New King of Corks?
By Peter Rowe
Ask a traditionalist about wine-and-food pairings, and be prepared for a lecture on the virtues of serving Rioja with rosemary grilled lamb chops or Champagne with oysters.
Let the fuddy-duddies harvest these low-hanging grapes. Gary Vaynerchuk has fresher, zanier ideas. In a September episode of his video blog, "Wine Library TV," he raved about how the 2007 Landmark Overlook Chardonnay enhanced his main course.
The chardonnay, he gushed, had a "really creamy, butterscotchy, caramel action which is the absolute thing that you want to do with Cinnamon Toast Crunch."
Then he matched a riesling to Cap'n Crunch and Champagne to Lucky Charms: "Magically delicious."
"It's not the natural thing you think of," Vaynerchuk allowed. "But especially the chardonnay pairing with Cinnamon Toast Crunch was shocking and perfect."
Some veterans of this clubby industry believe that wine needs an evangelist to the iPhone generation. Who will carry the gospel of oenology to a younger, plugged-in, tuned-out audience? So far, there's no app for that. Robert Parker, founder and editor of The Wine Advocate, may be the most powerful wine critic today, but he's not a pop culture superstar. He's no Rachael Ray, the chef/talk show diva/magazine honcho, equally at home in kitchens and gossip columns.
If any American is positioned to become the prince of pinot, it may be Vaynerchuk. "Gary V." has devoted most of his life to bottled poetry, transforming his parents' modest liquor store into The Wine Library, a haven for discerning vinophiles. As the host of "Wine Library TV," the hyperkinetic 33-year-old sips, swishes, then likens the refined aromas and flavors to "fresh catcher's mitt," "Double Bubble," "Hall's Mentholated," "Cocoa Puffs," "roasting marshmallows on a tire burning session in a junkyard" or "hit a deer on the road, let it fall down, throw a bunch of cherries on it, take out your knife that you always have on you, cut the deer, bite it, that's the flavor profile."
Sounds crazy, sure, but Gary V.'s act is crazy popular. In three years, his video viewership has climbed from zero to 80,000 per episode. This year, HarperCollins signed him to a 10-book deal. The first volume, "Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion," is being launched with a 35-city book tour that hits San Diego tonight.
Is Gary V. the monarch of meritage? Or merely a Barolo barbarian?
When Jancis Robinson, the proper British wine critic, appeared on Gary V.'s show, purists were outraged.
"He is one of the most disgusting things that could have happened to wine," protested Bisso Atanassov, a Russian wine merchant, writing on Robinson's blog. "He makes money ruining the wine culture irreversibly; he creates booze-lovers, NOT wine lovers, as they choose wine just because they think that HE is cute."
Even those immune to Gary V.'s charms, though, admit there's some truth to his video sign-off: "You -- with a little bit of me -- we are changing the wine world."
Sniffy sniff
Gennady Vaynerchuk was 3 when his family left Belarus and moved to the United States. Sasha, Gennady's father, followed the well-worn path of immigrants -- long hours working for a relative, scrimping, saving and finally buying his own shop in Springfield, N.J., Shopper's Discount Liquors.
The boy adopted American culture -- he loved "Star Wars" and the New York Jets -- an American name and an American attitude about business. Other kids might run a lemonade stand. Gary operated a chain of lemonade stands. Others collected baseball cards. Gary scouted vendors at card shows, then rented a booth and undercut his competition.
At 17, while working behind the counter at Shopper's Discount, he had an epiphany. Spirits and beer outsold wine, but Gary sensed more opportunity among the bottles of red and white.
"Have you ever tried to get someone to switch from Jack Daniel's to some small-batch bourbon? It's impossible. Or from Miller Lite to some lambic? Impossible," he said during a recent interview. "But you can tell a wine drinker, 'I think you'll like this,' and they'll listen."
The Vaynerchuks tested their son's theory. Sales grew, and the family re-christened the shop The Wine Library.
Always hustling, Gary was determined to use new technology to lure even more new customers. In 1997, he launched winelibrary.com -- the online site now accounts for half of the company's sales. An early adopter of Twitter, he now has 850,000-plus followers. And in 2006, he ventured into video, posting his first filmed blog.
More than 750 episodes later, the show still consists of Gary V. sitting at a table adorned with wine bottles, glasses and a spit bucket. (Around Episode 120, the bucket acquired a Jets sticker. Gary V.'s fondest ambition is to own that franchise.) The host stares straight into the camera; takes, as he says, "a sniffy sniff"; sips; rolls the wine across his tongue with a series of ear-rattling swishes; spits; then pronounces -- sometimes at the top of his lungs -- the verdict.
These judgments often jibe with those of Parker, Robinson and other serious critics. "He has a good palate," said Anthony Terlato, a legendary wine marketer whose family owns seven wineries and a majority share in an eighth. "He definitely understands what he's tasting."
But how he expresses that understanding -- well, even after five decades in this business, Terlato had never heard anything quite like it.
"If you went to an auto body shop and pelted it with 4,000 peaches, that's the smell you're going to get with this."
"It's like Smokey the Bear got handcuffed and people got a little rowdy in the forest, you know, like trees are burning in your nose when you smell this."
Terlato enjoys Gary V.'s creativity: "It's a giggle."
But not everyone appreciates these whacked-out reviews. "It's entertainment value, that's what he offers," said Mark Phillips, author of "Swallow This" and host of a PBS special, "Enjoying Wine With Mark Phillips." "But it tells you nothing about the wine. 'It tastes like a racquetball.' What does that tell you?"
Phillips, though, admires his rival's new media skills, dubbing Gary V. "the father of the wine video blog." Phillips himself has used the same technology, posting 28 video blogs since January.
Like a miner whose bonanza has become common knowledge, Gary V. now is surrounded by imitators eager to work the same rich vein.
"I realized as big as he is in the wine world, there's some room for growth," said Chris Riccobonno, 30, whose "Pardon That Vine" blog debuted Sept. 15. After 30 episodes, "I'm getting a lot of positive feedback from people who like wine but don't know a ton about wine."
A Paris-based sommelier had a similar goal when he began his video blog, Wine Rendez-Vous, in 2007. Olivier Magny, who taped in fluent English, promised "super-relaxed, informal" explorations of this often intimidating subject.
That blog trickled to a stop in May 2008. But in the States, the floodgates have opened. Don Sebastiani and Sons, winemakers and merchants, have hosted occasional videos since 2006. Two small California wineries, Hawkes and Coturri, each maintain video blogs to explain bio-dynamic wines, vine grafting, night harvesting and other topics.
Matthew Horbund, a wine collector in Florida, hosts one of the most polished blogs. "A Good Time With Wine" features background music and photo montages.
No matter how slick, most of these blogs are vanity efforts with modest audiences of friends and family. Terlato, however, is still stunned by all the people, from chefs to CEOs, who caught his "Wine Library TV" turn.
"He's attracted this cultlike following," Terlato said of Gary V. "It surprised me the audience that he had."
He's not the only one surprised. George M. Taber is a former Time reporter whose "Judgment of Paris" recounts the watershed 1976 competition that established Napa Valley as a player on the global wine scene. While finishing his latest book, "In Search of Bacchus," Taber frantically sought a dust jacket blurb from a loud, manic guy from Jersey.
"That's full circle, isn't it?" Gary V. chortled. "When George is e-mailing me every day, 'Please, please put a quote on the back of my book' -- I just pinched myself."
Peter Rowe writes about food for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
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