The great unknown here is what effects all this democratization of wine opinioin will have in the wine marketplace. We won’t know for a long time, but the first step is to acknowledge that it is happening. And it’s happening in blogs already, which is putting extreme pressure on the traditional wine media.

I find it hilarious that the multiple pointed discussions over wine marketing and direct shipping and wine topics in general are happening online. The mainstream media continue to act as arbiters of taste while ignoring the opinions of all others — and they seem to be ignoring the groundswell of activity online. The whole nature of how wine is shared is being transformed on the web — but you won’t read about it on paper.

There’s been a lot of talk about what constitutes a conflict of interest for wine bloggers and wine writers (and now I’m contributing to it ). Josh over at pinotblogger has his usual thoughtful take, along with a lot of……

Given what I see on some winery Web sites, I truly believe I could write more convincing sales pages than what they do one there own. If I go to wine.com or wine.woot and buy a wine because of their clever copy, isn’t that a good thing? Why not let a thousand flowers bloom. (note: wine.com has an affiliate program)

I believe a winery should be willing to pay me 5-10 percent of every sale I bring to their door. It sure beats giving a much larger percentage to the retailer or distributor. And chances are, I care more about their wine.

Will Amazon allow Amazon Affiliates members to link to wine? Now *that* will be interesting.

I like what you write (have no idea, if it is practible what with the various laws and regulations out your way — but actually, why should there be a problem?).

In any case, you opened a can of worms. I am just considering the talk over at VinTank with them guys sticking their necks and $100K out for 4 hopefuls and the up-for-grabs Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent job… (what a hey-day).

What Paul wrote on his blog is ringing in my ears here: the chances for the four choice candidates to go on to other wineries and move the scene is greatly increased.

Unlike Paul, I doubt that you would need to restrict it all to 4 people (although I do understand how little time they have to “donate” $100K worth of services to just anyone). What if there was a combination of the two ideas: VinTank/Murphy-Goode on the one hand and your ideas you posted above?

What if everyone who is apt to leverage the social media could go out there and beat the drums for the winery of their choice and if that generates leads and sales, then WHY WOULD WINERIES NOT GET INVOLVED?

This is for various reasons slightly over my head. I mean — you & Paul (and no doubt all other commentors here) know way more than I do about the industry and legalities… but you do have my head spinning (I mean, look at Amazon… they sell everything… why do publishers not make mini-amazons? Or would the better way to go be through a AmaWine setup?… thousands of questions.)

Anyway, thanks for opening this can and letting me have a view of it, I have a few things to think about… yes I do.

Please forgive my last comment. I was posting from a waiting room on my iPhone, which is not conducive to good grammar or spelling.

As to keeping this idea under wraps, I actually need other wineries to adopt it to be successful. It’s very much a network effect – like having a fax machine, the more people that have one, the more valuable yours becomes.

For citizen reviewers to really adopt the affiliate idea, there needs to be many wineries in the marketplace. It helps shield honest reviewers from accusations of favoritism.

As for talking about my winery, thats what this here blog is all about! For more info, you can read the About Us page linked in the upper left of the blog, as well as Our Story So Far.

There are links to media, newspaper articles (including the Wall Street Journal) about what I’ve been up to the last 3.5 years, Wine & Spirits etc.

There are also some really kind words from Tish about the Mini Doc I participated in called Robert Parker’s Bitch with Vineyard and Winery Management EIC Tina Caputo.

The winery is named in honor my great grandmother Maria Giovanna who was a bootlegger during prohibition. She would make wine in her garage using the wine bricks that they would ship with warnings about “Do not put in a gallon of water or fermentation may occur!”.

I’m certain the wine was absolute rubbish, but its a great story.

Hope this helps.

I have no doubt that some folks will rush to your $20 idea, and I have no doubt that the blogosphere is going to get monetized to some degree. I also have no doubt that there will always be a home for writers who work in more independent ways and have people who pay them for their ideas.

You might want to look at The Motley Fool model (investing advice) to see how a public medium has now become a pay for info play. In the long run, it was all about eyeballs in order to sell product. You can spin that busniess model any way you like but it will always be about how one sells product and where people get information.

I can find hundreds of comments about gas fed barbecue grills on the internet. In the final analysis, I also pay Consumers’ Reports for their views. And, yes, I also asked my peers. But I still paid Consumer Reports, and I still buy Parker and Zagat for my overseas trips.

I appreciate now that your model is really about selling your wine. In that case, if I were you, I would stop talking about it until I was ready to roll it out. But, I would, if I were you, run it past a bunch of folks, and I would ask myself, what happens if this idea works and bigger wineries co-opt it and make it difficult for me to make the idea work in the long run.

And now, Josh, how about telling us about your winery?

I’m not sure if this will improve or worsen your opinin of me, but I am in fact a winemaker. Were working on getting a loan for our winery right now.

And that being the case, it will be cone clear that I am the one offering the 20 bucks per sale, which if your analysis holds, will be furiously sougt after by thousands of bloggers.

Read Tris’ account of what happened tithe tech industry re: affiliate links. It’s relevant IMO.

Also note that I never said that traditional critics were going anywhere. You will always be valuable and needed.

Thanks for the conversation!

But, I do not get any benefits from the restaurants I rate highly and I should not. The same is true for the wines I review in my “old-fashioned, sure-to-die” print publication. I get paid by no one, and while Barbars Drady carefully chose her words, she leaves the implication that graft is rampant among print publications. She knows better. When she owned a winery, she submitted her samples to my publication and they got reviewed in blind tastings. Sometimes the wines were wonderful, and sometimes they were, in my opinion, far less than wonderful. But no money changed hands, and no money should change hands.

The same is true for Michelle Keller’s wines. I accept her samples, and when I don’t get those samples, I buy their wines at the fifteen or twenty wine stores I visit every month with my inventory lists in hand.

Josh, you may be right that there is a new day dawning, but I will bet you a shilling or two that your proposed method will be utterly useless in terms of monetizing the blogosphere. Snooth and Yelp are a far different barrel of fish, and their model is not all that far from folks like WineAcces who use my reviews and Steve Tanzers’ reviews to sell wine in exchange for hosting our websites. On the other hand, neither Connoisseurs’ Guide nor Tanzer see a single penny for any wine our readers buy from WineAccess.

Finally, a practical note. If you want to make $20 for a single bottle sale, no one is going to sign up with you. Just ask Barbara or Michelle if their wineries would enter into such an arrangement with a thousand bloggers.

But what about the vast hordes of people using Facebook, Twitter and other loosely structured communities? THAT is where the action will be, and affiliate links in those areas stand a huge chance of driving real sales.

Again, the idea is: Hey, I like this wine, you should try it. And if you click my link, I’ll get enough money to buy a bottle of wine for our next party! Win!

Tris,

As I said on Twitter, incredibly insightful comment. All of those questions will have to be answered by the individual blogger/Twitter/Facebooker. My only real contention here is that affiliate links should be accepted in the community, not that they will be perfect for everyone, or that adoption will be without any hiccups. Your comments illustrate the landscape of such a world very clearly.

As for wineries pulling affiliates for a bad review: totally unacceptable, and would irreparably damage the brand. It might happen once, but after that I can’t see it ever happening again. The outcry would be immense. Remember: the fact that folks are getting commissions will be completely transparent. There would be nothing standing in the way of an individual to call the winery in question out, and bring down the hell fire of a thousand angry bloggers.