You walk into the wine shop to buy a bottle of Champagne for New Year's Eve 2011. Greeted by a wall of unfamiliar brands you whip out your iPhone 5Gs and start scanning bar codes on the bottles. Your browser pops open with pages of reviews and commentary about the producer and vintage. There are dozens of reviews on CellarTracker and just as many posts on wine blogs. Quickly you make a selection and head off to the party.
This is not a guess of what's going to happen in the future, it is what is going to happen and is in fact happening now. The technology exists and it's in use. What you won't see on your phone when looking for recommendation will be scores from publications like The Wine Spectator and The Wine Advocate. Their data resides in "walled gardens" and you have to pay to see what they think about that bottle of Champagne you wanted to buy. At some point they will be faced with offering their content for free or, as mentioned in my previous post, sliding into oblivion.
The biggest threat to the point porn of traditional print wine media has to be the model employed by that IT wizard of the wine industry Eric Levine and his
CellarTracker website. There some 89,000 users have posted over 1 million wine reviews. Instead of ratings from a "wine expert" those who visit CellarTracker can often get dozens of reviews on a single wine from people who taste wine just like they do. Sure there are worthless notes from people that don't have a clue, but they are overwhelmed by those that take their comments on CellarTracker very seriously. This is a powerful resource that is comprehensive, free and available to anyone, anywhere with an Internet connection or a smart phone in their hand.
Wineries themselves are taking things into their own hands instead of just rolling the dice and hoping for big points in The Wine Spectator or The Wine Advocate. Notably Murphy-Goode with Hardy Wallace and St. Supery with Rick Bakas hired on as full-time new media hired guns have been aggressively following new marketing paradigms. Recent travels by Bakas showed the future of wine marketing as he did "Tweet-ups" around the country gathering small groups of wine lovers together to directly hear the story and taste the wines of St. Supery. Certainly such direct contact generates more consumer brand loyalty than just getting points and placing an ad in a wine magazine. When there's not a good reason for a winery to place an ad in a wine magazine that's big trouble for the wine publishing industry.
This confluence of technology, new marketing techniques and the growth of consumers that prefer to get advice from their "friends" rather than experts upon high spells trouble for the big wine media of today. They are just not needed in the same way anymore - by both the consumer and the producer. It's safe to say that in not so many years the big glossy wine magazines will go the way of Gourmet Magazine. This will happen not because of the quality of their content, but because the market has changed around them.
Oddly enough the 100 point scale, which built these established wine publications may be what they need to abandon to stay alive. Rankings, points and tasting notes will be easy to come by and free. What will be needed, and worth paying for, will be real wine journalism and wine writing. Great reporting and quality writing are things all to rare and people are willing to pay for things that are rare and precious.
Posted via email from Wine Camp Blog/Posterous Edition
Update on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 10:43AM by
Craig Camp
Worth noting is that now CellarTracker integrates reviews and commentary by some of the worlds most respected wine writers into their database. Stephen Tanzer, Roy Hersh, John Gilman, Brad Baker, Allen Meadows and now Jancis Robinson contribute their considerable wisdom along side the comments by the consumers themselves. It’s hard to think of a more powerful combination.
Update on Monday, January 25, 2010 at 5:10PM by
Craig Camp
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 at 10:27AM 
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Reader Comments (9)
Great post! No doubt that technology is moving away from pay and toward free content. Not only will free content pose a challenge to wine magazines who charge for content, I also think that the authority of wine reviews of wine critics has being exposed by several recent studies that show inconsistent ratings of the same wine, and that ratings are contingent on palate preferneces. So just because WA or WE think that a wine is excellent doesn't mean that everyone will.
Thanks TallyWineGuy, your comments are most appreciated.
Hi Craig,
Surely the Internet is changing the face of wine criticism with platforms that allow the user's voice to be gathered and amplified. Personally I think that many high-end wine lovers will still subscribe to the professionals, as they provide valuable depth and insight, and certainly my goal is to help the professionals who are willing to reach consumers on CellarTracker. It is worth nothing that my integration of course requires people to subscribe directly with the publications integrated on CellarTracker in order to turn on the professional content, and I know that this is helping to drive increased stickiness and subscription among our many shared customers.
It is also interesting to note that the Wine Spectator considers itself as more of a wine educator than a publisher and set of criitics per-ser, so I doubt that CellarTracker will have much of an impact on their core activity. I do love the trend of very high-end magazines of amazing depth like the World of Fine Wine. The price puts it out of reach of many consumers, but it offers SERIOUS, SERIOUS journalism and depth. We have done done some collaboration in the past and will do more.
Thanks,
-Eric
Eric - While there is a load of education in the pages of The Wine Spectator and the other wine magazines, it seems to me that readers of Playboy and Wine Spectator have a lot in common. They swear they subscribe for the articles, but it's the porn (or point porn in the case of the wine mags) that keeps 'em coming back. In their current format if they lose the point chasers they're in real trouble.
I could not agree more with you on the quality of The World of Fine Wine, which is one of the few places to find wine literature in a periodical. It is an exceptional publication. Another great publication is The Art of Eating. I think these magazines will survive because of their unique content and the amazing quality of their writing.
One day, we will all have iPhone 5gs with barcode scanners I'm sure! I will definitely have to use Cellar Tracker next time I am in a pinch for picking out wine. Thanks for the write up!
Craig,
Great post. Re: points. I can't even remember the last time a customer has asked me for the points on a particular wine. Two or three years at least--it's been that long--and a good thing too because I wouldn't have any idea. From my perspective (restaurants), the points are already irrelevant.
Jesse
Jesse - I agree points aren't what they used to be. I think this is partially because there are so many wines rated that it has diluted the impact. Also, point inflation has gotten to the point where people barely notice a score that's not over 95.
I do agree that points are becoming more and more meaningless as time goes by. So many critics, some of whom are rating everything 90+....gives the average consumer, especially when they are first starting with wine, the idea that all wines are the same.
I love technology and anything we can do to bring great, little known producers to the forefront-the better it is for everyone involved.
Hi Craig and everyone
Interesting post and fascinating comments. Thank you
I couldn't agree more about the points system. Just how do most consumers tell the difference between an 88 and a 90 , or a 90 and 91 anyway?
It reminds me of the education system here in the U.K. It's what we call grade inflation.
It used to be that A grade in an exam was exceptional, a B was praiseworthy and a C a good effort.
These days even some of the lesser universities demand straight As and preferably A *
But back to the discussion. I read recently of 'QR' codes under test in Canada that allow a wine labels to be read by a mobile phone and for the consumer to be taken directly to the wine maker's web site for more information.
Of course the information given by the maker will be not be independent so consumers may prefer to source their information elsewhere, but it's another pointer in the direction of direct consumer interaction that will indeed change the market and the marketing.
Jiles Halling