Inside IWM

The Inside Story from Italian Wine Merchants

Cheap, Good, Delicious

Reflections on generic wine lists

One of my favorite descriptors for my least favorite things is saltine. You may not be familiar with this use of the word. I like to think I invented it as a child, having grown tired of boring descriptors like vanilla, plain, and bland. Yes, the word is the name of the simple square crackers often paired with soup, or given to nauseated children as a snack by their parents. I do not dislike saltine crackers. In fact I like them very much when I am in the mood for them, but their very purpose is to be bland.

I value originality, almost above anything else. That’s not to say that I only go for something different. Sometimes a vanilla ice cream cone is exactly what a hot July afternoon calls for. My favorite writer happens to be Ernest Hemingway, whose prose style is considered simple and, his unadorned, quick sentences show that they were written by a trained journalist. Sometimes all I will eat for dinner is a bowl of arugula with lemon vinaigrette. And most Sundays I will wear jeans and a white t-shirt, nearly the simplest of outfits. But, I find originality to be very refreshing—in people, in food, in literature, and in wine lists.

Eric Asimov’s April 1st The Pour posting “On Generic Wine Lists” came at an appropriate time for me to reflect on an experience I had this past weekend. I went for a glass of wine Friday night with a friend near Columbia University, and I was met with a list of wines by the glass that was marred by being the quintessence of saltine. The list looked a little like this:

Cheap $8

Good $12

Expensive $18

When the waitress came over to take our order, I asked for a little further information. She told me she thought the cheap was Merlot, the good was Malbec, and the expensive was Sangiovese, or something along those lines. I hoped she could clear up the varietals for me, as well as perhaps vintage and even country of origin. I told her I needed a few minutes.

At first, I had been somewhat intrigued by this wine list design. How unusual! How different! I had never seen this anywhere before! But the more I thought about it, the more I had no idea what I wanted. When presented with a wine list with six different Chardonnays by the glass, I often feel completely torn. But this was far worse because they were offering me only three unidentified beverages. I felt I was being forced to make an uninformed choice.

Composing a restaurant’s menu is difficult, so is making a wine list. There are so many choices, so many customers, so many palates, so many restaurants, and so many of them fail. When restaurants make their lists, they have to consider so many questions: Who will the audience be? What price range can we offer wines in? How large do we want the list to be? What is the concept or theme? All things considered, the wine list needs to be at the very least informative, and if it isn’t, the staff should be. Otherwise, the patrons end up feeling like me last Saturday night, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

In the wake of this last experience on the Upper West Side, I’m wondering about what’s valuable in wine lists. Is it better to go off the beaten path and try to do something wildly creative? Or is it better to play it safe and run the risk of being saltine?

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Does Anyone Read Wine Blogs?

Dispatches from the bloglines

Last week, self-proclaimed “unsuccessful political blogger” turned wine blogger Tom Johnson wrote a piece entitled “There’s a Reason No One Reads Wine Blogs.” It was, irony aside, published on Palate Press, an on-line wine magazine; Johnson also pens a wine blog, Louisville Juice, a name that Johnson mysteriously notes will soon be changing. The issue, Johnson contends, is this:

There’s no way to sugar coat this: wine blogging is failing its readers.

The evidence for that failure: with very few exceptions, wine blogs don’t even have readers.

Johnson looks at several blog analytics in order to support his claim that no one reads wine blogs, including Cellarer and Truth Laid Bear. Using a combination of Cellarer and Google page results, Johnson suggests that wine blogs are reaching less than 5% of the prospective 40 million wine drinkers in the United States. The problem is, as Cellarer observes in its own valuation disclaimer, that for a combination of reasons, it’s really difficult to figure out exactly how many readers follow wine blogs—even wicked popular wine blogs like Vinography and Dr. Vino, and one commentator takes Johnson to task over his approach. It’s an inexact science complicated by Google’s own corporate interests and its own programmers’ hobbyhorses.

And yet there’s no evidence like personal evidence, and personal evidence suggests that wine blogs, even a wine blog like this one that is attached to a trusted corporate entity like Italian Wine Merchants, have a hard time gathering readers.

In spite of what his article’s title suggests, Johnson argues that in fact there are two reasons why blogs don’t have readers. One reason is that too many blogs concentrate on providing wine reviews, and the other is that not enough wine blogs link to other wine blogs. (This last point glimmers with irony, an astute commentator notes, because Johnson foregoes adding a single link to any wine blogs in his piece.) To Johnson’s thinking, wine reviews are unhelpful because while everyone seems to want to be Robert Parker, only Robert Parker is Robert Parker, and because wine reviews are boring.

In these points I tend to agree with Johnson. Rarely am I provoked to want to drink a wine because I know it will taste of dark berries, roses, licorice, tar, and cat butt (or whatever descriptors are in vogue that season). I’m provoked to drink a wine because I’ve been given a lively description of the person who made the wine, because I’ve been provided with a beautiful evocation of the land where the wine was made, or, occasionally, because the wine has a really pretty label. (I am a girl and a design nerd, and at least I’m being honest.)

Johnson argues that people’s stories are what make wine conversation interesting—whether in person, in print, or on the web. If writing doesn’t make people connect, it’s not good writing, and I think this point may be at the bottom of Johnson’s screed. If sheep were writers, we’d have stories filled with really good grass and watch out for that coyote and oh god, oh god, where did my little lamb go? But we are not sheep, and so we like to read about good meals and bad romances and that time we scored a really good bottle of Champagne for a ridiculously low price. We like stories about people, and the wine is almost secondary. Almost.

Which brings me to Johnson’s second point—linking. In blogging, to link is to create conversation. The ability to link is, in fact, the thing that defines Web writing, and it is something that began with bloggers. Links do a few really important things: they provide a launching pad for the writer’s thoughts, they show the reader support for the writer’s claim, they create instant attribution, they give the reader a path for reading, and they create a sense of community. Without links, the Web is a great digital wasteland, an abyss dotted by invisible ones and zeros; with links, it’s a cocktail party.

As editor of this wine blog, I urge the writers of IWM to read other wine blogs, to respond to other wine writers, and to link to wine bloggers. As a reader myself, however, I must admit my own prejudices. I have a tight schedule not given to as much free-range roaming through the Web as I’d like. That’s one reason why I appreciate other blogger’s links and their blog rolls and why I really like thoughtful blog aggregates like Alltop. It’s pretty easy to find The Pour by myself, but it’s less easy to find In Absinthia, my new favorite blog name (though I remain fond of my own apocryphal Absinthe blog, Absinthe Makes the Heart Grow Fonder).

So I’m curious. What makes you read—and return to read again—wine bloggers? And where have you found your good bloggers? Whom should we have on our blog roll and whom should we read regularly?

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We Want to Believe

Questioning Online Wine Sources and Other Matters of Taste
Still Life with Bread and Wine Glass by Isaac Luttichuys 17th Century

Still Life with Bread and Wine Glass by Isaac Luttichuys 17th Century

In an old-fashioned paper copy of Wine Enthusiast, I read an article entitled “Wine Online in 2009” by Steve Heimoff.  One section of the article really resounds with me:  the one that raises questions about online credibility.

Wine has many established authorities, from retailers and importers like Robert Chadderdon and Kermit Lynch, to writers like Eric Asimov, to the many, much-maligned wine critics (you no doubt know who they are). All of these people belong to fairly old, established professions, but today there are also bloggers who may be credible, random or, occasionally, both. While the credible have their clear because of credentials, expertise or attachment to trustworthy institutions, the random may know nothing more than how to pop a cork and pour.  Heimoff points out the fact that—whether film, art, music or fashion—every industry, as well as those who endeavor to learn more about that industry, values experience and knowledge.  Wine is no different.

As a long-time wine connoisseur, I’m of two minds. It’s terrific that more people are incorporating wine in their lifestyles, but I feel that it still makes sense to stick to the authorities when looking for advice.  And even if you don’t like a particular specialist in wine, if you know a little about how s/he relates to wine, you can still use his/her writing or opinion to decide whether you want to try that wine.  What is oh-so-very-important in judging wine is to recognize quality, even if you don’t personally like a wine style.  Most bloggers, and even many people who work in the wine trade, don’t do that—whether they are unable to make that important differentiation or whether they simply won’t.

I’m proud to be a member of the IWM team because we collectively really know wine, and I’m especially delighted to know that our blog—and our eLetters, our Wine Portfolio Managers and our Sales Associates—all reflect the care, experience and love we have for wine. It makes me happy to know that while there may be sources out there for whom, as Heimoff suggests, credibility is an issue, we are not one of them. And I’m even happier to know that we can recognize the beauty in styles of wine that we ourselves may not love. Because that, perhaps above all, is the true mark of a professional.

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