Thursday, August 7 2008
The Not-So Invisible Hand
Either he's tooting his own horn, or that's a rather large flagon of Rosè
October 24-26th will mark the first-ever Wine Bloggers conference in Sonoma. It sounds like a pretty cool place (and time) to go for a wine get-together, but I can't see the logic behind this 'bloggers conference'.
One of the principle reasons I enjoy doing this blog is that I hold some very contrarian opinions about wine and the industry surrounding it. Of course, I try to be respectful of other people's businesses so I don't publish reviews of wines I don't like, but I'm otherwise pleased to be free with my opinions. As such I can't really imagine enjoying myself in the company of others looking to 'learn about and discuss community driven content about wine and blogging'. Community-driven content? Sounds like the medium should go out for a massage.
I could maybe get behind a conference helping bloggers learn how to monetize (MBA-speak for 'make money from') their blogs. I'm not wondering how to pay bandwidth fees or scrabbling to pay hosting bills, thanks to this being a corporately sponsored blog (thank-you, hand-that-feeds-me) so that would be a great help for some folks in bloggyland. Likewise, seminars to help understand journalistic objectivity, ethics, clarity in writing (not that I'm a paragon of clarity with my relentlessly discursive style and multiple parentheses) etc, would be great, but the program doesn't seem to be promoting that sort of thing. Instead, we get
Blind Tasting Challenge: Bloggers will test their skills in identifying grape varietals and regions. Because we will have only local Sonoma wines, the competition will focus on identifying the type of grape, determining the AVA within Sonoma County, matching the wine to the label description, etc.
You. Must. Be. Kidding. Blind tasting in public is a party trick for fooling the masses. Full disclosure: I've done it at a grape growers conference once (and did a spectacular job, able to identify not only an obscure varietal made to a weird style) but it was a great big helping of blind luck that got me to the answer, not some sort of mystic skill. The truth of the matter is that even highly experienced professional tasters often can't even identify the colour of a wine if they're blindfolded, much less the varietal, vintage or region.
Perpetuating the the myth of 'blind' tasting is just the sort of jiggery-pokery nonsense that the idea of citizen news (aka 'blogging') was supposed to subvert. Instead, closeted away in Sonoma they're going to drive content. Wasn't it Adam Smith who said that men of the same profession never gather together in private except with intent to defraud the general public?
However, I'm sure they'll all have a happy and enthusiastic time generating their 'community driven content'. Me, I'll curmudge my way along as usual, looking at actual content, I hope.
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