WINE BLOGGERS ON THE TAKE!

Do I have your attention? 

(Always the high road, Strappo.)

There is incipient insurgency in Winebloggistan concerning the Rodney Strong initiative to garner reviews for their new release:   one blogger got some other bloggers (here are two, click and click) to accept samples from the California winery and to agree to review the wine within a certain period of time.  Tom Wark, for one, has raised some excellent questions regarding journalistic ethics and blogging.  The comments have been many and thought-provoking.  And, frankly, a stink over accepting samples, under any conditions, is pretty academic to me, since I don't receive review samples, ever.  (Any samples I get are ones that I've spent a few grand scouring Italy to acquire.)

But a recurring theme in both Tom's post and in the comments is that, one fine day, we the wretched refuse of the wine-communication shores will be the peers of the esteemed journalists of the mainstream, print-based wine press.  Color me eccentric for finding this a dubious honour indeed.  Since I'm such a pop-off and deep deep deep cynic, I couldn't help myself.  I wrote, in part:

... I wonder at the dominant assumption here, that we wine bloggers want so very much to be regarded as valid peers of the mainstream wine press. Do we really? Is that the future of wine blogging -- to be in the gentle vinous grip of a relatively small number of large wine producers/distributors/importers? Junketed and fed in far-flung places? More of their house "journalists" -- just in a different medium?

Oh, I can see the future of wine blogging now!  And I have to say that I don't find it at all pretty.

Or is cynicism discoloring my vision?

 

Comments

[Jeremy Parzen]

I am always on the take, TH, but no one is giving!

[Strappo]

Well put, Jeremy. Thank you for cutting thru the high-toned shit.

[John]

It kind of harkens back to the days when doctors were "on the take" from just about everyone from the drug companies all the way down (or up) to GE Med Systems, et al. Spouses and the like to the boon-doggle "events". Paid lackeys, no?

[Strappo]

The "educational" junkets really kill me, like the conference in tropical medicine at a $$$$$ estancia near Buenos Aires. Paid lackeys? Oh good God!

[Jeff]

I'm gonna go for the flip side of this argument. Let's say you're a blogger and garner a fairly large following. Expectations from your readership grow over time as to the number of reviews you do since no one gives a shit about your personal life any longer. You now are forced to consume more wine to satisfy readers. Do you spend additional time in Italy? Probably not. What you'll end up doing is sitting home with multiple bottles open just to get to the ones that are worth writing about. You'll have to slog through a sea of wines you hate just to get to the good ones anyway. Why wouldn't you accept samples if there was no promise to write about them? Producers, importers, distributors, and retailers all run the risk of sending you a less than stellar bottle on a day when you're feeling particularly chatty.

The sword has two edges Strappo.

[Strappo]

So I take it you're not a fan?

[Jeff]

Of yours? Of course I am. I have no problem with writers/bloggers accepting free samples so long as they're honest in their opinions. If I sent you a bottle and it was shit I'd expect you to say so. If you didn't then I wouldn't respect your opinion anyway and you'd never see a sample again.

[Sarah Newton]

Ciao Terry,

If you're involved with wine in any commercial way and you keep a blog you will always be regarded with the highest suspicion. I suppose its hard for some fat pocketed sections of the wine drinking community to believe that people genuinely would dedicate serious day to day blogging for any other reason that financial gain.

I know in my case only about 10% of the wines reviewed on wine90 are sold at TCD and they are mentioned even THAT frequently because I'm working day to day with those wines.

There seems a constant need for justification, if its not serving our own commercial needs then it is "wanting to be the next parker". We all have a reason for blogging, even if that reason is pure love!

[Strappo]

Sarah, very well put.

I do this out of the love of it, mainly. Well, only, because there's no money in it for me. If I mention a wine and/or a producer that I'm going to be involved with commercially, I do it out of my genuine excitement for the wine he or she makes.

I think your point about wanting to be the "next Parker" is spot on. There are several, whose names I shall not mention, who comport themselves and write in such a way that I cringe for them. They frequently write about the wonderful blogging community, etc., but success goes to their heads very quickly. The unspoken, unadmitted ambition of many bloggers -- obvious as it is -- irks me no end.
This ambition, indeed, may be the undoing of some, as the Rodney Strong brouhaha suggests.