Wine Blogs and Wine on the Internet: A Matter of Trust

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately that has panned the hell out of wine bloggers, wine mobile applications, and newer wine critics...and although I find some of it comical, it's been bugging me.

The basic argument in every study, commentary, and editorial is that anyone who is not already established in the wine writing game or isn't a source you know already is essentially full of s*&t. Each article, blogger, periodical, and Op-Ed'er is either saying that you don't trust anything that bloggers say (in the data-based studies) or that you shouldn't. The same goes for mobile wine applications, resource sites, and anything else that isn't Spectator, Enthusiast, Food & Wine, The New York Times, Decanter, The Wine Advocate (Robert Parker), etc.

So, according to these articles, YOU essentially are saying that all forms of new information and new media are worthless and may as well not exist except if written by the same people who write for magazines and papers that existed before the 1990s. YOU eschew "new entrants" into the field and don't trust or like anyone who hasn't earned their stripes at a major publication first. Better stop reading this blog now ...

But if you decided to read on...I'll say this. This story is a retread of the story of the entrenched, old media industries -- music labels and newspapers especially come to mind. Recall that the music labels shut down Napster rather than trying to harness its networking powers (for now, we'll leave it alone that the app was kind of stealing music). Then the industry boycotted iTunes because fat cat execs would have rather had you buy the whole crap album than just buy an individual song you may like. It's the same story: Old doesn't like the new and they don't want to share their audience or accept that things may be changing.

I'll concede that many wine blogs are written by folks without a lot of wine knowledge and that I'm personally a fan of a very few. I don't think this is a really radical view. To quote a fellow Long Islander (I'm a native, although I don't live there anymore) with everything you read or listen to or watch on a regular basis ..."It's a matter of trust."

But we don't need whining journalists to tell us to question media and our trust level of content providers. Trust is earned over time. Doesn't this go for everything in your life? Here are three examples:
1. You hear from a friend that a hairstylist is really great, so you go to the salon because you trust your friend. The stylist FUBARs your hair and then you neither trust the stylist, nor the friend.
2. You call a painter whose name you got off the Internet because you need a room painted desperately and the price is right. He turns out to be awesome. You use him again and you recommend him to everyone you know.
3. You read a review of a wine on a wine blog and it seems like something you would like. You buy it based on that recommendation. It rocks your world. You keep reading the blog and taking the recommendations.

Why is it that wine "authorities" think that we are all a bunch of morons and lemmings? Yes, there are 3,000 wine blogs out there. Not all of them will continue, and not all of them are written by people who know much about wine. But we know this. We can see it right away. And it's our choice to decide if we'll keep reading them for amusement or to find some other source of information.

I find it interesting that the data in one of the studies showed "definitively" that people don't trust wine bloggers, but then as a fellow wine blogger, The Wine Crumudgeon, pointed out, those who actually know what a blog is (that was part of the problem -- they didn't know what a blog was), trust them about as much as they trust the people at their wine shop. The empirical study implies that people trust wine shops a lot more than blogs -- proving the mantra I learned in business school -- there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Another fascinating article on "death to bloggers" comes from a writer for the Connoisseurs' Guide To California Wine, whose thinly veiled hatred for new bloggers seems to come from a fear that he and his cronies may be undermined by other, more interesting people on the horizon. He hopes to hold on to his salary (and his $90/year subscription fee) by stripping bloggers of their credibility and insinuating that the old guard is the only game that will survive (*Please see the comments below where a dialog between the author and I played out. He clarifies his position a bit).

I'm sure the author of that article would lump me in with the amateurs, but I like to think that because I am a Certified Sommelier, Certified Specialist of Wine, have done my time on the business side of the wine industry working in California for a large winery, and I have a wine education business in which I do classes for people constantly, that my stuff comes from a place of experience, expertise, and understanding about what people want to know about a very broad, difficult subject. But that's not up to me to decide. It's up to you to choose to trust me and many of the other bloggers out there or not.

Regardless, I think we should all resist the urge to cast a death knell to a new medium that gives people access to more information and gives them a chance to make decisions about who they believe in. The number of people who write blogs hurts no one, but the rise of successful ones eats into the scared old guard, which is why they keep predicting the end of it all (wishful thinking). I say, bring it on. In the end it's up to all of us to choose what we like and what we don't. The best will rise to the top, the less good won't garner an audience.

In this situation, let's use Billy Joel's wise words: "It's a matter of trust..." A matter which is up to you, not to someone else's opinion on wine bloggers, wine applications, and the future of wine on the Internet.