Wine and Multimedia — not always a winning combination

Browsing through the multimedia section of the Times online today, I stumbled across an audio piece from their Dining and Wine section (I try to pretend I’m a wine buff sometimes) on Pinot Noirs from the Russian River Valley section of California. I thought “Hey! How cool, I wonder what kind of interactive multimedia they’ve put together for a piece on wine!” My preemptive excitement was short-lived.

The thumbnails on the left side played some audio of NYTimes wine guru Eric Asimov and other wine experts describing the tastes and flavors they liked and disliked from six different varieties from the region. What a snooze-fest. “Lovely finish. Strong fruit flavors. Fleshy and fresh. Spicy.” I understand that in the wine world there are a limited selection of terms to choose from when describing the flavors that light up one’s palette.

But then, why even bother to build this piece? Why not just make a spreadsheet with adjectives down one side and names of wines across the top, with some check marks in the corresponding boxes if the word comes to mind while tasting.

And why tease the readers with a photo box on the right if you are only going to feature one photo for each wine? And poor-quality photos that were taken of half-empty bottles nonetheless. An empty wine bottle is green. Pinot noir is deep red and purple. It’s almost insulting to use photos of empty bottles. How do the non-wine conoisseurs out there know it’s not a white wine for goodness sake? Of course, it could be possible that the Times decided to add the online feature after the journalists had a nice wine buzz going, therefore leaving no choice but to take the photos after-the-fact.

Either way, there has to be a better way for the food and wine journalists to get this right. It may not come until “taste-o-internet” is invented. Ideas? I’ll be pondering a few.

Wine bloggers head to Twitter

Dr. Vino, of Dr. Vino’s Wine Blog (one of my favorite daily reads that doesn’t have to do with journalism), had some chuckle-worthy commentary on his reluctance to join Twitter.

I can’t decide if this is a revolution in micro-blogging or a complete waste of time. So far I’ve learned various things such as: one woman was PMSing, another guy hates his job, another guy just finished 18 holes of golf, somebody else is at the farmers’ market (BREAKING!), and yet another guy is pinging his DNS server or some such. I have revealed trivialities as my confusion thinking New York State cider was different from mere apple juice…(read more)

And whether or not he actually wanted to read about the lovely monthly emotional tribulations of said woman, he did. I guess that’s the point, stumbling across random ramblings and tweeting right back. The more people into the conversation, the better, I say! Follow me on Twitter.