Vinotology Wine Blog

February 18th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This week yielded a couple of items that warranted consideration for The Good. The first comes to us from my friend Joe Herrig of Suburban Wino. After all these years of fumbling around, trying to figure out how to behave myself at wine tastings, Joe has finally shone some light on the subject.

The second was a great piece of marketing that I found through Dr. Vino's blog. Move over Old Spice Guy, now the wine world has its own twist to the iconic ad campaign.

The Bad this week is the very thought that HR5034 might resurface again this year. At least there are efforts to get out in front of the sh%&ty legislation. Tom Wark posted on a report in WineBusiness.com that "...associations representing nearly all the wine, beer and spirit companies operating in the U.S. issued a letter to all members of Congress urging them NOT TO SPONSOR any new version of H.R. 5034 that will likely be introduced again this year." I find it hard to believe that this legislation would ever pass, but I would really prefer that we not even get close to finding out.

For those who aren't up on the details of last year's HR5034 bill, There's a great two minute long video that my friend Chris Oggenfuss from VinTuba put together last year explaining.

 

It is with great sadness that I must include this news of dumb-assery that took place in Austria. Vinography posted this story from the AP, about vandals chopping down a gruner veltliner vine that was over 500 years old. Think of all the things that this vine had to survive to make it 500 years on this earth, and it all comes to an end at the hand of one jackass. RIP old guy.

Cheers!

February 11th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Hardy Wallace was on fire this week on his Dirty South Wine blog. He had not one, but two squirt milk out of your nose funny posts this week. The first had Hardy laying the smack down on lame digital and social marketing shiz. Hardy wasn't done though, as he posted this work of art that shows what the wine industry could learn from the world of hip-hop.

Dr. Vino posted this week that wine investment fraud may run as high as £30 million a year, not that I know how much that is exactly in American money, but it sure sounds like a lot. The source for the report was a segment on BBC London.  

I always know that I can count on my friend Katy Pizzuto to talk sense when the world is going crazy around us, and this week was no exception. On her Gonzo Gastronomy blog Katie pretty well outlines how ugly the world of Valentine's Day can be. Fortunately, she also has a great prescription to the problem (aside from the obvious, more cowbell.) I think there would be a lot of marriages that would be better for listening to Katie's sage advice.

Cheers!

Photo taken from Dirty South Wine

January 28th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

After some chatting on Twitter today, Paul Mabray from Vintank convinced me to interrupt my hiatus to put out an installment of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly this week. For those who have been wondering about me, the plan is to relaunch Vinotology next week with my new design and format. The plan has morphed a little bit from what I had originally intended for the relaunch, but there will be some changes in store, beyond a new look for the site. Looking forward to resuming my daily duties on the blog soon, and thanks for your patience.

Without further ado, here's TGTB&TU:

During my absence, there has been some great content coming from some of my favorite blogs. One of my favorite posts (actually a two part series of posts) was from the 1WineDude blog. There have been a lot of bloggers who have tackled the issue of biodynamics on their blogs, but the two part point-counterpoint series by Joe Roberts is one of the best explorations of the subject that I have seen. He did a great job of getting both sides of the story, straight from the horses mouths. The interviews with Alan York (pro) and Stu Smith (against) were both expertly done, and did a great job of shining some light on the two perspectives. Check them out.

This next item could just have easily slid into the Ugly this week, but the competition for that category was fierce, and I managed to find something even uglier than cookbooks centered around fart inducing food. Go figure. Katie Pizzuto is awesome, as always, in her post on the sickeningly titled "THE FART WITHOUT FEAR COOKBOOK".

The Ugly this week centers on some controversy that cropped up this week about wine database and social networking site Snooth, courtesy of some good investigation by the Vintank folks. The first bombshell game in the form of an exploration of some numbers that were reported by Snooth. Vintank did some digging to explain the numbers, which yielded some evidence that seem to reinforce the old axiom about "lies, damn lies, and statistics." 

Unfortunately for the folks at Snooth, the hits kept on coming. In a follow-up post Vintank supplied evidence that Snooth had been populating their database with data taken from online wine review juggernaut Cellartracker. In a follow up response, Snooth founder Philip James provided an apology and explanation. While I appreciate the fact that Snooth seems to be acting to clean up the mess, it seems like a case of "too little, too late" to me. At best Snooth might have gotten caught asleep at the wheel when it comes to cleaning up old data, and at worst they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. It will be interesting to see what comes of this in the long term, as the possibility of legal action has been bandied about in the comments on some of these posts. This one really is a cautionary tale for anyone looking to do business online.

Cheers!

December 17th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I somehow totally forgot about this post for last weeks TGTBTU, so I decided to give it some props this week. I have gushed on this blog before about how Katie Pizzuto's Gonzo Gastronomy blog is one of the most consistently interesting and unique blogs out there, featuring some fantastic writing and loads of attitude, but I will reiterate that here. If you aren't regularly reading this blog, you should immediately change that and add it to your RSS reader. 

Katie was recently sent two sample bottles of the new wine created for the HBO show, Bored to Death (a must-watch BTW), and she posted a contest on her blog that challenged readers with a desert island scenario (you are stranded on an island and can only have one {fill in the blank}...) for drinks and a television show. She would pick the winner based on her appreciation of the comments for both drink and show. The winner would then help produce a co-op post on the wine. Last week she posted the results, and behold, it was Good. I especially love the synopsis that Katie had for this Chardonnay.

Finding a chardonnay from CA that doesn’t taste like Dole pineapple juice stirred with a 2×4 is a rare cause for glee in my house, and that’s what this wine was—like he said, compliments don’t come much higher than that.

Josh Wade posted this week on the problems that growers in Washington State could be facing due to some early frost. I always hate to see reports of trouble from the vineyards, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best for all of the growers in the NW. 

Steve Heimoff writes poetry..., enough said.

BTW, I'm just playing around with this one. I love Steve's writing, and I actually think that it was a cool way to announce a day off on the blog. Still, as a poet, Steve makes a hell of a wine writer. :)

December 11th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good this week comes to us via the Dirty South Wine blog. Hardy Wallace has a firm grasp on the needs of winos when it comes Christmas time. Screw all this noise about wine aerators, refrigerators and the newest must read book. What the wine drinking public really needs is this Indian War Club. Perfect for every occasion. 

 

One of my absolute favorite people on Twitter is Jennifer Thomson of Thomson Vineyards. She is one of those people who you always know where she stands on an issue. This week she had an amazing post that called out pretty much the entire wine industry for their approach to Millennials. Her post focused on the advent of 7-11 wine, and specifically the idea that the target market for this wine might be Millennials. One of her best points is that marketers are determined to make generalizations that don't really hold up with this generation.

So, The Bad this week goes to all of the marketers in the wine industry who try to make sweeping generalizations about Millennials, generally without a good understanding of their target market, and who are neglecting their more stable markets in favor of courting 20 somethings. Sure, this is a huge generation that is just now coming of drinking age, but I think that marketing teams have to be careful with their approach to them, especially in the $20+ a bottle market. 

I also want to award my second ever badge to Jennifer. Given the fact that Jennifer writes some of the ballsiest posts that I ever read, and that this one is a great example, I award her with the "Huevos" badge.

There is only so much that I can say about a post that features a mugshot of Nick Nolte and the words Laotian Tiger Penis Whiskey, so I will just let you read this post from Suburban Wino for yourself, and leave you with this image:

December 3rd - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I have been slacking off again in my Friday duties. Last week I took a much needed holiday break, but I also missed the week before that due to my travels around the state of Washington. Well, I am back this week, so here we go...

The Good

There have been a couple of great articles written in response to a recent survey conducted by Wark Communications. One of these great articles is on Tom Wark's Fermentation blog, but there are great responses on both the Good Grape blog, the Louisville Juice blog, and on the 1WineDude blog. It seems like the overall take-away from this survey is that bloggers need to write the best material they can, be professional, and ignore what wine writers think of them. 

The Bad

Bad behavior can be found in any industry, but there seems to be a specific kind of douche-baggery that exists in the wine industry. It goes hand-in-hand with the snobbishness that many associate with wine, and the kind of person that is described in this post by Amy Corron Power on the Another Wine Blog only serves to reinforce the opinions of the man on the street that us wine enthusiasts are a bunch of snooty ass hats. People like "Mary Jane" really know how to suck the fun out of something that should be immensely pleasurable, and they are a blight on the human race.

The Ugly

For the first time in a while, we have the same blogger making an appearance in this column. Tom Johnson has posted one of the more disturbing holiday gift ideas that I have seen in a while on his Louisville Juice blog. You have to read his post for his comments. Priceless.

This one most definitely fits into the category of "what the hell were they thinking?" Although, I have to say that this one is so weird and creepy, that I almost have the sick desire to posses it and display it proudly in my home. Think of the potential for lewd comments that this would inspire.

 

Look for this feature to get a facelift in the coming weeks. I have some changes coming to the blog that I am looking forward to sharing with you all.

Cheers!

November 12th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

Every once in a while I come across a post that is so imaginative and hilarious that is makes me laugh audibly (or LOL for you hip young folks), and possibly even wet myself a little. This week Joe Roberts, THE 1WineDude, had a great post about the alleged abductions of Pennsylvania shoppers by the state's "MCP" Wine Kiosks. It's like I always say, "you have to be watchful at all times for self-aware machines".

Image taken from 1WineDude.com

The Bad

One of the issues that has been a plague on the online wine world, is the lack of credible information to be found online. This is an issue for consumers, for bloggers, and even for wineries. The last year has seen some progress in this area, but there is still a lot of work to be done, and some of it can't really be addressed by anyone other than the sources of the content. Dr. Vino has a great post up detailing the results of some web surfing that he did, and calling more attention to the paucity of credible info online. 

I did want to call attention to the efforts of the peeps at Cruvee to develop a resource to gather information about wines and wineries into an easily accessible location. Although they are fighting an uphill battle, they are doing good work. Adoption is still an issue, but as time goes on there have been more and more developments that have made this technology a useful tool for wineries and for those looking for information about wineries and wines.

The Ugly

The state of Washington had a blogging firestorm erupt this week over one of the state's most respected and critically acclaimed wineries. The hubbub all started with a post from Kori Voorhees of the WinePeeps blog, in which Voorhees detailed the results of a laboratory analysis of Cayuse wine that indicated that the wine contained abnormally high levels of dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. Voorhees' post branded Cayuse as a flawed wine, and chalked up the unique characteristics of Cayuse wines to flaws, rather than the terroir that these traits have generally been ascribed to by wine writers.

The post prompted Sean Sullivan of Washington Wine Report to issue a response, in which he pointed out some flaws in the WinePeeps analysis and reporting. Although Sullivan has spoken positively of Cayuse wines in the past, his response to Voorhees was directed more at the logic employed in the post and at gaps in the information.

This post isn't the right forum for me to go into a response to this issue, although I do have some thoughts on the issue that I would be happy to discuss. Regardless, a look at the comment thread for the WinePeeps post will show how much of a ruckus was raised by this post. Cayuse wines have been held up as some of the most sought after wines produced in Washington, so the allegations have naturally elicited quite an uproar. Should be interesting to see if we have heard the last of this issue.

Cheers!

November 5th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

I always love seeing people within the wine community rallying around a great cause, and I have seen a few examples of that this week. This week I announced that I was going to be kicking off an effort to raise money to fight prostate cancer by becoming a part of the Movember movement. My initial decision to take the lead was brought on by a post that I read on the Wine(Explored) blog, but I have also seen a post on the blog of the Mosaic Wine Group, a wine brokerage in Austin, Texas. I also have received tweets and Facebook updates from Marshall Coffy, one of the new Napa friends that I met on my job search trip out there, saying that he was also sporting a 'stache. I am so excited to be joining in with some wine Mo-Bros in this endeavor, and I hope that the wine community will support the work that all of these people are doing. If you would like to donate to the cause, visit my Mo Space page. So far I'm sporting an embarrassing zero dollars, which is giving me a complex. Leave a comment below if you are also participating in Movember, and feel free to leave links to any blog posts or to your own donation page.

The Bad

It looks like Major League Baseball is joining the NFL in attempting to police anything that might resemble fun. In a move that I don't really understand at all, MLB has decided that there is a need to limit the use of Champagne in celebrations. I disagree with Dr. Vino's take on the whole thing, but my problem with the idea really has more to do with baseball's governing body needlessly stepping in to curtail something that has been a baseball tradition for many years. Plus, I think it just seems like a really stodgy thing to do. I will say that if a body was going to put a stop to some post-game tradition, it should be the announcement that players are going to Disney Land after winning a big game. Now that should be stopped right away. 

The Ugly

Don't get me wrong, I'm really excited for Hardy getting into making his own wines, and I will be right at the front of the line to get my hands on a bottle (or canteen) of this stuff, but I could have gone my entire life without seeing some of the images in this video. Seriously though, if you are sensitive when it comes to a little flash of Kraken, you might skip watching this, as The Dirty One goes all early Mel Gibson (remember when Mel used to be known for showing a little tush in movies, instead of for being a bigoted ass-hat?)  

Cheers!

Cheers!

October 29th - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 

The Good

The Good this week is the launch of a new blog focused on white wines from the Northwest. Ryan Reichert, one of the genuine nice guys and outstanding writers in the wine blogging scene, started this new project this week. The site looks great, and I love the highly focused nature of the site. I think there is some great material to be found there, and I look forward to seeing what the new site brings. Check out Northwest Whites here.

The Bad

According to a lot of what I'm hearing, wineries around the state of Washington seem to feel that the upcoming Initiative 1100 will be bad for smaller producers. This is a really tough issue for me, because my visceral reaction is that we have to get the state out of the liquor business. It also seems like opinion is split among people who I genuinely respect. Tom Wark, Sean Sullivan, and Paul Gregutt have all spoken out on the issue, and each has a unique perspective on it. Since I won't be registered to vote yet when this all passes, I don't really have to make a decision, but I am very interested in the outcome, and in seeing what happens in the future.

The Ugly

From time to time my mind (and as a result, this column) wanders away from the topic of wine. Last night I was subjected to the most brutal display of baseball suckitude that I have ever seen. The Twitterverse was rife with references to "Walker: Texas Ranger", which will need no explanation to those of you who saw the game. So, although I could have chosen one of several different Ranger relief pitchers, or their manager for overthinking his bullpen moves, I am going with the man who started it all, Derek Holland. Holland's line last night - 13 balls, 1 strike, 3 runs allowed. Brilliant. 

Just to justify my inclusion of this in my WINE blog, my friend Steven Washuta (said in best MMA announcer voice) posted this World Series write-up on the Terroirist blog. All of my California friends may feel free to post taunts and flame messages in the comments below.

As a wine related bonus, I also give you this image of Butt Grape from Dirty South Wine.

Cheers!

October 22nd - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

 

The Good

There was a pleathora of great stuff this week, as always. One of the highlights of the week in my oppinion was the announcement of a new online wine sale opportunity brought to us by the geniuses at VinTank. The program is called Deals From the Vines, and is modeled somewhat after the flash sale sites, such as CinderellaWine and the like. I will have a full post coming up on this new effort next week, but I want to call attention to a great post detailing the new program by Beau Carufel on his Beau's Barrel Room blog. You can also read about the details of the program on Paul Mabray's blog.

The Bad

The one and only Melanie Ofenloch posted the results of a recent tasting of wines from India. Unfortunately, this was not a very possitive experience for her. Has anyone else had any experience with Indian wines? For now, I'm putting this into The Bad, but I would love to one day offset this by posting a great experience that someone had with Indian wine.

The Ugly

The Ugly for this week is the back and forth fight that has been brewing (sorry for the pun) over the Washington initiatives to privatize liquor sales in the state. I had written earlier this week about the situation, as have many other fine bloggers. One post that I would really like to point out is found on the Wine Economist blog. To the surprise of nobody who follows alcohol consumer policy, the beer, wine, and liquor lobby has come out in full force to oppose these measures, which always gets ugly.

Cheers!