So the Wine Spectator got fooled. It’s kinda funny, and it may even be just a little bit telling. What it isn’t is evidence of any kind of graft or misrepresentation on their part. They’ve been open about their awards process from the beginning.

Interestingly, I don’t fault Robin Goldstein either. He’s got a book to sell after all. This was a well calculated move to garner attention for himself, and he went to seemingly great lengths to ensure that he was able to pull off his ruse. Kudos. Great marketing.

You know, just like Wine Spectator’s awards program. Great marketing. Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot.

What I’m dismayed with is how some rabid frothers on either side seem incapable of seeing both sides for what they are: people and entities working to market their wares and sell their products.

I’m all for a good holy war, but first you gotta find me something holy. This is just business.

Exciting news!

It works out that a tasting of Kick Ranch producers provides the perfect opportunity to pour barrel samples of my wines to the public for the first time.

Thus, I would like to warmly invite you to come and taste not just the 2007 Bedrock Heirloom WIne, the 2007 Rebecca’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, and the 2007 Kick Ranch Syrah, but also the offerings from Lynmar, Carica, Loxton, and Sanglier Cellars.

Where and when you ask!?

Overlooking the water of the beautiful San Francisco Bay on Sunday, August 17th from 1-5 PM @

The Golden Gate Yacht Club in the Commodore Room

1 Yacht Club Way, in the Marina of San Francisco.

This should be a great opportunity for me to meet all of you, and also for you to spend an afternoon tasting the excellent wines of 5 up and coming producers or Syrah, Pinot Noir, and Sauvignon Blanc.

I hope to see you all there.

Morgan

I’ll be there with The Wife and The Boy and will probably be helping dole out barrel samples.

It’s only a small (around $5) donation to charity at the door and the wines should be excellent. Total bargain and guaranteed good times!

Each seminar costs $150.00 and generally runs for half a day. All classes are held in Schultz room 1121, just inside the library.

Below is a list of the classes on offer. I’ll note which I’ve had the pleasure of attending in the past year or so and give them a letter grade.

At the bottom of the page is a short poll. I have enough time in my schedule to attend 2 classes this November and I intend to report extensively on what I learn, right here on the blog. I’ll list my top 4 choices and let you folks vote to decide which 2 of the 4 I’ll attend.

Hopefully this will benefit those of you not in Northern California, or those who lack the time but wish they could attend.

Should be fun! On to the classes…

Monthly Reporting for Federal Compliance
Instructor: David Lose.

I took this class several years ago and it seems that David is still teaching the class today. At a low level David will show you how to do the mechanical work required for Federal complaince, but the high level stuff and the Q&A with a formal ATF inspector is the real value of the course. I walked away absolutely sure that it was worth while to hire a compliance expert. But I also walked away knowing how to talk to such an expert with at least a bedrock of Federal compliance knowledge.

Grade: B+ - If you already have a compliance expert you trust, this isn’t really a crucial skill set or body of knowledge. However, if you want to understand all the vagaries of the wine business and you own you own brand, this is a great opportunity to gain some much needed insight from someone who has been on the other side.

Pricing Wine
Instructor: Steven Cuellar

From the course notes:

This course will cover the pricing of wine from basic theory to applications using modern statistical techniques and actual wine data. Through hands on exercises participants will be given the opportunity to explore various methods for determining optimal prices for their wines.

I haven’t taken this class as it is a new offering. The instructor is an Assoc. Professor of Econ at Sonoma State, so the material presented should be fairly rigorous. However I’m always wary of claims that the optimal price for anything can be known without lots of testing in the actual marketplace. Perhaps that is precisely what Dr. Cuellar intends to show attendees how to do, but in that case the class holds little value to someone with a new brand with no market history.

Moreover, using past/current pricing data to choose the price point for your bottle of wine has one huge disadvantage: you are following your competitors in your market instead of leading.

Seth Godin made an idea about pricing famous, and it has to do with being remarkable. One way to be remarkable, he argues, is to be the highest priced in your niche, or the lowest priced. Since being remarkable is the surest way to sales success, using your price is an attractive and legitimate way to achieve that goal. It also has the benefit that it doesn’t take fancy statistics for you to figure out where you need to price your wine. Either aim high, or aim really low. Yes, it’s true, people aren’t rational.

There are other ways to make your brand remarkable, but if price is one of your main options pricing your product at the same level as everyone else is the “safe” play. And paradoxically, in today’s market the “safe” play is actually the highest risk play there is.

Grade: Incomplete (haven’t yet attended)

Introduction to Tasting Room Management
Instructor: Jil Child

Here is another case where I think the Q&A session during and after the class will be the most valuable part of attending.

Jil has a wealth of knowledge and experience and will be joined by several other local tasting room managers who will share their insights.

Again though, you will not learn anything at the class other than what most other wineries are already doing. This can be hugely helpful and illuminating, make no mistake. But to really make an impact and be remarkable, to stand out from your peers, you’ll need to do something new. Something different. Unfortunately there’s no class for that.

With that caveat in mind, this looks like a pretty interesting class.

Grade: Incomplete (haven’t yet attended)

Advanced Wine Brand Development
Instructor: Paul Novak

A class on longer term brand planning with case studies. It’s another new class that I’ve yet to attend and is one of the 4 on the list below.

Here’s the blurb:

As a wine branding “guru” Paul Novak has few peers. In this advanced class on wine brand development, our instructor will explain how your long-term brand vision can be managed towards success. The brand plan is the key tool for precisely defining desired positioning, anticipated competitive stance and pricing and distribution strategies among others. The brand plan in combination with a thorough understanding of consumer’s perspectives will set the stage for increased success in marketing and sales execution. Paul will also share with the class case studies that will demonstrate how these principles can be applied.

Grade: Incomplete (haven’t yet attended)

Working the Channel: A Professional Selling Workshop
Instructors: James Haug, Ray Johnson, and Larry Van Aalst.

Blurb:

This professional selling workshop, explores the basics of selling from your first contact through follow-up and service. Learn the intricacies of effective communication and gain a new appreciation for asking questions.

This is yet another new class, and it seems like it would be a good one for both a new salesperson or a new brand owner or manager with litlle wine sales experience. Since I’m intensely interested in Direct to Trade sales, I’ll be putting this one on the list below.

Grade: Incomplete (haven’t yet attended)

The Easy Way to Successful Direct Marketing
Instructor: Elizabeth Slater

Blurb:

The most important element of direct marketing - yes, even more important than the wine–is connecting potential and current customers with your brand, your business and your products. A key facet of connection is your story.

• Learn how to tell a compelling story that differentiates you from other wineries
• Develop a unique selling proposition for your wines and your winery
• Discover these and other methods of connection in an interactive and enthusiastic workshop that will increase direct sales through your tasting room, newsletters, wine clubs and other direct marketing strategies.

The title itself is misleading; direct is hard. There is no “easy” in direct. Compound that with the fact that tasting rooms, wine clubs and newsletters are all so incredibly basic and common that this class will likely do little to improve your chances to succeed at direct - at least using those tactics alone. Hopefully there will be a bunch of creative “other” in the “other direct marketing strategies” portion of the seminar.

Still, it will have value for those with little to no experience or knowledge of direct winery sales.

Grade: Incomplete (haven’t yet attended)

Marketing Your Wine to Fine Restaurants
Instructor: Bryan Bousquet

Blurb:

An experienced restaurant owner with a top-rated wine list will share her experiences in working with wineries to taste and select their wines. You will get practical tips for introducing your wines to restaurants and insights into what you can expect the next time you meet with the restaurant wine buyer. A panel of guests including restaurant owners, wine buyers and sommeliers will answer questions such as:

• How do you get your wine on the wine lists of fine restaurants?
• What do restaurateurs look for when they taste your wine?
• How do they construct their wine lists?
• What is the difference between wine by the glass and a listing on the main wine list?
• How is a wine judged to be food-friendly?
• What are the future trends for wine lists in fine restaurants?
• What are consumers buying and why?

I’d taken this class before when local treasure Bill Traverso used to teach it. Traverso was very no-nonsense and down to earth in his approach. He did his best to dissuade pie-in-the-sky wannabe producers like me from being shortsighted in how we approach wine shop and restaurant placements. Bottom line: don’t get into this business so you can brag to your friends that your juice is on the wine list at the local trendy white table cloth or snooty wine shop. You need a sales plan, a brand strategy and great juice. Not much room in that equation for pure ego plays.

Also, don’t drop in on wine buyers without an appointment, don’t expect immediate feedback, and understand just how much wine these buyers have to taste each month. When you compare that with the available shelf space it’s not a pretty ratio.

The new instructor, Bryan Bousquet, will bring his wine buying experience and perspective from Mirepoix to the table, and as always real world feedback is extremely valuable. This one will be on the list as well.

Grade (previous instructor): A

Wine Labels: Protecting Your Trademarks and Designing Legal Labels
Instructors: Jay Behmke and Linda Fox

I learned A LOT from Jay Behmke in this class a couple years back. His advice was a tremendous help in getting our IP in order and this class is a must attend for anyone starting up a brand. Jay will show you step by step how to submit a label, name or any other trademark-able intellectual property to the USPTO. He also gives many useful tips on how to get your specific IP approved as well as what to avoid.

Jay also has the quirky habit of pronouncing merely so that it sounds almost like he’s saying “merrily.” I remember a lot of confused looks when he first said “primarily merely a surname.” Primarily merrily a surname? What? Good times.

I don’t have much to say about Linda Fox other than she was the person I used last year to get my permits, and we all know how that turned out. If you can’t say anything nice…

This one is a must attend for Behmke alone. He even took the time to answer some email of mine months after the class, and his reputation in the industry is impeccable. Highly recommended.

Grade: A-

So, Which Classes Should I Attend?

I’ll attend the top 2 vote getters and will report on the content of the class extensively here on the blog. Yes, you can vote twice.

Thanks for voting!

So yes, that old horse needs another beating, and I’m here to deliver the blows (you’ll see why that could be considered pun of Giles-ian proportions below).

The Real Writer’s Secret Weapon

One of the classic criticisms of bloggers is that they lack an editorial filter. Grammatical error errors, misspelled worlds words and poor fact checking are the triad of deadly sins of which bloggers are most often accused.

The editorial filters that Real Writers have access to, their secret weapons, are what are referred to in Real Journalism as “subs” (short for subeditors). Subs are in charge of cleaning up prose, spell checking, fact checking, grammar checking, and house style checking. They even write headlines, layout and publish pages, and edit picture galleries. In short, they rock.

If you’re a blogger, a sub sounds like the ultimate writer’s resource right? Can you imagine someone doing all that for you each time you post? It’s like having a live-in maid.

Yet for Guardian UK restaurant critic Giles Coren, not so much. That’s him over on the left. Giles, you see, is an Artiste and to his way of thinking subs are simply a rag-tag bunch of “useless c*nts”. His words not mine. But I don’t want to step all over Giles and quote him out of context! Instead I’ll let him take the wheel from here.

Behold:

From the Guardian UK

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don’t know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i’m assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it’s only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn’t here - if he had been I’m guessing it wouldn’t have happened.

I don’t really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn’t going to happen anymore, so I’m really hoping it wasn’t you that f*cked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh.”

It appeared as: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh.”

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking “I’ll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate c*nt and i know best”.

Well, you f*cking don’t.

This was sh*t, sh*t sub-editing for three reasons…

…’Nosh’, as I’m sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German ‘naschen’. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, ‘nosh’, means simply ‘food’. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the ‘a’…

…I will now explain why your error is even more sh*t than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as “sexually-charged”. I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word ‘gaily’ as a gentle nudge. And “looking for a nosh” has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. “looking for nosh” does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you’ve f*cking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks sh*t with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, f*cking christ, don’t you read the copy?

That’s right, the sub’s irredeemable offense was that he or she removed an “a.”

Better still, at the end of the day all this anger and vitriol is over an infantile blowjob joke. And a bad one at that. I’m pretty hip to the lingo and the whole gay thing and the blowjob reference went - WHOOP - right over my head. And if no one gets your joke? Yeah, not funny.

It’s clear to me though that wine and food bloggers have quite a ways to go before we can measure up to the Giles Corens of the world. You know, Professionals.

And if you think that Giles is just a lone voice crying expletives in the wilderness, you’d be wrong. Here’s Laura Barton giving Giles an old atta boy for “taking one for the team.” Apparently he’s the team’s spokesman!

Incidentally, I wonder how many subeditors have blogs? It seems like the perfect medium for their skills. They can write, self edit and self fact check. You know, everything Real Writers like Giles can’t!

Just have a look at the subeditors response piece to Giles. Well written, witty, and classy.

Somebody, quick! Get the Sunday Times subeditors Wordpress accounts!

For more Giles fun, here are the collected misadventures courtesy of the Guardian website.

Good times.

A southern French winemaker has been injured and is currently under investigation after explosives he was making blew up in his winery…

He is currently being investigated for links to recent attacks by the CRAV, a militant group of winemakers.

Public prosecutor Francis Battut told news agency AFP the police were looking to determine ‘whether the explosive devices are the same as those used in attacks these last few months’.

The winemaker told police the bombs, made with over-the-counter ingredients, were to be used to bring down poplar trees on his land…

Homemade explosives. To fell poplar trees. Hell, why not! You could also use m-80s to cultivate, and a shotgun to broadcast cover crop. Extreme viticulture was never this fun and exciting. Except when you blow yourself up. In your own winery.

So anyway, this all got me wondering what a meeting of CRAV, the militant winemakers group, might look like. Who brings the wine, because you know they aren’t drinking the crap they produce? Do they ritually smash bottles of Gallo before each meeting? Do they bring schematics and explosive materials along for show and tell? Do they make molotov cocktails out of Provincial rose bottles? The mind reels.

According to the Wikipedia entry on CRAV, their demands have included

…elements which are more-or-less impossible for French politicians to implement under European Union rules, since they would mean interfering with the single market and introducing national subsidies on top of the Common Agricultural Policy. The group has called for higher restrictive tariffs against the rising imports of wine from Spain and Italy, where lower social costs, less red tape and another industry structure leads to more economical wine production.

It has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks including dynamiting grocery stores, a winery, the agriculture ministry offices in two cities, burning a car at another, hijacking a tanker, and destroying large quantities of non-French wine…

On 17 May 2007 the group released a video in which it was stated that blood would flow if Nicolas Sarkozy failed to act to raise the price of wine.

There will be blood indeed. FAIL.

The Shirt Hits The Holy Land

The first pic is of some folks very close to my heart, my parents and my pastor and his wife on the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Israel. Besides being the largest fresh water lake in Israel, some cool stuff happened there in antiquity including a little water walking.

My Dad is on the left next to my Mom. Pastor Jim and his wife Mary are on the right. Motley crew all around. I’m not exactly sure what wine they are rockin’ in the photo, but I’m told it was a Cabernet blend and that it went down easy.

The Shirt Catches Big Fish

This second pic is from noted photographer and vineyard owner Alan Campbell near La Paz Mexico. Alan was there last week on a fishing vacation, and the shirt apparently brought him good fortune. Check out this absolute heifer of a dorado Pez Gallo.

Good times.

And thanks for the photos! Keep ‘em coming in.

There are signs the industry is concerned about a Syrah slump and is gearing up to do something about it. In May, Gallo sponsored a Syrah Symposium in Santa Ynez…

At one of the Symposium seminars, I was struck when several of the panelist-winemakers blamed the wine media for Syrah’s failure to win hearts, minds and wallets. “You guys have to do a better job of educating consumers,” one said.

Before I launch into a rant at the folly of blaming anyone - critics, distributors, consumers, God or the weather - for a lack of consumer interest in a variety, let me just say that Steve Heimoff’s blog has been consistently excellent since it launched just a few short weeks ago. Steve updates often, and with compelling content. Be sure to check him out.

So, back to the blame game. Here’s a question for wine producers: Who’s in charge of making sure your wine sells?

If you answer anyone other than “Me” I think a serious re-examination of your business is in order.

Wine Critics

Wine writers shouldn’t be relied upon to advocate for any one region or variety, even though they sometimes do. We’re fortunate as an industry to have talented individuals who are passionately driven to write about wine. But relying on the wine media as a core part of your business model is simply folly. Wine writers write for their audience, not to further the marketing goals of a winery or wine region.

The same goes for wine scores. There are so many other avenues to pursue right now in wine marketing it is simply lazy to rely solely on the tried and true: points and medals. If and when the scores and accolades come, bully for you.

But even if they don’t, many long lasting luxury wine brands have been built without top scores. They did it with savvy marketing, ridiculously great customer service, and good wine in styles that consumers desire.

Bottom line: If your business model includes “make a 94 point wine and sell out,” you’re short both imagination and good sense.

Distributors

The story is similar with distributors. It can be fantastic to have a distribution partner with connections, leverage and years of relationships with buyers out there moving your wine for you and building your brand.

But what are the chances that you’ll enter the industry tomorrow and fall right into such an arrangement? Yeah, good luck with that. For the vast majority of brands, you can’t rely on distributors to build your brand for you, especially if you are small or have a variety that isn’t in fashion at the moment.

Another reason why distributors are often a bad deal is the following paradox: If your brand is strong enough to attract the interest and support of a distributor (which means there is pull demand from the market) you should be looking at turning that brand strength into direct sales and moving to the self-distribution model.

Furthermore, the last thing the sales reps at the distributors want to do is launch a new brand. Believe me. It reeks of effort, and many reps are distinctly uncurious about little known wines and wine regions. They want to move product, make commissions, get recognized and get promoted. They don’t give a whit about your brand, and why should they?

Oh yeah, and the margins suck too.

Consumers

There is only one group you can rely on to help you sell wine, and unless you have direct contact with them, you’ll never be able to actually influence them.

Delighted customers are the only asset you can reliably lean on to help you market and sell your wine. If consumers aren’t recommending your wine, it means you aren’t delighting them. You aren’t exceeding their expectations at every opportunity.

It’s a very tough proposition, delighting customers and consistently exceeding their expectations so that they’ll talk about and recommend your wine. But it’s a tough business, and it’s glamourous enough that everyone wants to be in it.

It seems to me that being exceptional is the minimum threshold to even consider entering such a capital intensive, high risk industry. Which is why comments like the ones reported by Steve strike me as so utterly misguided.

Are these people just totally unprepared to compete?

Of course the devil is in the details. First off people have to be open to being educated. Then the material needs to be presented in an interesting and memorable way, and that’s not easy. Remember your High School Chemistry teacher? Exactly.

As much as I believe in online wine sales and the power of blogs and social media, the best chance for real education is in the tasting room. People are there because they want to know more and, if given the right information in the right way, formerly casual wine drinkers can be turned into well-informed brand ambassadors.

In fact there’s no doubt at all that face to face interaction in tasting rooms remains the best way for wineries to educate consumers and, as a result, sell more wine. But does it have to end there?

Education Outside the Tasting Room

But there are other opportunities for wineries to make wine information more easily comprehensible. Robert Parker revolutionized wine ratings by using a system of scoring that people already had a high comfort level with: the 100 point scale.

I wrote back in 2006 in a post titled How Wine Data Sheets Should Be that producers can do the same thing with the various chemistry data that we collect about our wines.

It seems pretty obvious to me: If you’re going to provide the information because you think it has value, why not make it accessible? Why not put the numbers into context that folks can instantly grasp. Like this:

So far only Twisted Oak has embraced such a system. Jeff even improved on the whole idea by adding descriptors to each side of the number line, giving even more context. Twisted Oak’s Geek Sheets are the best in the biz in my opinion, and it would go a long way toward educating consumers everywhere if more wineries used a number line to convey the difference between a TA of 3 g/L and one of 7 g/L.

Proof That Context Is Vitally Important

And if you think that context isn’t important, you’re just talking crazy. Look at the recent research just published by Harbertson et al in the latest issue of the AJEV regarding tannin concentration in red wines. Describing the study, here’s what they had to say:

The purpose of this study was to establish normative ranges for tannin in commercially available red wines…a key undertaking because no single winery laboratory would be likely to perform such work and make the results widely available.

A perfect example of public funding for applied wine science. And all aimed at giving the industry a larger context for understanding the results of the tannin assays they have run on their wines.

My question is: if producers need this information to understand the chemistry behind our wines, why the heck aren’t we also giving it to consumers? This is low hanging fruit, and we should grab it.

Based on Harbertson’s research on pinot, I can add this cool little visual aid to Capozzi’s slate of wine data graphics:

If you know of any other producers educating consumers in creative ways outside the tasting room, especially about wine quality, please leave a comment and let me know. They need to be recognized and encouraged!

I’ve thought a lot about our options, creative financing and the general direction of the economy. It’s all pretty dull and really just so much ineffectual navel gazing.

But I’ve had an epiphany!

What I should be doing is setting fire to the nearest police car!

Dateline: MONTPELLIER, France

Winemakers in southern France have burned two police cars and vandalized supermarkets during protests to demand government aid.

Vintners in the Languedoc-Roussillon region have been protesting plummeting prices for their wines as well as rising fuel costs.

A regional official, Cyrille Schott, said that protesters broke windows at the courthouse in the city of Montpellier. In nearby Montagnac, protesters wielding baseball bats chased police officers from their vehicles and set the cars on fire, he added.

Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie said the protesters had tried to burn a police car carrying six officers, the newspaper Le Figaro reported on its Web site.

“That is called attempted homicide,” she said, adding that the authorities would investigate.

Come to think of it, a few sticks of properly placed dynamite could probably do wonders for all the unsold housing inventory in California. Imagine the possibilities!

Thanks for the inspiration southern France winemakers!

Here’s a better question though: is your view of my credibility as a writer improved, or has it suffered due to my use of the sensational headline above?

Now what if I told you that while I believe the above to be true (I don’t) I’m really not qualified to give a definitive opinion since I haven’t read and interviewed most, or even many, American wine critics. How would you view my credibility now?

It’s an interesting question I think, especially after attending a book reading by Alice Feiring last night.

I went with Patrick and Genevieve of Iridesse Wines after an OWC meetup at Bovolo for a couple beers. We ambled over to the Healdsburg library, listened to Alice give a reading from her recent book and enjoyed a little Q&A with her after. To her credit, she took quite a bit of time to engage and the give-and-take was one of good humor from both Alice and the audience. She was charming and sweet and her writing is undeniably good.

Surprisingly, as far as wine goes, there are actually a few areas where Alice and I (and probably many Sonoma vintners as well) agree. It’s just that it’s extremely hard to find a middle ground with a person who would deign to write an article telling everyone to flush their California wine down the nearest commode, as Alice did in the LA Times earlier this year.

Alice claims that she just wants to make sure that the style of wine she prefers (lighter, less ripe, more transparent) shall not perish from the earth. It’s a laudable goal.

As I wrote in a previous post a year ago entitled “Bashing the 100 point scale”, if you decide to make a wine in a style that the market doesn’t want, you really only have two choices: you can either go broke, or you have to somehow create a market for your preferred style. Alice’s book is her attempt to help her favored producers (mostly French) do the latter.

In Alice’s more sober moments, when she isn’t marketing her book with a ferocity normally reserved for a new world brand manager, she’ll describe her mission by way of a question: “Isn’t the world big enough for more than just one style of wine?”

I’ll stipulate that it’s pretty clear the answer is “yes”. But how exactly does the inclusive, forward-thinking philosophy encapsulated in that pointed question about wine homogenization co-exist with the narrow-minded, hyperbolic view that nearly all California wine is undrinkable and you should throw it out?

That’s the basic question I had for Alice. So, when I asked her if she regretted writing the infamous LA Times piece, I was surprised at her response.

“No,” she answered, and gave as her grounds the reasoning that it was good marketing for her book and for her message. “It got people talking,” she said.

I suggested that such a position wasn’t all that different from a new world producer creating extracted, fruit laden wines so that they would stand out in a blind tastings. Aren’t winemakers also just trying to make an impression by “going big”? Aren’t they also just trying to get more people talking and buying their wines by making their juice as tasty and over the top as possible? Sadly my riposte didn’t seem to make much of an impression.

Still I’m left wondering: why do the marketing ends justify the means in one case, for writers, but not the other? And aren’t the New World producers on higher ethical ground in such a discussion, since at least they aren’t trying to proscribe one style of wine to the market at the expense of another, but are instead simply serving folks what they say they want?

I feel that if you’re serious about wanting to change people’s hearts and minds on anything, the best way to do so isn’t to tear someone (Parker) or something (a wine style) down. It isn’t to demean. It isn’t to insult.

The preferred way, the better way, the way that leads to lasting change in tastes and preferences, is to educate. Champion producers who hew to your way of thinking. Raise up the few that meet your standards at every opportunity and push hard to make them a success. Their success will encourage others to join them. And you’ll all be big winners.