Every Man a Sommelier
September 1st, 2010 by Tom Johnson
There is a theory that wine critics are going to be put out of business by web-enabled amateurs. According to this theory, Robert Parker and his ilk will cease to be significant because CellarTracker and even wine blogs bring the wisdom of the masses to the problem of wine.
Yeah, well: Submitted for your consideration, as Rod Serling used to say, this exchange on one of those websites where you can ask anything you want and get answers from random passers-by:
there is a girl i like and i want to get some wine to share with her and her friends sometime. i haven’t drank much wine so i’m investigating advice on what you would suggest for a group of friends in college, something good even if a little pricey, and for the fall time.
Chris G 1:42 am on September 1, 2010
Go for a good domestic chilled wine.
Posted in From the Web | Comments (2)
Why Does This Remind Me of Vegas?
August 30th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
If winery operators complain about the baboonish behavior of drunken tasting room patrons, imagine how it must be for wineries in South Africa, which occasionally face baboonish behavior from real baboons.
“They are not just eating our grapes; they are raiding our kitchens and ripping the thatch off the roofs. They are becoming increasingly bold and destructive.”
Troublesome apes are removed by burly security teams. Particularly boorish primates are tagged and monitored. Those who misbehave three times are taken out into the country and…well, let’s just say they won’t be showing their hairy mugs around the winery any more.
Can a baboon sleep with the fishes?
Posted in From the Web | Comments (2)
In Which I Detect a Flaw In India’s Logic
August 30th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
India is the world’s largest producer of mangoes, and economic development officials in the the world’s second fastest growing wine market think the country should make a name for itself with mango wine. I’ve never had mango wine, myself, so I can’t say for sure whether it has beyond-novelty potential. But the following justification doesn’t give me a lot of hope:
“We thought if France, Italy or Australia had made a mark for themselves as leaders in the wine industry, essentially because of their abundant grape produce, why don’t we try out our skills with the huge quantities of mango grown in this region?” said Neelima Garg, who led the research team.
Here’s the problem with that: France, Italy and Australia didn’t decide to make wine because of “their abundant grape produce”; they decided to produce a lot of grapes because grapes make good wine. Extending Mr. Garg’s logic, in Kentucky where I live we should make horse manure wine because we have a lot of horse manure. You can see how the logic breaks down.
Then there’s this:
The main problem researchers in Lucknow faced was treating the viscous mango pulp to make it thin enough to pass as wine.
Much as wine drinkers like a full-bodied wine, we’d really prefer “chewy” to be more metaphorical than literal. Also, worldwide standards are fairly high. You don’t hear a lot of people saying they’re looking for something that can “pass as wine.”
Posted in Oddities | Comments (0)
I Like a Wine That’s a Silk Blouse With Three Buttons Undone
August 30th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
In the vogue for finding ways beyond 100-point scoring to express wine worthiness, Brunellos Have More Fun puts forth a new theory:
When I’m tasting a new wine and trying to remember what it’s like, I tend to jot down notes of colors or moods. Or clothes. I daydream about what I would wear while drinking that wine or what the physical embodiment of that wine might be.
Posted in From the Web | Comments (1)
I Don’t Know What He’s Saying, But I’m Going to Try the Wine
August 27th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
Dirty South Wine on 1998 Castello Di Verduno Barolo Massara:
Smells like funk and tastes like Christmas.
OK, I’m intrigued.
Posted in Wine Writing | Comments (0)
Revenge of the Nerds: NZ Bloggers Go Righteously Apeshit
August 26th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
As part of their 40th birthday celebration, New Zealand’s National Business Review co-sponsored one of those seemingly simple social media contests with Veuve Clicquot. The winner gets his or her weight in Veuve Clicquot, and the way you enter is to go to the NBR website and write a paragraph on how you would dispose of so much Champagne if you had it.
The planners of this particular episode in social media promotion were no doubt thinking that the winner would be someone writing a gauzy paean to France’s most romantic wine. Which, of course, a lot of the entrants did.
But someone named Busted Blonde, who is a blogger and an apparently large-boned woman, filed the following entry:
I weigh heaaaps! So on the back of my successful 50th birthday in Wellington where I fed 50 people on Lobster and Bluff Oysters, I would hold a ” Just because you can” kick-arse picnic on a pontoon in Frank Kitts Lagoon. However, everyone would have to dress up and pretend to be complete wankers – which shouldnt be too hard!
And then Busted Blonde — who I think no longer has a blog, having moved her opining entirely to Twitter — emails and tweets all her blogging buddies urging them to promote her candidacy. It would be a good joke, making a 220 pound fat girl the winner of a contest that paid off her weight in expensive, glamorous wine. A pranksterish act of vengeance against the wealthy and fashionable, in fact, and Busted Blonde’s blog buddies went to work promoting her candidacy with all the enthusiasm of teenagers throwing eggs at a group of cheerleaders. It became quite the blogger crusade:
Busted Blonde is still in the lead, but it could be close. Go to NBR and vote for her (click on thumbs up sign next to her entry), so BB wins her weight in Veuve Clicquot. This is the final day of voting.
You can imagine how the corporate promoters, flush with social media enthusiasm, felt when they started to click-through all of those links into the NBR website and read things like this:
Now the fat slapper (Busted Blonde) has said she has been putting in the effort on the boil-up so it would be a shame to miss out. Busted, in between mouthfuls of Pizza, pork and puha, and gobs of cold mutton bird has mumbled that there are 3 places at the party avail able deserving candidates.
It is not precisely the glamorous image Champagne houses generally try to put forward, and one can well imagine the conversations as Busted Blonde’s vote total rose to the top and stayed there. Her main competition was a man who’d been engaged for a long time and promised to use the Champagne at his wedding reception. Or, as one blogger elegantly put it:
Her biggest competition thus far is from Joe Holden who has been with his partner for 18 years and will only marry her cos of free piss? What’s the bet he has a body like a half sucked throatie as well.
While I’m not entirely certain what that means, I’m pretty sure it’s not something Veuve Clicquot would like to put on a poster.
As it happened, Busted Blonde, as one blogger put it, “won by a margin as large as her arse.” But then the geniuses at New Business Review and Veuve Clicquot went behind closed doors and exercised their prerogatives under the rules, announcing that that someone slightly less hillbilly-ish had won. Apparently figuring that they could buy the fat girl and her blogging buddies off, they awarded Busted Blonde a previously unmentioned Miss Congeniality award: The Social Media Award. They offered her a magnum of Veuve Cliquot and, I think, a bag of Cheetohs or something.
The business logic behind that decision is flawless. As one of the calmer observers put it:
If I was wanting to promote my product to discerning readers and drinkers I wouldn’t want the word “wanker” in the winning entry.
The problem is, the anarchic world of social media doesn’t recognize business logic, and the next thing NBR and Veuve Clicquot knew they were in the middle of the online equivalent of a riot. The photo at right — a representation of Busted Blonde puking Veuve Clicquot, but not Busted Blonde herself — started making the rounds, and the slanders were flying so fast those typing them didn’t even have time to punctuate.
Quite simply NBR and Veuve Clicquot can no longer be trusted as either a source for news or as a decent luxury brand when they blatantly make up rules as they go along and when an outcome doesn’t suit their PR firms pitch for the competition just completely rubbish the input of the thousands of people who in good faith voted for Busted Blonde, including we must add many members of the media who were looking forward to consuming free piss on someone’s ticket.
There was, suddenly, serious talk of a nationwide boycott of Veuve Clicquot. A Facebook page popped up and it seemed like every misfit who’d ever been insulted back in high school was coming out of the woodwork, spoiling for a fight.
At some point, back in the NBR boiler room, a no-doubt-fashionable grown up with no real understanding of bloggers and their outrages, stepped in and said something like:
Jesus. Give her the fucking wine, already.
So:
NBR has this morning published a full-page apology, announcing that it “unreservedly apologises for the confusion surround ing our 40th birthday competition”, and to boot, “the publisher will personally provide Busted Blonde’s weight in Veuve Clicquot to her to demonstrate that NBR will not allow its integrity, transparency or honesty in its dealings with its readers to be compromised in any way.”
And all over the Southern Hemisphere, blogging losers and misfits are celebrating. And the big payoff is recognition from Jancis Robinson, something of a misfit herself in a lot of ways, who tweeted:
@bustedblonde Congratulations! Social media have the power to leech multiple kilos of Veuve C from tight fists
And so it is that one wag said, in wrapping the whole episode, that if you live by social media you die by social media.
UPDATE: I changed a couple of words for accuracy sake after hearing from some of the players in this drama (see comments) and fixed a couple of links. Thanks for the input.
Posted in Marketing | Comments (12)
Let Us Raise a Monument to Dr. Aditya Mattoo
August 26th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
A physician who has earned the nickname “Dr. Buzzkill” for advising his patients “don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t eat fatty foods, exercise more, and lose weight” takes a hard look at the data on moderate alcohol consumption and concludes:
Although detractors often complain that the data is largely based on patients answering questionnaires reliably, the literature has reproduced the benefits of light alcohol consumption time and time again. Furthermore, there is an undeniable paucity of studies that demonstrate light drinking is harmful. Armed with this, Dr. Buzzkill would probably advise patients to have a glass of wine nightly with dinner. Maybe now my patients will start calling me Dr. Feelgood.
Not for one glass, no. If you’d go to two, we’ll call you whatever you like.
Posted in health | Comments (0)
We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges
August 26th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
Winethropology writes a funny article I’ve wanted to write for a few days. Thus I am liberated to write funny articles I don’t want to write.
Thanks, Steve!
Posted in Good Stuff | Comments (2)
Oops
August 26th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
The really attentive among you may have noticed a piece posted here for 23 minutes that is, in fact, a draft of something not yet postable. It had lots of sentence fragments and paragraphs set aside for later use. It was, in short, entirely incoherent.
Sorry about that. Pushed the wrong button.
Posted in Junk | Comments (0)
Todays Do-It-Yourself Project: Wine Labels
August 26th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
If you’d like to combine your affinity for collage with a desire to hide from friends the brand of wine you’re serving, Bueno Bueno has a plan:
when Jacob and I go to california, we stock up on 2 buck chuck. (charles shaw) it’s only $1.99 a bottle, but has won awards, great reviews, and the taste buds of many. yes people, it is tasty and that’s coming from me, someone who loves wine tastings and wine nights! my family and i love the vino so trust me.
I think, personally, that Bueno Bueno ought to learn how to operate the shift key on their keyboard, but then I’m a fussy old poo.
Anyway, if you’re so inclined, Bueno Bueno shows you how to use scissors, glue and cut-up magazine pages to decorate a bottle of wine so it looks like a blackmail letter.
Posted in Do It Yourself | Comments (1)