Parker Predicts the Future!

[KMP]

The article leads off with "Robert M. Parker, Jr., the world's foremost wine guru, makes 12 bold predictions about seismic changes that will influence how we'll shop, what we'll buy and how much we'll pay." See here for more.

I particularly liked number 2 The wine Web will go mainstream
Internet message boards, Web sites tailored for wine geeks and state-of-the-art winery sites all instantaneously disseminate information about new wines and new producers. Today the realm of cyberspace junkies and hardcore Internet users, these sites will become mainstream in 10 years. A much more democratic, open range of experts, consultants, specialists, advisors and chatty wine nerds will assume the role of today's wine publications.

10 years!! Uhm, I think we are there already Bobby!!

Mike

[Bob]

10 years!! Uhm, I think we are there already Bobby!!

Mike

I beg to disagree somewhat Mike. Hard to believe anyone could think it will take 10 years, but ‘already’? Still too many poorly designed or faulty functioning sites, both producers and retailers. Ever had your browser freeze due to some error on the site? Ever tried to access a link that just wasn’t there - often even when it is just supposed be within the site itself? And then there are just so many people still with only dial-up access, not to mention some entire countries where access is far from universal. I guess it depends on how you define ‘mainstream’; I certainly enjoy the forum, but I would not call it ‘mainstream’. I think things will change greatly in the next 2 years or so, but there will probably be a lot more retrenching as well, producers shrinking or even discontinuing their sites to save money, many retailers giving up on internet sales, etc. rp is probably playing it safe with the 10-yr prediction. Still, thanks for the link, it made some interesting reading. I suspect rp’s purpose was to make some quick money for himself by predicting things that are either obvious or unknowable/forgettable.

[KMP]

Bob:

Thanks for your comment. I should preface my reply with a little caveat. The last discussion I had about the web was with my twin brother, who runs an Information Technology company. We had one of our civilized family discussions (after about 6 bottles of wine) where he proceeded to tell me, a biomedical research scientist, how great biotech was while I argued for the potential of the internet. It was so interesting our wives went to bed in disgust. The wine was good, thou!

Anyway! Certainly there will always be technical issues with both hardware and software, irrespective of whether its now or the future. But the web, while it may not be in every household and not yet universally high speed access, has pulled its cork and poured its self a glass. Its just waiting for the crowd to get a little bigger to say cheers!

Take a look at the Wineries and Vineyards page at the Wine Diva site. Some have quite interesting web pages!!! How many have web sites? How many offer their wines for sale on their site? True, every now and then you get "Page cannot be displayed" - I found two on that list of A's. I don't know the total that are on the web, but there are 50 on that first page of the WineDiva site, so a really quick and dirty calculation of say 30/page with 20 pages having wineries listed (e.g. Q has none) would give 600 wineries. That's about a third of the 1600 or that already exist in Oz. That 600 may well be conservative as I'm not sure how up to date the WineDiva site really is. I don't think it will take 10 years for the others to get online.

In terms of getting onto the web to talk about wine, we know that's easy as we do it now. But with eBlogs you can get online and rant and rave about anything, including wine. I run three eBlogs, two of which are related to wine. There are countless other sites including some that are really quite sophisticated (*he typed with envy*).

As regards internet sales. This year is the first year that I have purchased wine over the net simple because I've been very suspect of buying a perishable that has to be shipped to me. So I've only purchased within a 150 miles radius from home, but so far no problems. And more importantly I've been able to get wine that my regular shop has not been able to source, so now my cellar is definitely beginning to bulge.

So there really is a wine web out there already.

Mike

[Bob]

Mike,
Enjoyed your reply, and your caveat. With a case of wine we could discuss this for a week, partly because we probably agree more than we disagree. Parker is certainly wrong if he is implying that the web is now only being used by computer nerds. IÂ’ve been using a comp for 19 years now, but for me it is mostly just a jazzed-up typewriter. It took me almost an hour to figure out how to shrink a pic down to 4 K so I could get an avatar on this forum. And I barely know what a blog is, nevermind how to create one.

On the other hand, IÂ’m a real internet consumer. I purchase about 90% of my wine online (by value it is more like 95%), not to mention all of my books, movies, music, and comp hardware and software, most home appliances and clothing, and even frozen Oz meatpies.

Still, I haven’t seen a whole lot of progress in the past 3 years. Looking at the first page of the WineDiva listing, a half dozen or so of those wineries only have e-mail, not an internet presence. I’ve also seen some sites that consist of a single page, just a “who we are” type of thing, and other sites with info that hasn’t been updated in over a year. And some of the retailers are not much better. Looking at one online retailer recently, when I click “international shipping” I get “see separate section” for Japan, but there’s no link, and I’ll be darned if I can find that “separate section”.

I think costs are going to slow down future advances of the web. There will be more and more personal sites or blogs and more small wineries where the owner or a son or daughter or employee is internet-savvy will be putting up sites, but how sophisticated or interactive are those sites going to be? A lot of companies have scaled back their sites to save on maintenance costs. In an age when some wineries are cutting back on cellar door operations to save money, I wonder how willing they are going to be to expand their internet presence.

[Guest]

The article leads off with "Robert M. Parker, Jr., the world's foremost wine guru, makes 12 bold predictions about seismic changes that will influence how we'll shop, what we'll buy and how much we'll pay." See here for more.

I particularly liked number 2 The wine Web will go mainstream
Internet message boards, Web sites tailored for wine geeks and state-of-the-art winery sites all instantaneously disseminate information about new wines and new producers. Today the realm of cyberspace junkies and hardcore Internet users, these sites will become mainstream in 10 years. A much more democratic, open range of experts, consultants, specialists, advisors and chatty wine nerds will assume the role of today's wine publications.

10 years!! Uhm, I think we are there already Bobby!!

Mike

You are still quoting the Points Guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[GraemeG]

It took me almost an hour to figure out how to shrink a pic down to 4 K so I could get an avatar on this forum.

So, how do you do that?

cheers,
Graeme

[Bob]

Graeme,
Not sure what you mean, unless youÂ’re being facetious. You have an avatar, so I assume it is within the required 70x70 pixels and 6 KB. My avatar is from an old T-shirt that IÂ’ve always liked, so I used a digital camera to take a picture of it, but the smallest I could get was almost 300 KB. Never worked much with pics before, so it took me a while to figure out how to use some free software that came with the comp to specify the size.

[KMP]

The article leads off with "Robert M. Parker, Jr., the world's foremost wine guru, makes 12 bold predictions about seismic changes that will influence how we'll shop, what we'll buy and how much we'll pay." See here for more.

I particularly liked number 2 The wine Web will go mainstream
Internet message boards, Web sites tailored for wine geeks and state-of-the-art winery sites all instantaneously disseminate information about new wines and new producers. Today the realm of cyberspace junkies and hardcore Internet users, these sites will become mainstream in 10 years. A much more democratic, open range of experts, consultants, specialists, advisors and chatty wine nerds will assume the role of today's wine publications.

10 years!! Uhm, I think we are there already Bobby!!

Mike

You are still quoting the Points Guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear "Guest":

I think I might be doing a little more than just quoting RMP Jr!!

Mike

[GraemeG]

Graeme,
Not sure what you mean, unless youÂ’re being facetious.

No, I was seriously wondering whether there was a way to re-size existing .jpg or .bmp files using just Windows systems. Apparently not, which is probably what I'd expect!

cheers,
Graeme

[Bob]

Graeme,

I use a Mac, and the system always includes some type of picture viewing software. It used to be PictureViewer, but now it is called Preview. I finally figured out that under the Edit menu the Export command offers options for changing size and format (such as from jpg to png). I had a problem resizing and saving jpg to jpg, but I was able to resize and convert jpg to png and then covert the png back to jpg at the new size. I would think that whatever picture viewing software you use would have similar features. The reason it took me so long to figure out was that I was looking for some type of “resize” command and did not realize that “export” was what I wanted.

[cranky]

Hi
I am having troubles getting an avatar up too, but I did work out how to shrink down a jpg using win98... and on just Paint, too. I just kept cutting out a smaller section (yes, it is a bit of a cheat..), and re-saving as a new file, checking through My Computer's preview as to the size of the file.
Still can't upload it, tho'.
Any advice?

[cranky]

Ok, I just searched the site a bit harder and found the thread on emailing the image to Gavin.

I will try that!

[Craig(NZ)]

Seven years on...

How is old Parkers predictions for 3 years time looking now??

He might not end up being far off the mark re bdx pricing but malbec?? What's that?

[Wizz]

I think he is currently scoring about 4 out of 12. Normal hit rate for Parker really.

[ChrisV]

Argentinian Malbec has been a bit of a fad in the US the last few years actually. But all at the lower end of the market, rather than as serious wine as Parker predicted.

[Mike Hawkins]

Mike,

If you think a few of us wine nerds is 'mainstream' you're sorely mistaken. Most of the biggest buyers / collectors I know have never heard of any of these boards, let alone participate. How many of the indutry's top 'consultants, advisors and specialists' are active participants - 0.1%? IMO, it's going to take years before Bob's vision is achieved.

Cheers

(other) Mike

[Craig(NZ)]

Mike,

If you think a few of us wine nerds is 'mainstream' you're sorely mistaken. Most of the biggest buyers / collectors I know have never heard of any of these boards, let alone participate. How many of the indutry's top 'consultants, advisors and specialists' are active participants - 0.1%? IMO, it's going to take years before Bob's vision is achieved.

Cheers

(other) Mike

Yes in fact Parker himself has done a bit to work against his own prediction by closing down his forums to all but his paid up subscribers!