Virtual Vino Seminar at Vino 2010

Wow! I’ve had some time to reflect on Thursday’s panel “Virtual Vino” at the Italian Trade Commission’s Vino 2010 event. It was standing room only and great to see so many familiar faces in the audience. The feedback we got was extremely positive and clearly reinforced just how important…and controversial…social media is in the U.S. wine market.

vino10 on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

With only two hours for presentations and discussions, it was a pretty big subject to cover, so we were really able to only touch on some of the more “sensitive” issues. The overriding theme centered around the implications of the democratization of information created by this thing known World Wide Web or informally as the Wild Wild West.

Fred Plotkin asked the first audience question which led us right into the conundrum of how blogging is impacting traditional journalism and where the line demarcating fact from opinion lies.

I’ve been thinking about all the ramifications of Fred’s question which initially centered on the idea that “authenticity” was a critical issue to Millennials. He asked how I defined the word. And as I’ve had the chance to cogitate on it I realize there are two definitions that need to be addressed individually. One is in regard to authenticity as “honesty”, and that is more a function of voice of the writer/blogger. The second relates to authenticity as “truth”: facts and disclosure about the source of the content.

As to the writer’s voice, the conversation at the seminar revolved around the subjectivity of wine criticism and review. Your “notes of tobacco, tar and leather” may be someone else’s “bold, assertive and ripe fruit.” No one is “right” and a numerical rating scale is inherently flawed in that it presupposes the reviewer is comparing all wines against the same set of criteria. There’s been a lot of discussion on wine blogs about evaluations focusing more on a scale of “I like it” to “I hate it”. It’s perhaps more of a useful way to rank (not rate) the personal appeal of all wines against what is inherently a complex of personal opinions. At the end of the day, a Parker 94 and a 1WineDude “I really liked Wine A better than Wine B” are equally useful. The former more so from a commercial perspective and the retail price elite wines can command in the marketplace, the latter because I’ve found from personal experience that Joe Roberts and I share similar preferences in wine. (but Joe's opinion is free, Parker's you have to pay for)

Regarding facts and disclosure, the operative word is transparency. The FTC has mandated that bloggers must disclose the source of samples. (Interestingly, traditional journalists are not held to the same standards.) Many if not most bloggers have been doing this routinely anyway. But it came to a head with Tyler Colman’s (aka Dr. Vino) outing of Robert Parker and The Wine Advocate’s inconsistency in enforcing its own policies on samples and trips. The original post thread begins here and there is also a good summary published on Slate by Mike Steinberger. My personal opinion is that we will look back on Tyler’s post as being the point at which the influence of established wine critics and journalists crossed with the influence of the online world. And let me be perfectly clear here. It may have seemed that the whole seminar was saying that Andy Blue's self-described dinosaurs are going extinct, but that's not what we were saying at all. The point was the internet has created a new medium that enables regular folks to weigh in, and an audience that respects those opinions more highly than the traditional journalists. The very real problem faced by many traditional writers is how to get compensated for those skills and services they've honed over the years when arriviste bloggers don't expect to make money at all.

I’ll be writing more on this in my next post, but wanted to get this up in response to requests for access to the video archive of the session. http://bit.ly/9jXwou For those who want to see the slides I presented, they can be found here: http://bit.ly/bBm6hG. The Vintank report on Social Media in the Wine Industry, Tyler’s original post on the Robert Parker Kerfuffle and Mike Steinberger’s summary of the hoo-haw Dr. Vino created at http://www.slate.com/id/2229518/pagenum/all/ Sphere: Related Content

Vino 2010: Panel Discussion on Marketing to Millennials

The Italian Trade Commission is bringing the wines of the Veneto, Calabria, Puglia and Tuscany to the Big Apple this week via Vino 2010. I’ll be speaking on a panel moderated by Anthony Dias Blue (author, editor of Tasting Panel Magazine, San Francisco Wine and Spirits Comp, and wine and food personality) alongside Susannah Gold of Vigneto Comms., Susanna Crociani of her family’s eponymous winery in Siena, Doug Cook of Able Grape and Alder Yarrow, author of Vinography, arguably the oldest wine blog in the world. The focus of the panel is “Millennials, social media and technology's seductive appeal, and its growing role in reaching, informing, entertaining tomorrow's Italian wine drinking customers.”

The bad news is if you haven’t reserved a seat, the session is sold out. But the good news is, the ITC folks will be video streaming the session on the Vino 2010 website. And true to the title of the session, viewers will be able to interact with the panel by tweeting questions and comments to @vino2010 or @JRvino2010. (You can also tweet me @Stevenraye)

I’m still fine tuning my intro but will be presenting data on who the Millennials are, how they’re different from prior wine-consuming generations and how to engage with them using the new tools of social media. (The pic is of me in Pompeii at one of the many "wine bars" in the city that set the fashions for Imperial Rome...Falernum anyone?)

The real fun will be the conversation and questions that follow the panelists’ opening comments. Joe Roberts of 1WineDude called Andy out on comments he made about the legitimacy of bloggers in the July 2009 issue of Tasting Panel Magazine:

“And who are these bloggers anyway and, more important, what is their motivation? It would be comforting to find that they are altruistic wine lovers who see their purpose as bringing insight and valuable information to like-minded consumers. But the image that presents itself is of bitter, carping gadflies who, as they stare into their computer screens and contemplate their dreary day jobs, let their resentment and sense of personal failure take shape as vicious attacks on the established critical media.”

Never content to leave well enough alone, Joe posted AGAIN with a great title: “Guy who possibly hates wine blogging to give talk on Wine Blogging at Vino 2010”

Inflammatory? Yes, but that’s what sets up a good panel discussion. I expect that Andy’s vitriol may have been tempered by time (hey, 6 months in Internet time is an eternity) and I look forward to hearing him squizzle out of this one.

To be fair, I spoke to Andy about his POV and it was more a function of contrasting blogging with traditional journalism where editorial review, fact checking and “journalistic integrity” have a history as a profession. I was a communications major in college and while I never had a "legit" journalism job, coming from the school where Strunk and White taught and wrote their little book I take the subject very seriously.

So much so that I organized a Wine and Spirit Blogger summit last year. We gathered some of the top thought leaders from both the wine and spirit blogosphere to explore why there is such a dichotomy in philosophy and practice between the spirits and wine folks and what each group could learn from the other. What came out quite clearly was that the spirit folks actively court involvement and engagement with brands and their PR agencies. In contrast, the wine bloggers are more likely to publish their angst about integrity, transparency, bias (both real and implied) and whether its ok to accept samples or trips. The net result of the summit wasn’t what I had hoped, but it did highlight the dramatic and one might say polarizing difference between the two categories.

So back to Vino 2010…if you’re at all interested in this subject, then I think you’ll find the conversation on Thursday, Feb. 4 at 10AM EST interesting and enlightening. You can access the video stream somewhere on the Vino 2010 site (I’ll post a direct link if I can get the exact URL). And do please participate in the discussion by contributing your questions via Twitter. Sphere: Related Content

Vino 2009

I had the honor of speaking on a panel discussion at last week's Vino 2009 event in New York on "Vintners' Access to the American Wine Market." (That's me hiding behind Lynn Walding.) Not surprisingly, the issue of direct-to-consumer shipments was the key point of debate. As we all know, distributor consolidation has exacerbated the situation further leaving few options for smaller producers, many of whom were among the 250+ exhibiting at Italian Trade Commission-sponsored event.

Tom Wark of SWRA (Specialty Wine Retailers Association) eloquently voiced his mantra that there ought to be a level playing field for consumers, as well as suppliers, distributors and retailers. The U.S. may be on the brink of becoming the largest wine market in the world, but the reality is that consumers in many states don't have access to more than a fraction of the wines currently imported into the U.S. because of the three-tier system. His point of view was countered by Jim Rowland of WSWA who reinforced the reasons why the current 3-tier system works. Lynn Walding who leads the Iowa State Alc. Bev. division gave what to me was the most compelling argument as to why the system is unlikely to change...money. The system may be archaic, dating back 75 years to repeal, but the grandfathered entities...Control States and distributors.. are powerful forces with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. John Beaudette of MHW addressed the complicated registration process suppliers need to be familiar with to even get samples into the country.

One solution I've been a proponent of is e-commerce which is a way producers who can't get on the physical shelf, can at least get on the virtual shelf of many retail stores that have e-comm sites. And in spite of a couple of state law changes in MA, IL and KY to the contrary, I think it's a solution that ultimately may undermine the three tier system itself.

So stay tuned...with Amazon.com's wine initiative coming down the pike, the argument is definitely going to heat up. Sphere: Related Content

Steve Raye to speak at Vino 2009

I've been invited to speak at Vino 2009 in New York on January 26. It's billed as the first industry convention of Italian wine in the U.S. and will be held during Italian Wine Week Jan 23-27. I'll be on a panel discussion giving my point of view on new tools marketers are using to promote wine including Social Media Marketing and leveraging e-commerce opportunities. The panel wil be moderated by Bill Earle, President of NABI, and joining me on the panel will be wine PR guy extraordinaire and Tom Wark who also authors the blog Fermentation.

Sphere: Related Content