| Networking through the Grape Vine |
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| Color Magazine - Lifestyle | |||
| Written by Trond Arne Undheim | |||
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Just in case you haven't tried it yet, the hottest thing in wine right now is global, simultaneous tastings on Twitter, the micro blogging site. You simply pick a wine, advertise a hash tag and a time, and see what happens. The result is that expert, old Europeans with traditional commentary no longer dictate people's opinion or consumption. The trend in social media is that we only trust our peers. By one estimate, as much as 62 percent of content consumed by those born in 1980 or later is created by someone they know. Now, no matter who you are, you rule, or rather, your friends, peers and idols do.
Krushed Grapes, the sexy solo debut album of Hanif-Jamiyl aka "CabCabernet" brings hip hop and R&B to the topic of wine and a bit beyond, given that "krushed grapes" might be a metaphor, too. Sadat X of the alternative hip hop group Brand Nubian issues two or three wine videos a week. What is happening here? Theda Sandiford, a social networking professional who consults celebrities in using social media for branding, explained enthusiastically, "Hip hop and wine is the new thing."
Supernodes, Sandiford's New York City multicultural wine and technology gig is tapping into the trend, "Regular wine events are snobby. If you don't already know your grapes and regions, you may have to wait to get on a list. Supernodes events are different. People just show up." She also admitted, "I met my boyfriend on Cork'd."
In the Californian Bay area, for the third year in a row, Les Tso, of Aggregate Productions, a veteran in the beverage industry, puts on a wine tasting for young Asian professionals and their friends through the online grapevine. Targeting local Asian American community groups, Tso typically ends up with more than 400 attendees. He attributes the wine surge among Asians to many things: the demystification of wine, edgy marketing and the adoption of a more Western lifestyle. However, "what amplifies the trend," Tso said, "is the Asian affinity for food, especially as the confidence grows that Asian food can stand up to wine."
The growth of wine-inspired webbing, blogging and social networking is staggering. Top wine bloggers specialize in their niche. Burghound is the best on wines from Burgundy. Dr. Vino preaches the political economy of wine. Gary V's WineLibraryTV is a daily video blog for the young and hip consumer crowd. Even the established wine critics, such as Robert Parker, Steve Tanzer and Jancis Robinson, rely on blogs and websites beefed up by constant Twitter feeds. Indeed, many of the 279 British-based Masters of Wine have wine blogs. One hundred thousand affluent wine geeks use Cellartracker or VinCellar to catalogue their collection among 17 million plus bottles with well over a million wine reviews. Google has more than 175 million entries for the keyword "wine."
On the social web side of things, the wine industry uses the Wine 2.0 site, while younger urban professionals use SavorEachGlass, and the newbies use Tastewine, to discover their likings. In time, they graduate to sites like Bottletalk, Cork'd or Winelog. Social wine shoppers might use Snooth. Wine-Searcher, another useful tool, provides price lists from 17,272 wine-stores across the world. Even if you simply buy wines from Wine.com, you are part of the internet wine culture. Needless to say, each site has quirks and none of them substitute for your local wine shop or the recommendations of friends. That being said, your local wine shop and your wine-drinking friends are also online so the liquid net is everywhere. Social networking bypassed online porn traffic this year, a sure sign regular folks are taking over the net.
Over the next few years the world wine web market will consolidate. Grapedates, for instance, already seems to have folded, although WineLover's Match is still alive. Already, people are tired of logging into dozens of sites, and, I suspect, will start vacating them in scores. Those that offer the most value will remain. I, for instance, reckon I will stay with only one online community but haven't yet decided which. In the end, the best sites try to mirror, or create, lifestyle communities.
As wine tastings are exploding in cities like Boston, New York and San Francisco, multicultural, urban professionals - Asian and African Americans and Hispanics from the internet generation - are leading the way to the new palate. Nowadays, it seems self-evident: it is the combination of face-to-face and online meet-ups that excites people. Wine is particularly suited since it has the characteristic of being both a very physical and a very social activity. Even as people want to share their wine stories online, they are even more excited at the prospect of enjoying wine with someone. Hence, the continued draw of wine bars.
With the internet's social networks, wine talk is no longer the unique property of an elite group of Europeans: multicultural wine lovers everywhere are catching up. We want our voice to count; we trust our friends more than the experts.
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