Recently, there has been a lot of things Italian on my mind.  A little Milan AC, some Dante, my friend and Vias Imports’ rep Rudy Basile’s recent visit to TPS, and wine blogging comrade Alfonso Cevola’s recent blog post.  Last Friday, Alfonso, who masterfully waxes about all wines Italian at On the Wine Trail in Italy, uttered the fear all us wine bloggers fear – that nobody gives a shit.

I would argue to say that 99.9% of us wine bloggers do this for the love of it, counting our peers and wine industry brethren as our readers (if we are lucky), and staring at the ghost towns of comment sections daily.

Alfonso’s article spoke of fellow wine blogger Ron Washam (the Hosemaster of Wine) recounted surveying around 200 visitors to the tasting room he works, “how many of them read wine blogs?”  The answer, “zero.”  Zero, zip, nada, nyet, goose egg, the Big Nothing.

In seeing this, I am wondering more now than ever, “what the f@%& am I doing?”  I mean, I have said it countless times that I do this for my own benefit, keeping an online diary of all the wines I taste and everything that happens on the job, my job as a retail wine buyer.  Yet I hope that there are folks out there that actually read my drivel and get something from it.

It is the same as if it were one’s real job, the need to feel as though you’ve accomplished something, and that what you do has meaning, to yourself, your colleagues, your customers, your company… you want to have some relevance in this world, it’s a basic human need.

Meanwhile, good friend Rudy Basile dropped in to taste some wines and grappas with The Colonel, Irish T and myself:

Le Dolci Colline Brut Prosecco DOC NV.  Grade=Outstanding.  While I am getting a bit bored with Prosecco, the fact is this is pretty good.  Green apple skin and lime mousse, crisp acidity, and a clean finish make for a very good value.

Lechthaler Riesling Trentino DOP 2011.  Grade=Outstanding.  Showing more in common with Alsatian Riesling, this drier styled white displays clean stone fruit, a touch of white flower, mint and crushed stones.

Terredora di Paolo Rosaenovae Irpinia DOC 2012.  Grade=Outstanding.  Whaddya know?  My first Aglianico rosé.  Gorgeous notes of red plum, Bing cherry, peach and strawberry abound here, mingling with pretty hints of sweet mint and mineral.

Lechthaler Pinot Noir Trentino DOP 2010.  Grade=Outstanding.  Light, soft red with cherries and raspberries, touches of dusty earth, sweet spices and smoky herbs.

Lechthaler Teroldego Rotaliano DOP 2011.  Grade=Outstanding.  Trentino’s signature red grape, Teroldego, is center stage with its black cherry, tobacco, cedar, earth and dark spice notes.  Medium-bodied, bold and well-balanced.

Cataldi Madonna Montepulciano d’Abruzzo DOC 2010.  Grade=Outstanding+.  The Cadillac of Montepulciano, Cataldi Madonna scores again with its full-bodied presence of dark red fruits, spices and walnuts.

Produttori del Barbaresco Nebbiolo Langhe DOC 2010.  Grade=Outstanding+.  Bold, intense red, full-bodied with spicy tannins, smoky black fruit, black peppercorns, anise and cedar smoke.

Distelleria G. Bertagnolli Honey Flavored Grappa Trentino.  Grade=Outstanding.  Grappa always makes me queasy, but here you have a very approachable distillate, clean, with fleshy stone fruit and of course, the honey.  Very nice.

Distelleria G. Bertagnolli Mirtillo Grappa Trentino.  Grade=Outstanding.  Mirtillo means Blueberry.  Ah, so that’s why I feel like I am drinking my Grandmother’s homemade blueberry pie, fermented and distilled into a smooth, supple distillate.  I could get really wasted on this stuff.

One of the things I learned from Rudy was that coming soon, the D.O.C. (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) – a term we wine geeks have had engrained into our brains – will change to D.O.P., which stands for Denominazione di Origine Protetta, a classification used to define produce.  Wine is a grape, right?  Thank you E.U.

But getting back to the writing for a close circle of like-minded wine geeks, I guess it takes that transcendental someone to create a blog that is more universal, something akin to what Samantha Dugan at Samantha Sans Dosage is doing (she has got to be getting tired of my brown nosing by now).  Becoming less about wine and more about life, she has begun transforming herself into something more relevant to everyday living.

I get that the biggest issue with wine’s image is the exact thing being perpetuated by many wine bloggers, the issue being “elitism.”  Our beer guy here at TPS, Danny Gold, once said, “There are beer geeks and wine snobs.”  He’s not entirely right, but he’s pretty damn close.   It is so easy to fall in love with wine, yet because of its infinitely more diverse base of information – the varietals, the wine producing regions, vintages, etc. – the personae of wine gives the appearance of being out of the reaches of the average consumer.  Beer, not so much.  Anyone can appreciate beer, even if there is a growing multitude of choice amongst craft brewers and imports.

Wine bloggers can tend to add to the element of elitism by the unintentional level of condescendence inferred, whether you are talking about a wine pairing with a 20 course dinner, visiting the wineries of Uruguay or Croatia, or hanging in the cellar of Chateau Ausone and enjoying a 12 year vertical.  I would be all over any and all of those topics, felling a forest to scribble down notes and burning up cameras taking massive amounts of digital pictures.  Believe me.

But it would be easy to see that the average person may see these as pompous, and even worse, irrelevant to their lives and their sources of enjoyment.

Yet I also see the absolute relevance of what we do, what we discuss, what we chronicle.  It is at the very heart of the thrill of experience that we do what we do, and the incessant need to share those experiences with the world, however we can.  Absolutely, not everyone can experience what I experience at my job every day.  My travels, my experiences – the things I learn on the job and on the road – I write them down and chronicle them so I can share my excitement with my staff, my customers, my readers – it’s why I do what I do.

In the end, I like being a wine blogger.  For better or worse, for one reader or a million, the idea of sharing my experiences is not elitism, it isn’t condescending.  It’s simply in keeping with the concepts of the human condition.