It’s that time of year, again.
Last year, Michael Cervin (with whom I later toured the wine scene in Crete) from IntoWine.com stirred up a minor sh*tstorm when he published the inaugural version of his list of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the U.S. Wine Industry.
We love lists, and we hate them. Hence the ensuing sh*storm: why was so-and-so left off? how could they place what’s-his-name so high up on the list? are these guys just attention-grabbing?… etc. My takeaway last year was that the list was “good for a pulse check, probably bad for anything more substantial than that.” I’m pretty much of the same mindset regarding the recently-published 2013 version of the list.
According to IntoWine.com, they don’t really have a strong agenda in compiling this list of influencers:
“Does influential mean people who move markets, impact consumers, inspire winemakers, form policy, and create debate? Yes… We merely define the Top 100 people, from winemakers to law makers, bankers to bloggers, and sommeliers to celebrities who influence wine; how it is made, marketed, perceived, sold, shipped, purchased, shared and consumed.”
Over the last year, not a lot of shuffling took place in the top 20 (I swapped places with Eric Asimov, which puts him ahead of me and therefore rights at least one wrong from the 2012 version!) – I’m not sure if that means that the wine biz in the U.S. is pretty stagnant from an influencer perspective, but the advent of the list is a god excuse for us to take a pulse of the U.S. wine biz in general…
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[ Editor’s note: following is a guest post from the 1WD intern: the young, unpaid Shelby Vittek, who many of you will recall really shook things up with her first 1WD article. You can check out more of Shelby’s work at TableMatters.com, and find her on twitter at @BigBoldReds. Let us know what you think (but keep things civil, you opinionated b*stards!). Enjoy! ]
Just before the holiday break, Joe prompted me to run down to his cellar before lunch and pick out a bottle of wine for the meal that Mrs. Dudette had cooked up for us. It was an exciting moment – a free grab of any of the bottles I’ve been sorting through and cataloguing for months. (No, I didn’t choose a crazy expensive bottle, or touch any of his beloved aged Riesling collection – I know better than that by now.)
But the excitement of this new responsibility quickly turned into fear. I don’t often drink my wine with food and was worried my selection wouldn’t stand up well to the meal. What if the efforts to impress my “boss” ended in total failure, causing him to reconsider taking me on as his intern? And the last thing I wanted was to put Mrs. Dudette’s amazing cooking skills to shame.
Sometimes, my biggest flaw is this: I am a Millennial; and while we do have wine knowledge, we don’t know much about matching it with a meal. My generation, a hodgepodge of older students and young working professionals, marries wine more with occasions and events than they ever do with food. We drink it at parties, when we hang out at each other’s apartments, and in front of the television during date nights with Netflix. I even have a few friends that like to drink wine while writing a paper, which may or may not have once happened in the basement of our college library…
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Welcome to the Weekly Wine Quiz!
This week, we’re continuing the theme of questions relating to research cited in iconoclastic Master of Wine Tim Hanni’s new book, Why You Like The Wines You Like (full disclosure: I received a review copy, and I am mentioned favorably in the book – though I didn’t know about that mention until after he sent the thing to me).
I’ve been having my mind rocked regularly by Tim’s new book – though I can tell you that it needs editing and already requires a layout re-do. Whatever… let’s just have some fun with this…
Ties That Bind (Food To Wine)
True or False: The higher your emotional ties to wine and food matching, the less likely you are to perceive the match as a good one?
Cheers – and good luck!
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