Ronga’s Rant

When you’re at a wine store, restaurant, or bar how do you decide which wine to get? You may ask a friend, the waiter or sommelier, or you may even do some research online. Either way, you are looking for a recommendation. As my friend Paul Mabray mentioned, recommendation is the number one influencer for purchasing decisions when it comes to wine. I’ll go out on a limb – don’t quote me here – and say wine isn’t unique to this phenomenon.

What’s fascinating is that there are only a FEW authoritative voices on wine. Whereas in restaurants, movies, books, products, music, etc. people have the luxury of listening to the voice of many. People turn to Yelp, Rotten Tomatoes, Amazon, Cnet, iTunes. Now you might argue, well, wine is a luxury good, where I want an expert opinion. Really? What about food or movies? You trust your palate or opinion enough to know what you like and what you don’t… you’ll listen to Yelp or Rotten Tomatoes, and your friends rec over Ebert & Roeper. You don’t go to the old school (or maybe you do, I realize I’m making a major gross assumption here) Zagat hard copy which was written at single point in time to look up a restaurant. If so…then here’s some food for thought. Restaurants have mad turnover in terms of employees, wine pros, chefs, etc. Zagat ranks a resto once per year. So… you go off of a Zagat rating 10 months ago, which by the way is one voice (or at least < 5). Instead you could hit the interwebs, go to good ole Yelp or the resto rating of your choice and see REAL TIME, what peeps are saying. You might get 20 reviews in the last month! This would quell any fears about employee turnover, especially with the cooking staff. Now, these peeps most likely are not foody connoisseurs. However, do you trust them to adequately judge service, ambiance, and quality of food? Maybe not. But at least you can read their reviews to ascertain how sophisticated their analyses may be. Decide for yourself.

In the wine world, people have been turning to a dying industry. Wine Spectator (don’t get me started). Wine Advocate. Wine Enthusiast…magazines! Now what? Robert Parker is an influential figure and, darn it, I respect him for what he done in the biz with scoring wines. Tremendous. But what he is doing is not scalable going forward. Espcially with people consuming info online and turning to consensus reviews. Parker rates wine at a point in time – for you finance nerds it’s like a balance sheet vs. an income statement.

Wine changes… it transforms in the bottle, in the glass, in the moment. Let people decide. Let them tell the story, based on their palates. Let the winemakers tell the story. 100 reviews is much more powerful than one man’s, in my opinion. I believe Cork’d is a sucker that can scale. People, more than ever are consuming information online… But I diverge. The point is, no matter how many influential human beings there are in the wine world, one voice doesn’t do it. It takes many. My palate is totally different than yours. I like smelly arm pit, just came out of the gym, sweat socks, barnyard, funkified, dirty, blue cheesy wine. I’m guessing you want to throw up right now.

So… make your voice heard. Not just in wine. But everywhere. Don’t be shy. You can’t be wrong when it comes to wine, music, food, art, travel. They are subjective and local to your DNA. It is your opinion after all. Embrace it and share it. Influence. Otherwise, how will others know what to buy?

Today at 4pm I venture into the big city on a tour of the best restaurants with wine friend, Enrique Ibanez. He will introduce me to the top sommeliers and I hope to try some very good wines. More importantly…what could be more important than wine, you ask? Conversation. I hope to learn from these somms. Just as I expect I will learn from this entire experience. Wine can truly take on new forms and taste completely differentl when shared with others and when there is a story told around it. Some people (hopefully those I’ll meet tonight) have a special gift for explaining and breaking down wine into words that make the wine so truly enjoyable it is truly spectacular.

As Corkd does not (yet) have a mobile app, plan on me taking note of each wine I taste and reviewing them later on Cork’d. This is a PROMISE.

However, I must admit…I’m a little scared. Not about wine being intimidating and interacting with folks more knowledgeable than me. I’m the first to admit when I don’t know something. Here’s the thing: we start at 4pm, before the somms are busy. We’ll hit five or so places….wait til after the rush is over, then hit five or so more places. Have you done the math? That is a lot of wine!

The key is not to drink a full glass (at least in my world… and my body size , just a taste (2+ oz) so you can fully appreciate everything the next wine has to offer. . Enrique may by on a different playing field, however.

I will write about this NYC restaurant tour, of course, in my next post and tell you all about my experience and if I… eh.. I mean “it” lived up to all I had hoped.  Two hours til GO TIME.