Wine Word: Fermentation author Tom Wark

By Jim Boyce

Tom Wark is author of Fermentation, which comes with the tag line, “A blog set inside the world of wine public relations – where the media, the culture and I mingle. He is founder of the American Blog Awards and has spent nearly two decades in wine PR, including with Wark Communications since 1994. I asked him about the PR challenges for Chinese wineries entering the United States, his take on blogs and print media, standards for wine quality, and more.

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JB: Labels that misuse vintages and pass off imported bulk wine as local, product safety scares involving milk, pet food, and lead paint, and the presence of counterfeit wine have not given China’s wine industry the world’s greatest reputation. As someone in public relations, what would you advise the industry to do as first steps to improve its image?

TW: Quality is the first step in burnishing any reputation for a wine producer or a group of wine producers. It’s critical that China’s best wines be exported to the U.S. and put in the hands of the industry gatekeepers in the trade and media. This must be the first step.

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JB: Some Chinese-based producers, like China Silk and Dragon’s Hollow, are targeting the mainstream U.S. market. What PR pointers would you give to producers from “new” countries trying to enter the market?

TW: If it were me, I’d target my PR efforts on a select few markets; perhaps one big market and a few smaller, regional markets where the efforts could be concentrated. Those efforts certainly would include creating tastings for the trade, sampling local media, and creating very good, simple, direct educational materials that can help connect the Chinese efforts in wine-making to the long traditions of wine-making in other parts of the world. Finally, I would be touting each and every good third party endorsement of the wines that I could get my hands on.

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JB: You wrote that wine bloggers should follow the same ethical principles as professional journalists. Why is this important, to what extent are bloggers doing it, and what trend or incident led you to focus on the issue?

TW: Wine bloggers write for an audience. All Journalists write for an audience. In this respect they are the same. It is also true that trust, the trust of the reader that the blogger or journalist is working on their behalf, not be breeched. The wine blogging community is particularly susceptible to the consequences of breeching that trust because they are only now emerging as a recognized source of information. If they, deservedly or not, get a reputation for not always serving their readers, then they compromise what is shaping up to be a very important future.

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JB: Someone left a comment on your site and you discovered it was a clever promotion for the movie Bottle Shock. You kept the comment anyway and wrote: “I think I want to be reminded that this blogging space that I love being in and that I think is fundamentally changing the way wine is presented to the world is a tool that readers can’t entirely trust.” Why do you love the “blogging space” and how is it changing the presentation of wine?

TW: There was a time when wine lovers and those looking to learn about wine had very few sources to which they could turn. Today there are literally thousands of such sources. There are so many in fact that there will never again be a “Robert Parker” or a Wine Spectator; that is, a source of wine information with such tremendous power. I’m excited about the blogging space because I believe the democratization of opinion is a very good thing for the wine industry and consumers.

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JB: You have also criticized print media. For example, when Wine & Spirit magazine claimed there are widespread winery payoffs to blog writers, you called it a “hatchet job” and stated that bloggers strive for honesty because “they can’t rely on the perceived authority that is granted to writers whose words appears on paper…” What trends do you see in the print wine media?

TW: I should note that is was the English trade journal, “Wine & Spirits”, not the American “Wine & Spirits Magazine”. There are no bloggers being paid off as far as I know and the article you refer to was a travesty. More than anything it was a failure of the editors that let it into publication. With that said, I believe print wine media will become a great source for longer, more thoughtful articles. This is exactly what they should focus on. Leave the news and trend spotting to sources that have a more immediate perspective.

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JB: You have written about “standards for quality” in wine, covering topics such as academic studies that find “experts” and “non-experts” tend to like different wines as well as the issue of whether wine tasters have an innate or acquired ability. You wrote: “I’m coming to the conclusion that whatever standards for quality in wine might exist, it really is just a statement of agreement among those that are educated, not a statement of anything objective.” Where do you currently stand on the issue?

TW: I don’t believe… in fact, I KNOW… there is no such thing as an objective basis for assigning the terms of quality where wine is concerned. There is something of an agreement among educated palates as to what “quality” is, but there is no objective warrant for this collective judgment.

It is also noteworthy that judgments about what constitutes high quality wine has changed considerably over time, suggesting further that high quality wine is what the accepted “gatekeepers” at any given time say is high quality wine.

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JB: How did you first become involved in the wine industry and what are you favorite wines?

TW: After graduating with a Master’s Degree in Diplomatic History I discovered my knowledge of Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt were of only limited value in the money making world. However, I did possess writing, speaking and researching talents, all of which led me to the field of public relations. I was offered my first job in the field of wine PR at an agency in Sonoma County, California in 1990. In 1994, I started my own firm and have been with it ever since.

My favorite wines include Australian Tokay and Muscat, Austrian Riesling and Gruners, dry Rose, aged Chardonnay, old vine Zinfandel, Mountain Grown Cabernet Sauvignon and Anderson Valley Pinot Noir.

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