Thanks Paul.

Yeah, Makay’s great. Huge fan of his books.

One thing tho: If all you are looking to do is populate the database with contact info, there is no reason why you can’t use the information in the guides you mention. Contact info isn’t proprietary nor can it be copyrighted. The only thing you wouldn’t be able to use is the custom Q&A from the Somm guide or any other original content.

That said, Ronn would be a great guy to have on board for a project like this. It would also probably be a great forum for him to cross-promote his book.

You’re absolutely right though, the real value (and the real headache) is in the information aggregation that can only be acquired by scouring multiple sources like trade journals, WS, rest. websites, google searches, and newspaper reviews. It’s from that stuff that useful info can be found to help build relationships.

Thanks for the comments as always Jeff!

Great post. I like that you referenced Harvey Mackay, too as I have his “How to Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive” and “How to dig your well before you’re thirsty” on my bookshelf.

This is somewhat inline with what Inertia would like to create with a Sommelier community. I think the key to this, from an information gathering perspective, is to populate the initial content as quickly as possible so additional energy can be spent on refining and relationship-building. Something like the Ronn Weigand/Chalk Hill Sommelier Guide would go a long way towards that end. Barring that, WS has similar information based on their restaurant awards. I wonder if it’s possible to license that information so it can be provided in an electronic format, as opposed to a bound book. Since it’s self-published I’m guessing it can be.

Good stuff, here.

Jeff

Thanks for the comment.

The difference is pretty straightforward: Linkedin profiles are self-generated. The database I’m envisioning has already been created (by me) and would be added to by people who come into contact with the wine directors, not the wine directors themselves.

Not that I would be against it, but I’m not looking for wine directors to add any information to their own profiles.

The site would be useful only to a highly targeted group of people, not very large in size: wineries looking to self distribute and wine salespeople at distributorships.

In the end I’m more than happy to keep my database private, it took a lot of effort to create and gives me what I feel is a pretty good advantage over other folks like me just starting out with self distribution to white table cloths. The only way it would make sense to share the info would be if I could make it better and somehow monetize it.

Thus the pitch.

Hope this helps!

I agree that the Web 2.0 approach is preferable to your brute force private database but I’m not sure if I get who the site is aimed at from your pitch…