I was recently interviewed by WineSpiralProject.com, as part of their series on wine industry innovation, in which they interview personalities in the wine world and ask them to share thoughts on the wine biz and how it can/should innovate.

Yeah, I know, I’m not 100% certain why they picked me either, but what’s done is done so let’s just roll with it, okay?

You can check out the entire series of interviews at this link; I’ll give the the super-short, edited-down-to-the-bare-bones-Cliff-Notes version of my interview right here:

Wineries are amazing at production innovation; Wineries suck at engagement innovation.

It’s not in bottling lines or fermentation vessels that we need an innovation push in the wine biz; we need innovation in adjusting the attitude that most wine producers have towards consumers. What do I mean by “engagement innovation?” Short answer: using the single most innovative outreach platform ever developed in the history of the human race – the Internet – to directly engage the people who buy their shiz. This may sound like common sense to you, but a lot of the producers I encounter seem to need reminding that those consumers – and not critics – are the ones who matter the most…

Yes, critics have reach. They can and do expose wine brands to markets that otherwise might not know they’d exist. But if I were a small-production winery, I’d be worrying a hell of a lot more about how to reach, engage, and keep customers I had (as well as engaging new ones) than trying to get a crazy-good review with critics that have substantial followings in the hopes that those followings will buy up every last drop, allowing them to quintuple prices and retire in the outer Hebrides.

Because that scenario is about as likely as Bon Jovi opening for my band on a world tour. In other words, for most producers it’s a total waste of time. And I am saying this as, in part, a wine critic – because after people do you the honor of following your thoughts about wine, and publicly declare on social media platforms that they are going to buy or avoid a wine that you write about because of what you said – or didn’t say – about it, then for all intents and purposes you are now a wine critic (at least, to them!).

But engaging customers and turning them into potential life-long fans of your brand? That’s happening every few seconds every day on social media platforms. To quote, well, myself from the interview (emphasis provided as published by WineSpiralProject.com):

“Wineries have the ability, through social media, to reach younger wine consumers directly and be just as influential on their buying decisions as Wine Spectator, Robert Parker, or little ol’ me. That is an amazing opportunity and those that do it right are gonna beat the pants off of those who don’t in the marketplace eventually. It takes time, and a long-term view because the influence is done via one-on-one relationships – patience is going to pay off in that case!”

That’s why I think it qualifies as “innovation” (sorry the rationale is coming so late, for those who have been waiting for it): because it’s nearly the opposite approach as compared to what most wine producers are doing in (not) reaching out to their customers right now.

Honestly, I’ve got no idea what producers (especially smaller wine producers) are waiting for when it comes to outreach. Well, aside from fear of the unknown, I mean. In my view, they should stop wasting time complaining about social media and just start using that time on social media to connect with customers already.

That’s sure-as-sh*t what I’d be doing if I made wine right now.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Where Can Wineries Really Innovate? In Engaging The People Who Actually Drink The Stuff! from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Why? Because there’s nothing “wrong” with it.

I am here today to tell you that Pinotage is not bad; it is simply different. And if you don’t like this oft-maligned but more-oft-misunderstood South African cross between Pinot noir and Cinsaut, that’s your prerogative. Just stop drinking it and shut about it, already, then. I mean, Pinotage has some high-profile wine critics who are haters right now – for Pete’s sake, Lettie Teague expresses disdain for it on her friggin’ homepage.

Yes, the worst of them (Pinotages, I mean, not wine critics) smell too much like overly-aged smoked meat wrapped in bananas and dipped into a vat of acetone that’s being bioled over a tire fire. I fully acknowledge that, okay?

But riddle me this, Wine Man: what bargain-basement version of any variety doesn’t have its fair share of sh*tty-tasting bottlings? Ever had really bad Cab? Terrible Pinot? Of course you have. Pinotage is no different than any other fine wine grape (yes, I meant to put the “fine” part in there), in that bad fruit in incapable winemaking hands results in a terrible wine, overemphasizing the worst qualities of any grape. It just so happens that Pinotage has more ammunition with which to work than most in the off-odors department.

That doesn’t mean that Pinotage cannot be beguiling when the right fruit gets into the right winemaking hands. It just means that there’s a little more of a deft balancing act to be attained when dealing with Pinotage.

But I know it can be done, and done well, because I’ve tasted some first-hand…

I suppose that I should expect a great deal of challenging push-back on this, since many seem to be strong with the Dark Side of the Pinotage Hate Force these days. So why the crotchety words on Pinotage-hate? Because I’m sick of wine variety bigotry, in which one style or grape gets maligned unfairly simply for being… itself..

The bottom line is that a lot of people dig the red fruit, leather, bacon, tropical fruit kitchen-sink mix of aromas that Pinotage has to offer – and they’re not wrong. You can shift your perspective to see their Pinotage-loving point of view, by the way – you just need to approach it with an open mind.

Am I saying that you should happily gulp-down any old Pinotage that reeks of acetone? NO – pour that shiz down the drain where it belongs. But I am saying that Pinotage that is complex, interesting, even compelling and doesn’t reek of acetone is, in fact, totally worth seeking out because it may end up being one of the most eye-opening, unique wine experiences that you’ll ever have along your personal journey towards vinous enlightenment.

For example, this bottle that I pulled from the growing ocean of samples in my cellar…

2008 Kanonkop Pinotage (Stellenbosch)
Price: $27
Rating: B+

The 2008 Kanonkop deftly captures the entire BBQ picnic in a single bottle; toast, smoked meats, red fruits, bananas, leather purses & all. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a great introduction to high-end Pinotage and actually delivers quality and complexity levels a bit above its price point.

The interesting thing about this wine, for me, is that it’s also a bit of a crowd-pleaser. I’ve served it to people without telling them what it is, and most happily drink it up and actually perform a bit of a head-fake when I later tell them it’s Pinotage. Now, it definitely tastes like Pinotage, it’s just that it’s fruity enough that the smoked meat and tropics are part of a balanced whole, so they don’t dominate. If I have a cavil about this juice, it’s that it’s a bit oaky – but even that demonstrates a fairly unique quality that Pinotage possesses, which is an ability to absorb amounts of toasty oak that would cripple other varieties and yet still offer a balanced and pleasing drinking experience.

So is this a commercial for Pinotage, harkening it as my new fave fine wine variety? No.

But it is a minor plea against the undeserved hate.

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Stop Hating On Pinotage, Already from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

I’m not here today to dissect Jon’s responses (many of which ring true for me, and are worth a read because he’s a very, very intelligent guy), but one answer he gave to the IntoWine folks struck me as a bit odd. To the tape (emphasis is mine):

“The average consumer still feels intimidated by wine and wine-speak. Are publications like the Chronicle partly responsible for the prevalent feeling among consumers that wine is somehow beyond their comprehension?

If we’re going point fingers at the idea that wine is pretentious, let’s start with the spread of overpriced, mass-produced wine sold as an aspirational luxury. I’ll borrow a phrase from a conversation with a fellow writer a few days ago: You write up to your audience, not down. If sportswriters had to explain a two-point conversion every time they mentioned it, we’d all die of boredom. That’s not an excuse to fall into jargon. But there is no shortage of amateur wine criticism out there that doesn’t contribute to the conversation.”

The trouble for me is that I’ve got no idea what conversation Jon is talking about in that response.

It might be that there is a hidden wine conversation, one available only to a Romanée-Conti-sipping secret society of critics with wine review superpowers like UV vision that can detect the exact number of Brett, fruit, and mushroom particles floating around in a glass of Burgundy and determine at a glance if they are at an appropriate level. A secret society that meets in an underground lair at an undisclosed location (guarded by pools of sharks with lazer beams attached to their heads) and through joint nefarious consensus determines what wines will get the really high scores this year.

The bottom line is that this secret society might as well also be made up of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny, because the real wine conversation is actually the one that the amateur critics are having. Or, I should say, it’s the thousands of real and virtual “water-cooler” conversations that the amateurs are having every day, all over the world…

While I’m not sure what Jon was getting at in his answer exactly, I suspect that it means there are people reviewing wine publicly who have neither the experience or background to make determinations on its quality in comparison to the greatest wines in the world. And on that point, he’d be right. I can tell you firsthand that the man knows his shiz, is sharper than a tack, and isn’t afraid to voice (and defend) a well-considered opinion – all traits that make me deeply admire his work.

But if I’m right about the reasoning behind the view he expressed to IntoWine, then I can safely conclude that the view is skewed, in that it ignores a fact that is fundamental to how wine information is being consumed today: nearly everyone who buys wine and decides to talk about it in their social circles is now an amateur wine critic to some extent.

This is not new news – in Internet terms, which are more akin to the rapid aging of dog years (and even then, those are parallax dog years, in accelerated speed-of-light terms compared with the orbiting-close-to-the-black-hole-event-horizon off-line world), it’s a bit of ancient history; studies that demonstrate the power of en masse customer reviews have been with us for years; and it’s not as if the pace of the Internet has slowed (or become less of a popular draw) since then. That wine should be somehow immune to the same forces of customers easily sharing their opinions on-line is, simply, insane-asylum-strait-jacket crazy.

This isn’t to say that the role of critics isn’t important – it is, precisely so that the barometer can be set for how wine’s compare across the entire quality spectrum, from the banal to the truly sublime; and not only across the less-experienced spectrum of each consumer’s taste-buds. But that doesn’t make those consumers’ taste buds somehow irrelevant – in fact, within immediate social circles, those consumers’ taste buds might not only be relevant, they might be the only taste buds that matter when it comes to wine recommendations, period.

So what’s a (professional) critic to do when everyone is a(n amateur) wine critic?

The answer, I think, is simple: help the amateur critics.

Professional wine critics now serve at the pleasure of the audiences who give them the honor – and humbling responsibility – of following their advice. Critics must therefore serve their audience above all else – and if separate conversations are being had when it comes to wine, then it seems to me that one of the critics duties in this now-not-so-new world is to help bridge the gap between those conversations, amateur and professional.

In other words, join the (lively, exciting, and engaging) amateur conversations, and invite the amateurs to join in theirs. Social media tools make this very, very easy to do – but that’s another topic entirely, and I’m already thirsty…

So for now, let’s just leave it at this: Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not adding to the wine conversation – because you are the conversation; and no matter what knowledge level of conversation you’re having, rest assured that your voice now matters, and matters more than it ever has!

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at You Are The Wine Conversation (What’s A Wine Critic To Do When Everyone Is A Wine Critic?) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

Well, unemployed in the traditional sense, anyway.

Those of you who’ve been following along with my (now well-protracted) endeavor to Go Pro in the wine biz are probably (and not without good reason) rolling your eyes and muttering “finally… it’s about time…” It only took me a year longer than originally planned to cut the cord (hey, it was their idea to keep extending me).

Nearly 15 years (that’s 14++* years in Wine Advocate math, I think) behind me at the same company… holy crap, that was a long time of not really fitting in (the pay made up for it, as did the people and great opportunities).

It’s become a bit of a tradition at my soon-to-be-former day job to send farewell email messages, and so I decided (after consultation with a few people at the DJ that I trust deeply) to author one of my own. I’m sharing an excerpt of that letter with you below, with the only modification being removal of some contact details and the company name.

On the surface, this has nothing whatsoever to do with wine, of course. So why am I sharing it? I’m not sure, actually.

Probably because so many of you out there feel like friends and family to me, even though many of us have never met face-to-face; and so I don’t mind telling you that the note was cathartic and helped to slow down the near-constant swing of my current emotional pendulum (which happens to be oscillating with vomit-inducing speed between he extremes of pure elation at chasing my dream, and sheer terror at facing the road-much-less-traveled) – and that the lessons-learned I described in that DJ farewell note have everything to do with how I approach the wine world.

That, and it feels more original than giving you a list of sparkling wine recommendations for New Year’s Eve (here’s some quick advice – go with the real-deal and pop open some Champagne… you know, the stuff actually from Champagne… in France)…

Anyway… here ‘tis…

This will not be a long, protracted farewell message (and it would’ve fit on one screen if not for the contact details!). It’s with mixed emotions that I hand in my laptop and BB tomorrow and wrap up my career here (sad to leave such a great group of people, but happy to finally hand back the BB!). If any of you don’t yet know what a pleasure it was working with you over the years, and how much I will miss that – well… an email from me isn’t going to cut it at this point probably, but you can rest assured that I would’ve told you in person had time/opportunity allowed it!

For those who want to stay in touch (and I sincerely hope you do), I am fairly difficult to miss on-line these days (and yes, you can feel free to ping me for wine recommendations… trust me, you will not be the only ones so just go ahead and do it).

I asked a few people if I should send a farewell note, all of them said yes, but I will refrain from mentioning them by name to prevent any embarrassment should this email not turn out as well as I’d hoped. Anyway, when asked, they all agreed that a list of the most important lessons I learned in nearly 15 years here would be appropriate goodbye-email content (but then, they may just have been trying to get me to shut up…). You probably don’t need the following insights, but I’d hate to end this note on a list of contact links, so here goes:

1) “Don’t do things that suck, because life is too short for that.” This was told to me by a deadbeat friend-of-a-friend while I was on vacation in the Bahamas – this guy was the kind of deadbeat who couldn’t hold down a steady job during the economic boom in the U.S… a strange place to gain inspiration but I’ve thought often about his words, which basically amount to “follow your heart” (but that sounds waaaaay cheesier, doesn’t it?). Go for the work that you will enjoy, that will challenge you, that feels worth doing (and you will find such work here, by the way).

2) Whatever you do, go ALL IN. I remember hearing a quote from a movie that was replayed during an interview on NPR, listening to it on the car stereo on the drive into the ISP office a few years ago. I don’t recall who said it, or what the movie was about, or the exact words (lame, I know…. I really need to take a memory class…), but I can tell you that it summed up my approach to, well, to life. The quote was something along the lines of “Go all in, because when you do, you are at one with the gods.” I don’t think it was meant to be boastful, but just to say that the Universe simply cannot ignore someone that gives their all to everything that they do. Yes, that means going ALL IN on your expense report, for the time that you’re sitting down to do it (hey, some work you cannot chose – sorry!). Above all, don’t multitask, because the Universe absolutely does NOT think multitasking is cool (multitasking is The Great Lie, people!).

3) Learn, and have a blast doing it. Those who have kids, or pets, can imagine what they would think if you told them you’d decided to do things all day that weren’t fun (i.e., “you’re nuts!”). We have, in deciding how we will react to what life gives us each day, the power to choose to be happy (or not). So don’t make the wrong choice, don’t lose the fun, and don’t lose the enthusiasm to learn that goes hand-in-hand with all of that fun. Treat yourself like a kid whenever encountering something new, open to learn about (and enjoy!) that thing as if you had nothing to lose.

Those aren’t lessons I learned here per se, but (14+ years, 10+ managers, several million dollars saved and innumerable emails, amazing trips, projects, & not-so-amazing expense reports later) they impacted just about everything I did here (and everything I did outside of here, and will impact everything I do after my tenure here), and so felt worth mentioning.

I wish you luck in all that you do, confident that you’re talented enough not to at all need it! ;-)

Okay, so it was pretty long, after all. Give me a break, this was almost the entirety of my post-undergrad life here!

I’ve got no idea whatsoever what the future holds, or if this Going Pro thing is going to work financially – but I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl, and sharing the journey with you all!

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Going Pro: Wrapping Up 14+ Years from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!

The first thing most people over the age of twenty-five think of when you ask them to name a song about wine is probably UB40’s Red Red Wine, which is ironic because they’re all totally drinking beer in the vid for that tune.

In a similarly ironic case of music-meets-wine creative worlds colliding, the band I’ve been playing in for… well… for a long time (some of you will remember us as the dudes who recorded a rock version of the Snow Miser/Heat Miser song, and a reggae/dub take on the Oompa Loompa Theme – we’re kinda into the holidays), has just released a video (available for your viewing pleasure below, after the jump) for a tune titled Wine Kissing Days.

The ironic part: the song is about the social pleasures of sharing wine (a near-constant theme among these virtual pages), was filmed in part at local PA producer Chaddsford Winery (which has been profiled here) BUT… apart from playing bass on the tune I had nothing whatsoever to do with it. More on that in a minute or two. Also, since we know that the music played during wine tasting impacts the qualities that people recall about the wine, if I were a tasting room manager I’d buy a few copies (you know, like, 10,000 or so) of this song. Just sayin’.

Anyway, you can hit up iTunes to grab the tune (and the album from which it comes, “Tricky, Seabass & the Hun” – and damn, it sure makes me feel old to even talk about the conceit of an album at this point), but I’m giving away a copy of the new Steve Liberace Band CD (another near-ancient conceit!) to three lucky randomly-selected commenters!…

Back to the irony:

Wine Kissing Days has lyrics that evoke a wine-tasting note (“tobacco, & leather, & pepper I’ve found”) but I had zero lyrical responsibility for the tune – our head-honcho-singer-songwriter Steve Liberace happens to live about one mile as-the-crow-flies from Chaddsford Winery in PA.

The band has played events at Chaddsford before, and Steve has done his fair share of hanging out there drinking vino (and hanging out at his home drinking their vino), and basically the song is about the general life-lovin’ positive vibes you feel when getting buzzed on good wine with good friends (for more on Chaddsford, check out my interview with winemaker Eric Miller, and the feature on PA’s vintage-of-a-lifetime 2007 reds; for more SL Band, check out the vid for “When You Turn Blue” which is a slightly darker song, being about drowning someone and all that).

The vid for Wine Kissing Days was produced, filmed and directed by the intrepid team at AverageEnthusiast.com and features portions captured on-location (during a rare November snowstorm) at Chaddsford Winery as well as some live action of the band “rocking out” as my daughter likes to term it. For more of the band-meets-wine thang, check out my Summer Solstice music festival field-test of boxed wine, and the 20-year Merlot retrospective and on-the-back-patio gig at Peconic Bay Winery in Long Island). While I’m pretty sure that the tee-shirt-over-long-sleeves fashion choice will eventually come back to haunt us, I’m also pretty sure that the MTD bass guitar I’m playing will always look better than I will.

As for the giveaway:

Leave a comment telling us about your favorite wine-related or wine-inspired tune, and in one week I will randomly select three winning comments at random whose authors will each receive a CD copy of Tricky, Seabass & the Hun.  Enjoy the vid – bonus points if you can find the lady heading to the ladies room behind the band in the live shots…

Cheers!

Copyright © 2011. Originally at Worlds Collide In New Wine-Related Music Vid (And YOU Can Win Some Free Tunes!) from 1WineDude.com - for personal, non-commercial use only. Cheers!