THE LATEST FROM ROBERT PARKER AND GARY VAYNERCHUK AS WINE'S NEW FUTURIST

The August 2008 issue of The Wine Advocate just came out – the World’s Greatest Wine Values – and I would venture to say that at least half of the issue is reprinted reviews. My only problem with reprinted reviews is that many of the wines that are featured here are LONG gone. A lot of what is listed in the magazine is already on the next vintage. I normally wouldn’t care except that I have customers who use this and other publications to buy their wines, and when they are using expired information, you can see how frustrating it could be.

I would love to inspire the reviewers of the world to move up some of their timetables so that their reviews might actually be relevant to current releases, but then that would be a whole other dimension to the “Are wine reviewers really all that relevant anymore?” discussion – and yes that would include me (though I don’t SCORE wines). However, as it stands right now, and as difficult as it is for me to accept, wine reviewers are pretty much the only game in town right now, so most folks more-or-less HAVE to use them, so wouldn’t it be a great public service for wine customers all over, for the reviewers to be AHEAD of the curve and not BEHIND it.

Which leads me to the new horizon – Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk, and a host of others following suit, has decided to use the Internet to take his interactive approach to the masses. As featured in Jo Diaz (of wine blog Juicy Tales) begs the question “Is Gary Vaynerchuk the New Millennial’s answer to Robert Parker?”

Jo discusses Gary’s exuberant delivery of wine knowledge, making it more accessible to the new wine drinkers, and giving more credence to its social and cultural ties. For those of you who don’t have a clue who Gary Vaynerchuk is, Gary is a young, energetic Internet wine professor who runs a very large wine store called The Wine Library in Springfield, New Jersey. What was once a small brick-and-mortar liquor store run by his family, Gary transformed it into a 40K Square Foot mega-wine store, its success fueled by his devotion and excitement for lesser-known wines like Muscadet and Monastrell, and his dedication to creating an interactive wine universe on the Web for his customers. The success has led to appearances on Conan O’Brien, Ellen DeGeneres, and many other syndicated TV shows, as well as spots on NPR and his own Web TV show at Wine Library TV.

Where Robert Parker took Bordeaux and Burgundy into the spotlight (albeit a more exclusive one), Mr. Vaynerchuk takes it to the masses, where both young and old, novice and expert, can appreciate all that wine has to offer, together. Check out Gary's Thunder Show every Friday, and you'll see what I mean.