In this blog I will be talking about wine, wine service, and the wine industry.
Most people who blog about wine are able to do so as an unbiased, outside observer.
I am not either of those things. I sell wine for a living, working for a distributor in Alaska, and as such, as much as I would like to claim that my viewpoints will be without bias (and I certainly will strive to make them so), the very fact that I sell some of the product that I will be talking about makes any intentions of objectivity sadly moot.
My involvement in the wine business also creates a conflict of interest when it comes to reviewing wines as well. Posting a poor review of a product I sell would hurt both my business and my company’s business. Herein lies the dilemma – how will I approach tasting wines with any sort of objectivity? More importantly, perhaps, is how can you, the reader, know that I am not talking a wine up just because it is in my portfolio, or conversely, how do you know I am not being more critical of a wine because it is one that my competitors sell?
The answer is that you don’t, and you should take any recommendations I make with a grain of salt, like you should with any wine review. When it comes down to it, there is no such thing as a purely objective review of wine, as the experience of tasting wine is anindividual experience, to which we bring our own tastes, taste-buds, and experience with wine.
With all that being said, my personal goals for reviewing wines on this site are as follows:
- I will try and remain objective as possible, regardless of the price and producer of the wine.
- I will try and review my competitor’s wines as often and as fairly as possible. My position grants me access to easy access to wines that I sell, but I will try and keep a balance when reviewing between my product and the competition’s.
- To help mitigate the issue of favoritism, I will never post a review of a wine that I do not like, irregardless of whether I represent that wine. While I would like to be able to steer people away from wines that I consider poor quality or value, doing so is the only way to mitigate conflict of interest issues in my profession.
.
