Wine Sediments

The Washington Post ran an interesting article on Saturday about how companies are increasingly supplying bloggers with free stuff to get them writing and talking about their wares.

One of the blogs that received special mention in the piece was a wine blogger I’ve been reading for a couple months named Alan Smith. His blog is called Wine Smith, and since he started it in May, he has been sent a handful of wines to review by wine distributors and wineries. Free wine, he cheerfully admits, was one of the main motivations for starting his blog.

In the piece, Post author Kim Hart, by way of carefully arranged quotes, questions whether or not free samples can ruin a blogger’s credibility with his or her audience. Here’s a clip:

Alan Smith, 30, started writing a wine blog, Winesmith, in May as a way to learn more about the industry …

“They’re trying to target this emerging market of budget wine drinkers,” Smith said. “It’s an effort to partner with bloggers to seek out newer and broader markets instead of being in this rut of looking at just traditional wine media.” That approach, he said, “doesn’t really speak to me.”

Smith said he didn’t mind reviewing an occasional free bottle of wine if it helped expand his readership. But some bloggers think that accepting such offers undermines their credibility.

Alex Giron, a 26-year-old Web developer in Pentagon City, started his blog, CSS Beauty, two years ago … Now he gets 8,000 daily visitors and at least three pitches a month from companies seeking a mention on his site or trying to persuade him to sign up with hosting software. He always turns them down.

“To me it feels like selling out, because I do this for fun.”

But is it selling out to accept a free bottle of wine for review, so long as you disclose that fact? Isn’t that precisely how Wine Spectator, Robert Parker and virtually every other wine critic acquire the wines they review?

Besides free samples, there’s also another threat to blogger independence looming on the horizon, and it has to do with affiliate commission schemes. One company in particular, Triggit Wine, seems to be leading the charge. Susan Coelius Keplinger, COO of Trigger, told me that they have created a technical platform for a bottle-by-bottle affiliate program aimed specifically at wine bloggers. They plan on starting with Vinography and Cellar Tracker at first, and moving out from there. From their website:

What if every time your users read about an exciting new wine they could click a link and buy a bottle? Better yet, what if you made a commission each time they purchased such wine? Triggit makes this possible.

My take? If companies like Triggit are successful, I think it will help establish blogs and referral links as an emerging but legitimate direct distribution channel. Speaking for my winery, this is a very exciting development. When our inaugural vintage comes to market, this is an avenue we will be aggressively exploring. Even now we’re laying the groundwork at our winery blog and offering free tee shirts and free bottles of Pinot to readers.

The key to maintaining credibility is to be open about the situation. Wine bloggers need to inform their readers when a sample has been provided, or when a wine being reviewed will enrich them if purchased via a site referral. Full disclosure will allow readers to properly calibrate their opinion of a wine review, while allowing a wine blogger to be compensated in some way for their efforts.

At least that’s my theory. People whom I respect hold entirely different views on the subject. For instance, fellow Wine Sediments author Andrew Barrow thinks referral programs could end up irreparably damaging a bloggers credibility.

But it’s the readers that will be the ones who ultimately decide. What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments because I, and I’m sure many others, are very curious to read them.