Public Opinion is to Elite Snobbery as Wine Blogger Reviews are to Wine Critic Reviews
When it comes to wine, what happened to the court of public opinion? Does the public even have an opinion? The wine industry has been dominated by a few individuals for such a long time that the voice of the masses has been drowned in a whirlpool of professional wine critics and writers.
The total reliance on professional opinion is one of the major factors contributing to the sorry state of the wine industry. Unfortunately, most people seem to be afraid to voice their opinion about wine. But there is one important thing to remember, tasting wine is a SUBJECTIVE experience.
It doesn’t matter what someone else has said about a particular wine, its all about what YOU think about it. While there are definite benefits to reading wine critic reviews, they should be taken for what they are; someone’s opinion on a subjective experience. Taking these opinions as rule is the best way to back your palate into a corner and never really discover what you really like and don’t like.
> Free Thinkers are to Sheep as “Followers of their own Preferences” are to “Followers of Wine Critics Preferences.”
Fortunately, over the past couple of years, things have been changing. The development of the wine blogosphere, although still in its infancy, has enabled a more democratic take on wine and the wine industry. Instead of reading a wine publication, many people are searching blog posts for wine reviews. These reviews are a better representation of public opinion because they are not corrupted by the forces influencing major wine magazines.
> Public Opinion is to Elite Snobbery as Wine Blogger Reviews are to Wine Critic Reviews
In addition to the wine blogs, there are now wine websites that are more interested in what people like you think than what some professional wine critic thinks. User generated wine sites like Cork’d, Winelog, Openbottles, Bottletalk and Vinorati all emphasize user opinion.
The trend towards impartial user reviews is taking hold in almost every major industry. User reviews are all over sites like Amazon and Overstock, and were the driving force behind the development of blogs; as they morphed from personal websites to weblogs at the turn of the millennium.
> Democracy is to Non-Marxist Imperialism as User Generated Reviews are to Wine Critic Reviews.
It seems that there are three major categories of opinion; Wine Critics, Wine Bloggers and the General Publics. Which is most important to you? How many people would have a give a positive review of a wine to convince you its good? If a wine critic gave a wine a bad review, would you automatically think its bad?
These are questions you can only answer for yourself, but have serious implications on the direction of the wine industry. As more emphasis is placed on wine blogger and general public opinion, the wine industry will become more democratic and less imperialistic. And it is within this movement that people will free their palates and truly develop their own tastes and preferences.
Comments & Reviews
March 9, 2007 | drdebs
Great story, Ryan. I've had a piece in the drafts folder on just these issues for a few weeks now. I'll post it next week with links to your story. Hopefully this post of yours will be the kick off of some good discussion about some important issues.
March 9, 2007 | Ryan Fujiu
Thanks Debs, I can't wait to read your story. I'm definitely interested in what others think about these issues...
March 9, 2007 | drdebs
Tom's already picked it up at Fermentation--let the conversation begin!
March 9, 2007 | tom merle
We at The Wine Coop/CitizenWine.us wholeheartedly agree with you. It is the people who buy the wine and their opinions don't always coincide with the "experts" whose palates are admitedly more refined. The opinions of the cognoscenti do and should carry weight, but they oftentimes fail to provide guidance for those in the middle of bell curve.
One need only look at the success of Yelp to see that a bottoms-up approach to assessment has great value.
In an attempt to generate viewpoints from those whose interest stems from making the regular meal more pleasureful by adding an appealing wine, we are launching a series of consumer blind tastings at Citizen Space in SF.
Using a five star system, with half stars allowed, we sum the total, sometimes dropping out the highest and lowest scores, and arrive at the arithmatic average. Both absolute and QPR scores are given. We also award medals: Double Gold: 41/2 stars, Gold: 4 stars; Silver: 3 stars; bronze: 2 stars.
I hope you, Ben and others who read your blog will join us this Monday night as we rate and rank some 20 different Premium Cask Wines, from Blackbox to Bandit to Delicato (we will feed the findings into the ~Wine Blogging Wednesday~ network).
We'll follow this inaugural event with a vinous critique of Mendo wines.
More info can be found at www.wine.coop and clicking on tne ~Events/News~ button. Another page describes the scoring system.
Au revoir,
Epi
March 9, 2007 | Sagi Solomon
Hi Ryan. Great post. I completely agree. We are seeing a revolution in the wine industry - a revolution led by public opinion. I don't see the popular wine critics going away, but I do see their influence being diluted by the communities. One problem that we have to resolve though is that consumers are used to reading “technical” reviews like those in Enthusiast or Spectator, which leads them to believe that all reviews have to read like that. We (OpenBottles) are trying to correct that misconception by encouraging people to talk about their personal experience (we allow for more technical reviews as well). As more people become comfortable with sharing their opinions, we will have more information by which to judge whether a wine is “good” or not. Pretty soon, the wine industry will have to pay attention.
March 12, 2007 | Ryan Fujiu
@ Sagi: Agreed, that is why I wanted to include you guys in the post. Openbottles is a great resource and is a "free" environment for people to share their thoughts on wine without being afraid of someone looking down on them. We need more websites like yours that encourages people with less experience to talk about their wine; besides, talking about wine is the best way to learn about it.
@ epicurus: That sounds like a great event, anyone who is interested should go and check it out.
March 13, 2007 | thomas matthews
I don't see why these are either/or positions. We learn about wine the way we learn about any other subject. At school, for example, you learn from your professors (the "critics"), and also from your interaction with other students (the "public opinion"). At Wine Spectator, we urge our readers to develop their own palates, but we believe that our tasters can facilitate that process, through their knowledge and experience. We are all wine lovers; the goal is to share the passion and help each other learn more and drink better.
Thomas Matthews
Executive editor
Wine Spectator
March 13, 2007 | Ryan Fujiu
@Thomas: Thanks for your insightful comments. I don't think anyone has called your magazine's love and passion for wine into question. Additionally, I'm not trying to place the full brunt of the blame on wine critics. Its just as much (if not more) of the publics fault to blindly follow scores. However, I do disagree with your school analogy though. Most of the subjects taught in school are objective, math science, history, economics, etc... While perception of wine is subjective. In school, another students opinion on Newton's theory of relativity doesn't mean anything. You can't have an opinion about laws of nature, thats why they are called laws. But anyone can have an opinion about wine. Some might be better than others, but thats also a subjective opinion.
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