for prices? Right off the bat, even a layman (which is what I am when it comes to economics) can see that, if demand increases and supply is static, then price must rise.

And demand is rising–not just because, as Bill pointed out, China now has skin in the game, but because the evil Recession is petering out (actually, it was officially declared over last October), and people once again are starting to spend. Granted, the beleaguered middle class (that’s me) continues to stuggle, but then again, we were never the ones that bought Harlan and all the other cult wines in the first place. That was rich people, and they’re the first ones to recover as the economy improves. From everything I can see, the wealthy are spending again on all manner of toys, and that includes super-expensive wine.

So that touches on Bill’s #2 prediction, that the slump in Napa high-end wine (which we knew occurred after 2007, through anecdotes and confessions) is over. We’d have to see the actual sales figures for all the cults–Harlan, Screaming Eagle, Colgin, Bryant, Araujo, you know the list as well as I do–to know for sure. But I keep my pulse on the industry pretty tightly, and I can tell you that confidence is back at the top houses. Prices are once again inching up, which would have been unthinkable three years ago. There’s optimism in the air.

And this optimism isn’t based on simple faith, it’s based on something more fundamental: the knowledge of proprietors that they possess the most valuable commodity in American wine: “Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.” No four words have the same cachet. None ever will. Pinot Noir (from California and Burgundy) may be the sizzle of the moment (and deservedly so), the contrarian wine even some Cabernet winemakers in Napa collect in their cellars, and that critics love to praise. But Pinot cannot rival Cabernet for sheer seriousness, and besides, for a wine to be famous it must be irrevocably connected to a place. Where is the place in California for Pinot Noir? You cannot name just one. Yet “Cabernet Sauvignon” is as yoked to “Napa Valley” as “Queen Elizabeth” is to “England.”

And this just in:

“People with Tattoos Drink More Alcohol, Shows New Study From France”

Not only more alcohol, but better, I would hope, if they can afford it. And lest you think tattooes are only for prisoners and skateboard kids, I would remind you to check out the arms of players in the NBA, NFL and MLB. Tatts have gone upscale. I always said that people with tattoos had greater discernment about the finer things in life than the skin art-challenged (as we call the non-tattooed), and now we have proof. Now (speaking of cult Cabernet), if I can only lure Jayson Woodbridge down to my Oakland tattoo artist to get that chest art he says he wants…

Every wine critic, or wannabe, has to face the truth sooner rather than later: Since you can’t taste every wine in the world, you have to pick and choose what you can.

Circumstances compel it. There are, broadly speaking, two ways to deal with this situation. You can be a globe-trotting generalist, like Jancis Robinson, who can fly anywhere in the world and be welcomed with open arms by the most famous wineries in that region. (All right, if you detect a teensy weensy note of jealousy there, I’ll own up to it.) Or, along similar but less celebrated lines, you can be a Joe Roberts/1WineDude. He has, I suspect, fewer options than Jancis (at this point in his career, anyhow), having to depend on junkets or whatever comes across his transom (archaic metaphor). But he’s still a generalist: a little Italy, a little California, a little Spain, a little whatever, here’s what I think.

Being a generalist has its advantages. You get, over time, a grounding in the world’s wines. But generalism has its drawbacks. You can never really get to thoroughly understand a particular region; and if you can’t do that, then you can’t help your readers do it. Another drawback of generalism is that the peripatetic wine critic tends, most likely, to pay attention only to the best known wines of whatever region she’s covering at any particular time. New wineries, younger winemakers, innovative producers tend to be ignored by the generalist.

On the other hand are the specialists, like me in California, Paul Gregutt in the Pacific Northwest or, for that matter, all of Wine Enthusiast’s regional editors. I’d also include Lenn Thompson, at New York Cork Report, Alfonso Cevola’s On the Wine Trail in Italy and HaKerem: The Israeli Wine Blog as examples of specialists.

The neat thing about specializing is that you get a top to bottom understanding of your region, which you can then share with your readers. But I can see both sides of most things, including the specialist-generalist spectrum.

There are hundreds of wine blogs of both types, more than anyone can keep track of. To get just a taste, check out Alltop, a source that many bloggers go to every day to see who’s saying what about whom. I celebrate this diversity. It’s so different from when I started, when your choices were limited to 3 or 4 American critics with any credibility, and a handful of English writers whose knowledge of California wines was woefully inadequate, and limited to what they thought were the “important” wineries. It was all top down. New wineries didn’t have a chance of being discovered, unless they had a friend somewhere.

At the same time, this diversity puts the consumer in a bind. Whom to believe? That’s what’s so interesting about the Alltop website (which itself represents only a fraction of all wine blogs). There never have been so many choices, so many opportunities for consumers to obtain information and opinions on wine. That’s good, I suppose; but it’s also an unstable situation in need of resolution. This proliferation of sources reminds me of a Rube Goldberg machine, an overly complicated, irrational way of getting something simple accomplished.

Which is why wine critics have to make their choices. This chaotic situation will resolve itself, probably within the next few years. There will be a winnowing out. Who survives the coming shakeout cannot be known in advance; but, in retrospect, we’ll be able to look back and understand why “many were called, but few were chosen.” The chosen ones will be those who made the right choices, and stuck to their game plan.

I like Allen Meadow’s dictum about Burgundy, expressed in his new book, The Pearl of the Côte: “You may not always get what you pay for, but one thing’s for sure: You’ll never get what you don’t pay for.”

I’m sure that’s true of a region as old, established and well understood as Vosne, where they figured out a long time ago that, say, La Romanée is great terroir whereas Echezeaux is slightly less so–hence the difference in price.

What about California? Let’s take Allen’s Dictum and apply it to certain wines and regions.

Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon/Bordeaux blends.

“You may not always get what you pay for.” True enough! I can’t tell you how many 85-87 point Cabs I’ve reviewed that cost more than $50, and sometimes a lot more, into triple digits. (Readers of my blog know that I don’t identify specific wines in a critical way. But you can always go to Wine Enthusiast’s free database and look up my scores. Then you’ll see who I’m talking about.) I don’t know about you, but I think it sucks when an 86 point wine costs $70. That is the very definition of “not getting what you pay for.”

However–and it’s a big however–the truth about Napa Valley is that, in general, you do get what you pay for. To pick one example, $275 for 2007 Araujo Eisele? At 98 points, it’s worth every penny (unless you happen to be of the Fred Franzia school of thought which declares that no wine is worth more than $10).

Do you have to pay that much for a 98 point wine? Nope. Consider Vine Cliff’s 2007 Oakville Cabernet, which also got 98 points, and costs “only” $75. The difference, I suppose, is bragging rights. I guess it’s flashier to put Araujo on your table than Vine Cliff.

Now, how about “You’ll never get what you don’t pay for” in Napa Cabernet. That, too, is true. You simply have to pay a lot of money for a top Cabernet (although, as we just saw with the Vine Cliff, “a lot of money” is a relative term). Still, the fact is that most of my very top scoring Cabs do cost in the triple digits. If you can’t afford that, then I’m afraid you’ll rarely get a great Napa Valley red wine.

California Pinot Noir.

This is a different story. “You may not always get what you pay for.” Well, that’s always true, across the board, in every variety, wine type or region in the world. But here, we have to be careful, because the statement “You may not always get what you pay for” is actually very complicated. Break it down, and you’ll see that it has to do with expectations. What if you’re disappointed when you taste an expensive Pinot Noir?

It could be that the wine actually is very good, only it’s not to your liking. Young Pinot is notoriously more difficult to appreciate than young Cabernet, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience. Maybe you prefer a lush, rich, high alcohol Pinot, and the one you bought is made in an earthier, more acidic style. (Of course, you should have done your homework before you spent, but that’s another story.) Still, it’s absolutely true that, in California Pinot Noir, “You may not always get what you pay for” occurs more frequently than in Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.

How about “You’ll never get what you don’t pay for” in Pinot Noir. That, too, is true, and it’s even truer than it is with Cabernet Sauvignon. In Cabernet, there’s a chance that, with careful selection, you can get a fine Cabernet for $25. To pick but a single example (and there are many), I gave 91 points to Raymond’s 2008 Family Classic Cabernet Sauvignon, which has a Napa-Sonoma-Lake appellation. That’s a pretty good wine. Why Cabernet is easier to make good and inexpensive is because Cabernet isn’t really that hard to make to begin with. Get the grapes ripe, have sound winemaking practices, give it a little oak, and voila. Much of the rest is sizzle, not steak.

Good Pinot under $25? Fageddaboudit. Sure, dig through my database and you’ll find some 91s and 90s in the $11-$20 bracket, but not too many. It’s not much easier finding great Pinot from $21-$30, and such as there are tend to be notable for instant gratification rather than true, ageworthy complexity. Example: Melville 2010 Verna’s Estate Pinot Noir ($26), which I scored at 93 points. That’s an amazing bargain, which is why I gave it an Editor’s Choice special designation. But again, it’s an exception to the rule.

What about all those other varieties–Zinfandel, Syrah, Petite Sirah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc? Allen’s Dictum is far less relevant. It’s easier to find good versions of all these varieties at lower price points, while super-expensive bears less relation to quality than in Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon. (I consciously include Chardonnay in this generalization.) I guess that’s why Cabernet and Pinot are described as noble varieties. You do get what you pay for.

I have mixed feelings about the Federal Trade Commission requiring alcoholic beverage companies to reveal their “Internet marketing and data collection practices,” as reported here.

Most of the information I cite here came to me this morning from the Buffalo Trace Distillery, a Kentucky-based whiskey brewer, through an email blast. Unfortunately, the contents of that email are not available on the Internet, so I can’t provide a link.

But according to Buffalo Trace, the FTC “for the first time” has requested the information in order “to see how effective the industry’s voluntary guidelines are in reducing marketing messages to underage audiences.” The companies now under compulsary order by the FTC include Anheuser-Busch, Diageo, Constellation, Brown-Forman, Jackson Family Wines, Pernod Ricard and many others that are big players in the wine, beer and spirits industry.

The FTC is concerned, rightfully so, with Internet marketing of alcoholic beverages to people below the age of 21. According to Adweek magazine, which reported a version of the story yesterday, until fairly recently the FTC wasn’t terribly concerned with Internet marketing of alcoholic beverages. But all that changed following “the explosion in mobile apps and social media, reportedly a new favorite of alcohol marketers.” Seems the FTC became aware of a study which determined that “digital marketing…might be even more profound than the known risks of exposure to traditional marketing,” particularly when targeted to “youth who…increased their drinking levels more over time…into their late 20s.” You can find a link to this study by going here and then clicking on the “Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age” link at the bottom of the page, which brings you the PDF.

The reason I have mixed feelings about this new policy by the FTC is because I’m concerned about the increasing encroachment of the government into our Internet activities. I grant that the government has a legitimate interest in combating underage drinking. It’s also obvious that alcoholic beverage companies are experts when it comes to marketing. See this report on how “Social networks are becoming the go-to platform for alcohol marketing,” which says “social media has become a new venue for promotion, and alcohol is no exception.” Check out, for example, this YouTube-like opener for Corona Beer. It’s really well made, addictive in its own way. Who wouldn’t want to be young, cute and lovable, on a warm beach at night, with other young, cute lovable kids, rocking out to live music while sucking up the suds? The possibilities for love are endless.

Of course these ads are reprehensible; they seek to entice young people into irresponsible behavior, at a point in their lives–teenage–when they’re least capable of self-discipline. On the other hand, how intrusive do we want government to get, even with giant corporations? It’s also unclear what the FTC means to do with the information it has required from the companies, which is due by June 11. Can the FTC force companies to drop their Internet ads? Is that censorship? What will the courts decide? As usual, the intersection of public policy, law and private behavior (remember, “corporations are people”) is an exceedingly complicated one.