The UnCorker

Wine on The Web: Wine Podcast Round-up

April 8, 2009 | In DIRT | No Comments

The UnCorker reviews five top wine-related podcasts!

What better way to learn about wine than with free media that’s accessible while you commute, workout, or jog. Or heck, listen along from your couch with a glass of vino in your hand… it’s all the same to us. iTunes has a plethora of wine related content at varying quality levels. The UnCorker sorts it out for you.

Wine Library TV (video podcast)

The fact that Gary Vaynerchuk recently signed a seven figure book deal that is not really about wine is revealing. WineLibraryTV is often more the story of Gary than the story behind the wines being discussed. Gary’s amazing nose and palatte. Gary’s ability to score a wine with tremendous precision on a 100 pt. scale after only seconds in his mouth. Gary’s apartment. Gary’s fridge. Gary’s soulmate. Gary’s love of olives. And least trivially, Gary’s advice for staying optimistic and self empowered through the down economy. Here’s an example from his twitter feed, which has a ginormous following(170,000 twitees at last count): why wont people realize that $ isn’t the game! The 10 happiest people I know make wayyyyyy less money then many people I know. A confessional tone with oodles of personal sharing has forged a following for a show that exists more or less around a single personality – equal part Tony Robbins & hyped-up Jersey version of Robert Parker.

The host is entertaining enough and we don’t have a problem with his over caffeinated dialogue and manic pace. He posts nearly daily with a wide variety of topics, locations, and guests. He knows wine, that’s beyond dispute. It should also not count against him that he is exploiting a perfectly acceptable part of the vernacular of his video-blogging medium – informal personal style and loosely – bordering on “un” – organized content. Watching people taste wine is boring – and Gary knows this, trying every crazy analogy he can come up with to keep things moving. Gary’s tasting notes are creative, funny and atypical – racquetball, fabreze, cocoa puffs, jolly rancher, starburst not to mention the combos – black currents in a cedar box. Like Car Talk, this is the show that aspires to entertain an audience far beyond it’s specific milieu. But ultimately the show is a difficult format in which to learn about wine. When Gary tastes a 2004 Latour Martillac Bordeaux (in his apartment kitchen) and is ‘bullish’ on the experience – we’ve forgotten the wine completely within minutes after viewing. Instructional designers talk about retention and transfer as two types of learning outcomes. Here we take away only the memory that Gary’s fridge seemed awfully empty. Gee, we think, this guy must really travel a lot.

3 Wine Guys (audio podcast)

Here we have a trio of real Chicago guys: prone to swagger-y, masculine banter and inside jokes – the sort of talk that happens between old college buddies over a boring televised hockey game (is there another type?) You know, Ditka guys. But these guys are obsessed with wine and it shows. The testosterone contrasts nicely with the crunchy NoCal vibe of so many other wine related podcasts (Jersey wunderkind Gary Veynerchuk excluded, of course). The guys alternate their podcast format each week between a loosely formatted rant called “What are we drinking?”, mysteriously entitled ‘blogcasts’, and their official (and far more interesting) themed podcasts that focus on a specific aspect within the wine world: a varietal, a producer, a region. If iTunes had an option that let one subscribe only to alternating weeks, thereby skipping the “blogcasts”, this would rank higher in our book – as the information is quite deep, well-structured and useful. You get the impression these guys would be having this exact conversation over the same bottles of wine with or without a microphone around – and that’s what’s great about the show. We like it when these guys aren’t trying to pull every last tasting note out of the air and are communicating the context behind the wine to us. Their comfort zone is shooting the shit – and the show suffers in terms of pacing as a result. But it’s generally interesting and worth spending an hour (or so) of commuting time on.

Crushnet TV (video podcast)

One day the make-your-own-wine-2.0 craze will come to end. Folks will quit logging on to stylish websites to check the brix level of their fermenting lots of cabernet and they’ll be content to leave that stuff to professional winemakers. UC Davis viticulture grads will have to face the hard reality that theirs is an agricultural profession and their job opportunities in trendy urban-industrial nabe’s like SoMa or TriBeCa are limited. But until that day comes, there is Crushnet – the amazingly informative video podcast by San Francisco DIY winemaking coop Crushpad. The podcast is part marketing effort and part dialogue and tutorial between the professional winemakers who work at Crushpad and their clients – the “barrel team” armchair winemakers who follow along from home (and occasionally drop by the winery or the vineyard to help.) In general, it’s great to listen to a winemaker while they taste and talk about wine – unlike a critic- as they tend to sum things up with great economy and without much fuss. That’s the tone here – and the short video clips combine to form a cohesive and insightful look into the winemaking process – even if you never intend to use Crushpad’s services. The seven minute segment on oak barrels is probably the most interesting wine-related item on iTunes. Period. In a lot of ways, this is better than a visit to the winery itself – as you get the benefits of watching things unfold over time – from harvest, to crush, to fermentation decisions, to barreling and racking, and bottling. And their willingness to show all the ‘behind the scenes’ technical equipment and lab processes goes beyond what most in-person winery tour insurance policies must allow. This is great wine education – so definitely check it out now in case their Silicon Valley business model flames out before you get a chance to.

The Wine Spectator (video podcast)

Ok. This seems to be the scoop on the venerable rag, The Wine Spectator, among wine geeks. Nobody loves it. Everybody reads it. There is something a bit tight about the Spectator, and it’s not just their need to taxonomize and score the wines. There is an editorial focus on discriminating, refined consumption at work – a need to create sponsor-friendly weather in it’s ecosystem. As a lifestyle mag it lacks nuance and reinforces the feeling that global wine culture has a certain universal look and feel – a town and country faux rustic-ness, a polished Reidel sheen, a quality of bland professionalism to it. Let’s face it – a lot of times reading the Spectator is about as fun as reading one of those thick, glossy local destinations guides that comes with your hotel room. And it’s not cheap enough that you don’t care. But being the status quo – these guys know everybody and are the epicenter of the wine world in so many ways they just can’ t be ignored. In this – the free podcast version of the magazine – they cover major events, talk through their featured articles, top wines of the year, interview famous chefs and winemakers, and (particularly enjoyable) give behind the scenes clips… sort of like a “making of” of the magazine. We don’t always buy the mag, but we wouldn’t miss the podcast… a convenient substitute that does the trick and is even worth putting up with the occasionally blatant product placement disguised as editorial content. It’s well-produced, frequently updated, short clips that keep you in WS’s world with minimal bother, fuss, and price. How can we complain?

Grape Radio (audio and video podcast)

While this outfit is based in viticulturally challenged Orange County, California – you would never know it from this podcast. Grape Radio is plugged in, not only to the massive amounts of wine activity in the central and northern parts of their own state, but world-wide. These guys (and gals) consistently line up excellent interviews with major wine world personalities, cover interesting events, and visit vineyards and wineries. Here’s a crew that knows how to put a show together – something rare in the podcast world (not counting those programs which are produced originally for terrestrial radio.) It is one of the more professional “radio-like” podcasts in terms of structure – and the video segments are well done and consistently educational. Clearly these are not just a couple of guys in the basement farting around on their MacBook, and their website reinforces this claim with many awards and recognition within the pocasting world (not to mention a vast panel of contributors). While we like the folksy amatuerism of less slick podcasters, we do appreciate a good interview. Here they let their subjects talk and express their full story, ask insightful questions, and are not afraid to run long segments. They manage to keep things contextualized at the high level, while not being afraid to dive into the details as well.

Honorable Mentions:

We love listening to the The Oz Show out of Australia for it’s different perspective, and the guys are pleasant to listen to and know their stuff – but unfortunately this one succumbed to podfade and is not updating anymore. Worth checking out the back catalog which is still available on iTunes.

We also listen to Tim Elliott’s WineCast – but ommitted it here because of it’s industry focus. If you’re interested in becoming a wine blogger, then you might like this one.