It is because I say it is

Wine is a subject based upon information. Too much information, as anyone who studies the subject in detail will tell you. Places, names, soil types, grapes, styles. Add to this the fact that half of the info changes every single year, as with each successive vintage an entirely new wine is (or should be) born, with a whole new set of info to remember such as how the heat wave in the middle of August affected the Merlot grapes but not the Cabernet, but the rains at the end of September affected the Cabernet grapes but not the Merlot.

Living in the information age is a great advantage, as we have instant access to more wine knowledge than any one person could ever possibly have use for, no matter how much you like to rattle off facts and figures to your significant other because you know how much she likes to hear you talk just for the sake of talking. Inevitably the info starts to merge with other sets of info, forming a 3D grid of wine stuff that swirls and sloshes throughout your brain like a fine wine in one of those 90 ounce wine glasses that are all the rage nowadays.

But at what point does lots of information become too much information? At what point do you have to say enough is enough? It seems that the wine intelligentsia thinks that wine intelligence is based on how much info can be acquired, not how much is useful. Someone isn’t anyone until they can spew forth a litany of descriptions about obscure factoids regarding the second layer of soil on the fourth hill over from the 3rd best wine growing region in a second-tier country. It seems that each wine guy out there is desperately trying to outdo the next by throwing as many seven syllable words like Trockenbeerenauslese into a sentence. Their prize? A shiny new wine thesaurus.

Why must it be this way? At what point did it become ok to go from casual conversation to showing off? For all of you wine writers and experts out there I expect it. That’s your gig, brother. Go with it. If you didn’t I would think you a hack. But we are at a crossroads with wine information online. The hippest fad in the wine world today is the wine blog.

What a great way to throw around opinions on everything wine related from the intricacies of the industry to the nuances of wine speech itself. What a great way to develop the discourse, to further the flow and to expand the world of wine. But where will it end up? One of the biggest faults of the internet has always been misinformation, propaganda and just downright BS cleverly disguised as a reputable source of juicy info. As anyone who has ever checked their email inbox after a week’s vacation knows, there is an awful lot of crap out there, and somehow it is being directed at breakneck speed across the internet to unsuspecting folks everyday. Wine is next.

Even the large companies are hitting the blogosphere. Hop onto many a big-biz website and you are bound to find a blog detailing how great their product is. Hmmm. I wonder who penned that deliciously useless waste of my internet time? Wine propaganda is already running rampant on the sales circuit, as each time a sales rep for Gigantocorp. Conglomerate Inc. swings by the wine shop to hawk his wares I am inundated with a professionally created mountain of folders, tech sheets, pictures and notes about how unique and small the winery really is. Really? Can a small winery really afford to drop $20 per on the glossies they are handing out on a wine that retails for $10 a bottle? Fuzzy math to be sure.

For all you Bloggy McBloggersons out there (myself included) I offer this little piece of opinion to add to the sea of information: Use your power wisely. As blogs become more and more popular and prevalent, distinguishing opinion from fact will become more difficult. Please be clear about the distinction between the two. It is a well-known fact that people who love wine love to throw around nugs of information, because they are fun, or interesting, or interestingly funny. Seldom are these facts ever given much personal research, and if coming from what one thinks is a reputable source they are taken as gospel.

For all the servers, retailers and wine reps out there these jewels can be the difference between a sale and a see you next time. Good for them if the sale is made, but I would hate to be the one who purchased that wine under false pretenses. Yes, I probably could whip out my PDA and download the entire copy of An encyclopedia of the the wines and domains of France by Clive Coates MW and spend the next 15 minutes pouring over a ton of information from an expert on the subject, but I will probably take the seller’s word for it instead.

I see the world of wine in the information age as a world of potential. Potentially it could be a world of information shared at light speed. Of reviews from professionals and enthusiasts alike crossing the planet instantaneously. Of discourse and opinion flying about to offer the curious another avenue to take when getting on the wine information superhighway. Everything one could ever want to know about wine at their fingertips. A true wine information age.

But I also see the potential for rampant abuse. Of websites and wine blogs that tout the beauty of the Gigantocorp. wines that are secretly run by Gigantocorp. Of reviews that are based solely on someone else’s review. Of falsehoods and exaggerations that will soon end up on the lips of your local wine monger. “That wine got a 95 in the Spectator, and it is made by Heidi Barrett.” This statement might be enough to sway the swaying from walking out with a $50 bottle or walking out with the $20 bottle that they came in for. But is it true?

In the end one can only hope. Hope that the wine buying world is smart enough to weed out the fiction from the fact and the opinion from the information. Hopefully the wine writing world, and this includes us bloggers, will have the integrity to write with integrity, and keep the hearsay and random opinions in the hearsay and random opinions file. Don’t get me wrong, I eat the stuff for breakfast, but it is getting to the point that you can’t swing an empty bottle on the internet without hitting some wine writing, and for all the bloggers out there in cyberspace there are no wine police checking facts and writing tickets for talking out of your (blank).

So keep that info in check by keeping it info. If otherwise, please state so. There is plenty of room for all of us hurlers of wine related stuff, just as long as we don’t fall into the “It is because I say it is” category. In the absence of police we are forced to police ourselves. The absence of law should not lead to lawlessness. So with that I mind I leave you with this: In the immortal words of my favorite rap star- “Keep it real, yo.” Or did I just say that?

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