If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, many wine lovers will soon have their day of reckoning as tasting note sites self-select into enthusiast categories.
It’s somewhat de rigueur for wine enthusiasts to state that they believe in the democratization of wine: a chicken in every pot and a wine glass on every table. As the saying goes, “if I had a nickel for every time somebody said they wanted to ‘demystify’ wine I’d be a very wealthy man, indeed.”
I’ve been thinking about this since word came out last week via a press release and an article at TechCrunch that tasting note and social community site Cork’d relaunched with a new CEO (Lindsay Ronga—a freshly minted Harvard MBA hired by Gary Vaynerchuk who assumes the mantle of “Chairman”).
In my opinion, watching these various communities develop and grow is some of the most dynamic and interesting water cooler action in wine today.
Historically, tasting note sites like CellarTracker, VinCellar and Cork’d started out as a closed-off combination of personal cellar management and tasting notes, but has quickly morphed into their own communities on par and exceeding many of the most heavily trafficked wine sites on the web.
Pick Your Flavor
Each of these sites brings the same basic premise to the table, with very different executions.
VinCellar is the Wine Advocate of the online wine tasting note scene – collectible wines with a very high-end user. CellarTracker, easily the largest service of its kind, is more of the Wine Spectator / Wine Enthusiast audience –- educated and smart while casting a wider net of inclusiveness for wine lovers. And, Cork’d. Well, Cork’d is a bit of a mystery and deserves time to develop under focused leadership, but it’s not a stretch to say that their audience consists of a significant population of those just earning their first wine merit badge. How else to explain the fact that one of the top rated wines is a Temecula dessert wine, alongside a ’95 Chateau Margaux?
It is ironic that these three sites represent the three different strata of customers in the wine world. And, each takes different approaches to their ongoing development strategies.
VinCellar is one of a myriad of services offered by wine company Vinfolio. VinCellar aids the Vinfolio cause as a complementary vehicle for their high-end audience interested in cellar management and other wine portfolio needs, with tasting notes acting as an ancillary benefit.
Credit where credit is due, Alder Yarrow, the online wine community’s most influential writer is, by day, a user-experience expert who worked on the VinCellar redesign project. His combination of wine knowledge and usability expertise creates a very elegant site experience.
CellarTracker, the grand old dame of this space, is more community and tasting notes driven with a very high-level of activity from their user base, having recently notched their one millionth tasting note. Compare to VinCellar’ self-reported number of 29K tasting notes and you can see the wide delta in user engagement, if not quantity of users.
Offered as a donation-based service with some premium offerings, CellarTracker sprung out of founder Eric Levine’s desire to create exactly what he has today – an online community of wine lovers trading thoughts and notes on their bottled wine adventures. What’s lacking in elegance in design (Eric’s rolling out a new version sometime in the next couple of months) is made up for by depth and breadth.
Cork’d, on the other hand, is definitely more proletariat if VinCellar and CellarTracker are bourgeoisie. With a decidedly more common touch, Cork’d is re-launching with the idea of bridging the gap directly between winery and consumer.
Leveraging Facebook Connect, a universal web sign-on of sorts, with direct integration into Facebook, Cork’d has a tremendous opportunity to tap into the very significant segment of the wine consuming public that drinks the stuff, but doesn’t wax poetic with purple prose. The fact that Cork’d is directly integrated with Facebook also allows them to ramp up number of users very, very quickly.
Here’s the thing about these tasting note sites – they haven’t been tapped for marketing from wineries, though Cork’d is looking to change that. Their business model is to engage wineries to set-up a page on the Cork’d site for an annual subscription fee of $999, allowing the winery to directly engage with consumers.
It’s a smart move, with a lot of implications.
Life Gets More Complicated
I can imagine a very near future where even the most casual of wine fans is avidly logging their notes as an ongoing historical journey of their wine adventure. And, given my belief that winery marketers will come to tasting note sites, all tasting note sites, coupled with what could be a huge expansion in people doing tasting notes online, this has me wondering what it all means.
Unfortunately, people want to associate with people that are like them. Sure, I want to demystify wine and I want more people to enjoy wine because a rising tide raises all ships, however, I’d prefer not to have to spend a whole lot of time around somebody who thinks Burgundy is a jug of wine, or somebody whose self-proclaimed love of wine takes them about as far as the wine aisle at Safeway looking for a $7 Riesling –especially if I have a choice of where I hang out online.
So, ultimately the question is this: as tasting note sites become a widespread tool in the arsenal of people who pursue their love of wine online, and wineries engage on that turf, what will ultimately happen? Will we promote the democratization of wine, or will we decamp to our respective knowledge comfort zones with birds of a feather, perpetuating the gap in between the wine elite, wine enthusiasts and newcomers?
I’m afraid I don’t like the answer to my own question …