Vin de Napkin - Incredulous Consumer Edition

More social commentary on the back of a napkin ...

I’ll let you be the judge, but Wine.com certainly hasn’t done much to build credibility in the enthusiast and high-end of the online wine audience. 

First, they rankled many people early last year when they essentially sought to disrupt online competition by firing letters off to enforcement agencies about other online wine retailers who were allegedly shipping to states that were not legal ship-to states.  This is akin to collegial Tonya Harding whacking Nancy Kerrigan in the knees back in the day (See my posts here, here and here).

Now, Wine.com is entering the collectible and fine wine segment to complement their lower-tier portfolio, a hedge against Amazon.com if ever there was one.  However, they make the absolute credibility killing mistake of misspelling the names of wines and producers in their press release.

Even worse, the misspellings are attributed to Michael Osborn, Founder and VP Merchandising at Wine.com, which means two things:  #1 Osborn doesn’t even know what quotes are attributed to him in a press release because he obviously doesn’t see them before they go on the wire and #2 whomever writes his press releases doesn’t know much about wine.

They probably let the intern get one more release under her belt before sending her off to wait tables for the forseeable future.

Oddly, though, it does seem to be poetic justice ... to paraphrase Osborn, I have little doubt that “Borolo” is a favorite of the wine.com community ...

On another note, I think I’ve given Oprah just about enough rope.  Joining Dr. Phil as worst quack foisted on the public is Dr. Oz, so called “America’s Doctor.”  Goodness.  Does he “accidentally” double bill insurers, too?  That would be quite American.  This guy will sell anything he can attach his name to.  Do a search on “Dr. Oz” and you will see his name attached to just about every facet of pop medical—diets, beauty and now Resveratrol.