Feb 24, 2012
I think I'd be a pretty good wine reviewer. After 20 years of tasting wine regularly and with a certain cache of knowledge in the subject of wine, and given my propensity to be able to focus intensely on a matter, and, finally, having a certain confidence in my writing that allows me to compose rather quickly, I am certain I could act as a responsible and useful wine critic. Yet I don't. The reason is pretty simple: My day…
Feb 22, 2012
A billboard for Wodka Vodka placed in the Bronx, New York has a headline that reads as follows: "Escort Quality, Hooker Pricing" Yes….Really. Oddly, as you can see on the web page of the NY Daily News, the marketers of the vodka somehow found the gumption to try to sell their vodka in this extremely repulsive way, but couldn't quite get themselves to go the whole way and put a picture of an "Escort" on the billboard. This kind of…
Jan 25, 2012
Today in the New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes about the era of "average" being over: "Being average just won’t earn you what it used to. It can’t when so many more employers have so much more access to so much more above average cheap foreign labor, cheap robotics, cheap software, cheap automation and cheap genius." He's correct, it seems to me. Looking just at the amazing tools now available to wine marketers that are ALSO FREE and you get…
Jan 19, 2012
If I'm not mistaken, we are seeing the development of a strong cultural aversion to the now notorious "1 Percent". Put another way, there appears to me to be a strong and still developing cultural and political zeitgeist that includes diminished respect, and even distaste, for financial elite, their demonstrations of wealth, their political power and the issues they care about. (Before someone mentions that I've used the term "zeitgeist" incorrectly by making observations of the present, rather than a…
Dec 13, 2011
As a publicist working in Northern California in the wine trade, there are certain things I come to vow never to do. While many have to do with my trade, others have to do with the result of working in Northern California and working in the Wine Trade. Those things I vow never to do, in no particular order: 1. COMPLAIN ABOUT DRINKING OR TASTING WINEI was reminded of why I never do this when today I saw a tweet…