Category: Shower Thoughts

Originally published on October 8, 2008.

OK, so it’s more of a credit crisis than a liquidity crisis, but when you own a wine store, credit puns don’t work as well as plays on the word ‘liquidity‘…

So today’s sidewalk sign reads:

Liquidity Crisis? Drink Wine!

Simple, but effective….I just crack myself up sometimes.

Originally published on September 17, 2008 .

…so says the store outside my shop.

Given the current market climate, I think this is good advice.

Given my shops location between a major subway line and some of the Lehman/Merrill offices, it’s pretty amusing…in very, very dark, dry way. And when times are bad, people drink more, which for a wine shop, isn’t such a bad thing.

Originally published on August 31, 2008.

As of today, the Rodney Strong Affair was still going strong with comments and twitters barely trailing off – despite this being a holiday weekend. Tim, one of the bloggers who reviewed the wine, posted a summary today.

I’ve been reading through all the posts and comments trying to formulate some sort of coherent opinion, but it’s hard to keep track of exactly what the issues are – they seem to change with every post.

The big question seems to be if ethics ‘were breached b/c the bloggers accepted samples in exchange for writing about the wine during a certain time period’? This remains the issue, whether the program was conceived by the Rodney Strong winery (as originally reported by both Tom Wark: Fermentation and Steve Heimoff) or Jeff at Good Grape (as was actually the case.)

My thoughts: Sure, yes, this breaches the journalistic code of independence that we (would like to) believe old guard media adheres to. But when it’s done so transparently, it just doesn’t feel like a breach of trust. I’ve been told exactly what’s going on and I can choose to believe what follows – or not. It’s a level of disclosure you never see in mainstream media.

Beyond this, the issues are plentiful: The original objectors to the program didn’t get their facts straight and wouldn’t just admit it. The program was an indicator that bloggers are taken as seriously as traditional media. The program was an indicator that bloggers were more easily manipulated than traditional press. The ethical concerns assume that bloggers want to play alongside traditional media. The original objectors are being hypocritical in their ethical objections. And on and on.

And as I read, I was wondering what the real world thought about this debate. Did they realize it as going on, or is it only bloggers that read the blogs? And if they were reading, what did they think of all this?

Finally, at some point late today, one lone voice from the real world emerged and sure enough, watching this was making him sad.

Originally published on August 27, 2008.

Seems like it’s been a very busy week in Blogland, with several stories capturing the keyboards of bloggers across the internet. Rather than go into great detail myself, I’ll just do the hyperlink thing and take advantage of all the virtual ink that’s already been laid.

1. The Rodney Strong Affair: Rodney Strong gives samples of their new, high end wine to bloggers to review. Bloggers review it. The chattering classes chatter away about journalistic ethics, revolution, and the eventual mainstreaming of the blogging frontier. Tom Wark’s Fermentation has links, thoughts, and a rowdy comments page.
2. Little Trouble in Big Wine Spectator Land: That mighty marketing marvel, the Wine Spectator, gives out these silly restaurant awards. Actually, it doesn’t give them out, you have to pay $250 and send in some info. Recently, they gave one to a restaurant that doesn’t exist and the blogs and wine boards go wild! Bigger Than Your Head gives one of the more balanced summaries I’ve seen. While both of these stories have the blog world in a tizzy, I wonder if anyone in the ‘real world’ cares…..

Originally published on July 19, 2008.

Yeah, I know today isn’t actually Wednesday, but I just read the announcement for Wine Blogging Wednesday #48 on the LENNDEVOURS blog and I’m very excited!

(For details on what Wine Blogging Wednesday is, go here.)

This may be WBW#48, but for me, it’s the first time. And fittingly, the August theme is “Back to Your Roots” so I get to start at the beginning: we’re each supposed to go back and re-taste a wine from our wine-tasting baby days.

Could be 1) the first wine we ever had – in my case, Sutter Home White Zinfandel, or if we’re counting anything with ‘wine’ on the (plastic) bottle, then it would be a California ‘wine’ Cooler.

Or could be 2) something we drank a lot of in our early wine-drinking days. In my case, that would be slightly sweet Rieslings (especially Finger Lakes Rieslings given that I was at Cornell, far above Cayuga’s waters).

Or could be 3) the first wine that was an ‘a-ha’ wine, a wine that was somehow a life-changing (or at least a palate changing) experience.

I’ll probably take the second route and I hope most of the WBW bloggers do the same. The ‘wine-that-changed-my-life’ stories can be a little cliche – mainly because they always seem to revolve around gorgeously-aged Barolos, heart-breakingly perfect Burgundies or a brilliant bottle of vintage Krug pulled out from a moldy cave (preferably by a Krug family member.) And most people don’t just randomly come across a glass of ‘life-changing’ wine – chances are they already have some sort of wine history beyond Yellow Tail before they made it to that moment.

Sure, there are be plenty of a-ha-moment wines that don’t involve 5-star bottle. Moments when our taste buds realized that balance, elegance, even restraint could be a beautiful thing. But that’s sort of cliche as well. Change the name of the wine and the region, but the story is still the same.

What I really want to read about is what came before that. If everyone is really really true to what those wines were, I’ll bet there are many happy bottles of buttery chardonnays, fruit bomb reds, and slightly (or not so slightly) sweet whites that weren’t exactly models of balance and elegance – a graveyard of wine skeletons we now bemoan as suited only for the great lead-palated masses.

But we all had to start somewhere and for those not born into wine royalty, that start was probably a long way from whatever we’ve evolved into, be it a burghound, rock-head, point-chaser (although there don’t seem to be many point-chasers roaming blogland), or just a generally promiscuous wine slut.

The point is, our wine tastes evolve over time. Obviously that’s stating the obvious. But since most blogs revolve around where a given drinker wound up, I think it would be espeically interesting to learn where we started.

Bring out those skeletons!