I can't watch Gary Vaynerchuk and find the whole Wine Television shtick embarassing, humorless and clumsily over the top. It reminds me of the old Alan Burke and Joe Pyne shows I used to watch as a young man. Or the late Soupy Sales without a pie.
I suppose its Glen Beck with a spittoon, but it is all about Mr. Vaynerchuk and only a little bit about wine. Yes, Gary Vaynerchuk the phenomena, the moneymaker, the media star, the promotional wizard. Wine seems to be an incidental vehicle to celebrity.
I've never met him and I'm sure he enjoys wine. The problem is that there is no such unitary category....wine. Popularizing "wine" makes as little sense to me as popularizing music or popularizing film or popularizing reading.
Do we need Danielle Steele's so that people will graduate to serious fiction? Perhaps we need Danielle Steele so that people will increase revenues for book publishers, but I don't believe the mechanics of reading a trashy book makes the reader more open to literature.
I also don't believe that Two-Buck Chuck or Yellowtail brings people into the fictitious "fine wine world" on a one-way conveyor belt to Haut-Brion. Haut-Brion and Yellowtail come in bottles, come from fermented grapes, and have alcohol. Other than that, I can't see anything in common.
Mr. Vaynerchuk has praised some of our wines and I'm grateful. He's truly an American cultural phenomena, a product of the reality TV generation, and I can't say I have warmed up to him. It might just be a personal prejudice, but I cringe when I watch his interviews.
My credentials are solid. I grew up a New York Titans fan and watched the Titans play at the old Polo Grounds. I worked for the Harry Stevens organization as a kid to watch the New York Jets play at Shea Stadium while I was selling pretzels and hot dogs in the grandstands. I haven't followed the Jets or Giants since they left New York to become New Jersey teams, but I hope they will sober up sometime and come back.
Emerson Boozer was my childhood hero and I still worship him to this day.
