18 Responses

  1. Dale Cruse - November 28, 2008

    Alice Feiring is more “Huge” than my pal Gary V? With all due respect to Alice, I don’t see it, especially considering Gary’s effect on Millennials, which you rate as the “Hugest” and one of the most “Lasting.”

  2. Dale Cruse - November 28, 2008

    Interestingly, I see “Bottle Shock” on the list but not “Sideways.” Is it no longer significant? Can we all drink Merlot again?
    I’d also add “The Value of the Dollar” as pretty “Huge” but also “Transient.”

  3. Dirty - November 28, 2008

    Along with Dale’s addition of the value of the dollar, a lot of things could roll up into overall “bad economy”- Fuel costs, weak dollar, real estate, and financial sector bubble bursts…
    Economy needs to be way up in the huge range (if not off the chart), and in the middle of transient and lasting.
    Thought the market may get better, many places won’t survive. The current downturn in pricing and profitability will change how many folks operate in the next few vintages.

  4. Tom Wark - November 28, 2008

    Dale,
    I think that in 2008 the impact of “Sideways” has pretty much run its course. Yet, here came a film this year that, like sideways, delivered something of a window on the world of professional winemaking. Millions saw the film. The significance of pop culture in shaping people’s views of this or that can’t be underestimated. That said, unlike “Sideways”, “Bottle Shock” will, I think, have only minimal lasting impact on the wine culture.

  5. Tom Wark - November 28, 2008

    Regarding Gary V, you can see by my placement of him in the middle of the Wineogram and by his relative placement to other people, places and things and issues that his impact is significant. However, I think his impact is still on a relatively localized group within the wine culture. I expect this to change in the next few years if Gary stays in the wine field. However, Alice’s writings reach a much broader group of people with her articles in general reading publications and her book and her editorials in large circulation newspapers. This was a great year for both Alice and Gary.

  6. Dale Cruse - November 28, 2008

    I do agree this was a great year for both Alice and Gary. No matter what general reading publications Alice’s writing appears in, Gary has been on national television shows like Conan O’Brien, Jim Cramer, Ellen Degeneres, and more. And with Gary’s daily viewership swelling to 80,000, that’s actually more than I hear are subscribed to Parker’s newsletter (60,000).

  7. Dylan - November 28, 2008

    It’s nice to see Millennials at the top of the charts. I agree 100% they’ll be the ones with a large, and lasting, impact on the wine industry. Of course, due to their demand for instant gratification, their impact isn’t happening fast enough so they have lost interest and moved on to the next big thing.

  8. JohnLopresti - November 28, 2008

    Since I am in a hurry usually, FermentationBlog often is where my reading begins, together with its links. Feiring’s consumer popularist article cited at FermBlog a while ago* confirmed, for me, her endurability as a commentator on the purposes which some distant writer coined the concept in vino veritas. As for the fuel bills, I would employ that on a graph charting offsetting factors for wine’s lonstanding and ongoing rise in popularity, as wine’s consumption tends to mitigate against noticing drafty insulation, and helps keep the hallway thermostat set to low range. In the diagram’s area near the placement of critters might be TwoBuckChuck, which as a minimum has kept the label’s art to utter simplicity, just the facts, ma’am.
    ____
    *http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/29/fashion/29love.html?_r=1&n=Top/Features/Style/Fashion%20and%20Style/Columns/Modern%20Love/&oref=slogin

  9. Scott Tracy - November 28, 2008

    1) you may now remove COPIA from the chart, it has shuttered it’s doors.
    2) Screw-caps are far more transient. I think the ALCOA glass closure will be replacing it over the next decade. (Both closures are reductive, but there is an unparalleled elegance to the glass closure)
    3) Parker vs. Wine Spectator is a ranking based on the power of the Spectator in the retail marketplace. Retail customers don’t send money to buy Parker’s books but shelf talkers have an impact. Only Parker is read overseas, only Parker is read by collectors, only Parkers scoring is deemed to be consistent and only Parker’s scores are remembered year after year.
    4) Gary V. vs Alice Feiring is a ranking that is valid for this year but long term, I wonder if it won’t be seen that Gary is for wine and Alice is against Parker. Gary comes across as an entertainer and Alice as a reformist. Americans like entertainers.
    A fun winegram, Tom, better conversation piece than any football games this weekend. Hope you had a great Thanksgiving

  10. Dale Cruse - November 29, 2008

    Scott, Decanter has reported that COPIA plans to reopen in December. There are already events on the calendar: http://www.copia.org/calendar/2008/12/all

  11. Scott Tracy - November 29, 2008

    Check the headline and story in the Napa Register.
    Maybe it will open in December. but the events for november were on the calendar, too and canceled without notice.
    People made reservations for Thanksgiving at Julia’s Kitchen and that was cancelled. People showed up the for Friday night movie and just a note on the door saying closed until further notice.
    Juiia’s Kitchen employees have been coming by our restaurant for jobs, they had not been given any notice or certainly not told they were given a week off until December. No operator is on duty for COPIA and the web page says that Julia’s Kitchen is closed and to check back soon for more information. I don’t know more than I know. But I as less than inclined to believe everything or anything I read in a COPIA press release. Perhaps COPIA hopes for a benefactor to buy the loans and lease it back to them. I can’t believe that any such benefactor exists in this economy. Locals were always very divided with the COPIA project.
    Check the comments in the Napa Register. http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/11/23/news/local/doc4928f82b98a6f888615788.txt

  12. KenPayton - November 30, 2008

    Silly post, Tom. Might even be stupid, with all due respect.
    Luv ya, man, but, really…. you left out technology, science, UC Davis, Fresno, Cal Poly, Cornell, teaching, research institutions generally.
    (By the way, Tyler Colman’s book is a mile wide and a foot deep, an endless series of nested references.)
    And you make no mention of industry mags, Wine Business, Wines & Vines, Practical Winery & Vineyard.
    Back to the blackboard, my friend.

  13. KenPayton - November 30, 2008

    Another thought….with respect to farmworkers, baby steps…. Reckoning is just around the corner….

  14. Tom Wark - November 30, 2008

    Ken,
    You didn’t even come close to listing all the various people, places, things and issues I didn’t include, demonstrating there is in fact a limit to the information the Internet can hold. That said, at least tell us where you’d place the items you note.
    No offense taken.

  15. KenPayton - December 2, 2008

    Two things. First, I am very grateful you took no offense. Secondly, family finally cleared out late in the day. Let’s just say I was in a reactionary mood.
    Your observation with respect to the sum total of all that remains left out of the grid above, true enough. That said, I would place university research programs near millennials and farmworkers. I would place the Wine Institute near Riesling, seems only fair; wine mags, between box and organic wines; CRAV near the lower left hand corner, just for laughs; Able Grape, near Alice. Tyler I’d swap with Global Warming. Your modesty aside, Fermentation belongs to the right of Snooth. Lastly, I would place private GMO research, the quiet revolution, at the top to the heap. Lasting and huge. The proprietary scientific literature on this matter is 2008’s biggest story. And 2009’s.
    I’m working to bring the info to light.

  16. Doug Cook - December 9, 2008

    Tom, an interesting and provoking chart. Maybe I should run through the Able Grape query logs and pull out key themes from the year; I wonder how well they’d correlate. (insert sound of one more interesting project being added to a very large pile…)
    Ken, thanks for the kind mention. I’ll pay you later! 😉 I’m not sure how high up Able Grape is yet; I get a fair number of pageviews a month (on the same order as Fermentation) but still am under the radar for most (by design, I’d add; I’ve wanted to keep things word-of-mouth while I learn from my early users, soon I’ll be working on ramping up traffic). Hopefully I belong on the right side of the chart though!

  17. Joel - December 9, 2008

    Hey! That’s me in there! Cool!
    Nice to pick my head up from plugging away and see that. Thanks Tom.
    Its funny because less then 1 year ago when I started the OpenWine Consortium someone referred to me as a “wine blogging nobody that will be gone in a year”. (FYI – he didn’t think it would get back to me).
    Thanks for the props. Cheers!

  18. Joel - December 9, 2008

    One other point – the 100-point scale is transient? Interesting. Any commentary on that?


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