He's been called the first wine guru of the YouTube era. Yet Gary Vaynerchuk's bigger distinction may be this: He's a wine geek you'd actually enjoy having over for dinner.
Mr. Vaynerchuk, 32, hosts a daily video blog called Wine Library TV (which he has just rechristened the Thunder Show). To call it educational programming might be a stretch at times. More than one commentator has likened it to Wayne's World - with wine instead of guitars. Mr. Vaynerchuk's mission: to make chardonnay drinking safe for what he calls the "college-kid crew," many of whom presumably are too intimidated to stray far from Coors Light and Jägermeister shooters.
A natural in front of the webcam, Mr. Vaynerchuk discusses a new topic each day from Springfield, N.J., where he co-owns a large wine store with his father.
He begins each segment with a shout out to fans, whom he refers to as "Vayniacs" and "Vayner Nation." Then he launches into a sampling of up to six wines, peppering the monologue with descriptors drawn from his baseball-card and comic-book-collecting youth, such as "Big League Chew," "Cocoa Puffs" and "grape-flavoured Nerds candy."
Gary Vaynerchuk's day job, managing a New Jersey store called the Wine Library, gives him ample material for his Web show. (Michael Falco for The Globe and Mail)
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The pretense-busting approach and street humour have proven infectious. He says he pulls in 60,000 viewers and between 500 and 1,000 letters daily.
More significantly, his star is shining beyond cyberspace. Last August, Mr. Vaynerchuk made his broadcast-TV debut, appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. And more recently he was a guest on Ellen as well as appearing on ABC News' Nightline.
On Late Night, Mr. Vaynerchuk encouraged Mr. O'Brien to stuff cherries smeared with dirt and cigar tobacco into his mouth (to better appreciate the earthiness of a Tuscan red) and lick an asparagus spear wrapped in a sweaty sock (to help identify the funky nuance of a red Burgundy).
Even before his run on the talk-show circuit, Mr. Vaynerchuk's foreign audience was considerable, nowhere more than in this country. "Canada is insane for me," Mr. Vaynerchuk said on the phone from New Jersey. "It's by far my second-biggest viewership."
One thing that sets the Belarus native far apart from other high-profile international critics is his embrace of inexpensive wines. "There is a little bit of a New World bomb, shiraz, merlot on steroids, a little Roger Clemens action going on in this wine," he said recently of a $5 Argentine bonarda, reviewed last Saturday while lounging on a couch next to his temporary sidekick, a giant teddy bear clutching a $120 Riedel Burgundy glass. Translation: A tad fruit forward but still impressive.
"It is a beautiful wine for the Super Bowl," he continued, after spitting into his trademark bucket adorned with logos of his beloved New York Jets. "This is a wine that I think would go great with guacamole or with pizza or Domino's or cheese sticks - fun food."
It may sound obnoxious in print, but Mr. Vaynerchuk carries it off with wit and charm. He also exudes two things most wine connoisseurs sadly lack - humility and an occasional twinge of self-doubt. In one episode, he proudly uncorks what he erroneously recalls to be a hot pinot noir "find" before declaring it, and the shipment he'd just ordered for his store, a dud.
Mr. Vaynerchuk also has, in my opinion, succeeded where no one has before, miraculously translating wine appreciation into a form of genuine video entertainment. I would take his homespun dispatches over the pretty vineyards and pedantry of, say, the acclaimed BBC series Jancis Robinson's Wine Course any day (and I esteem Ms. Robinson as probably the world's foremost wine expert and newspaper columnist).
Not surprisingly, Mr. Vaynerchuk says he's been approached by broadcast producers but will take his time before deciding whether to make the leap to conventional TV.
He has a day job, after all, managing his cavernous family store, called Wine Library, which employs 100 and does $60-million (U.S.) in annual sales. It is access to those shelves that gives him ample material for the Thunder Show, including some worthwhile wines that most international critics tend to ignore.
He has even featured Canadian wines on his program on at least two occasions (episodes 90 and 196). "I'm going to tell you a secret. These wines are ridiculously underpriced," he said on the show of several Canadian icewines. "Some of these top wines could be $200, $300 a bottle and they're still in that $50 to $60 range."
He was particularly taken with the offbeat aroma of a Jackson-Triggs icewine. "It's kind of, like, mechanical, something you'd smell in a body shop. If you went to a body shop and pelted it with 4,000 peaches, that's the smell you're going to get with this."
His verdict was less flattering in the case of a 2004 chardonnay from Niagara's Cave Spring, which he described as having a bouquet reminiscent of Febreze fabric freshener. "It's not pleasant. I just couldn't wait to get it out of my mouth."
No one could accuse him of regional prejudice, though. The Cave Spring escaped with fewer scars than the white that followed, a Valenzano Chardonnay from his own state, which he affectionately refers to as "the Dirty Jerz." His rating: "A very, very awkward nose. It actually reminds me of Raid bug spray. This is not my cup of tea."
Commentators, notably the estimable Mike Steinberger of online magazine Slate (the one who anointed Mr. Vaynerchuk the YouTube wine guru), have justifiably raised questions about objectivity. How can a critic review products he sells?
In his own defence, Mr. Vaynerchuk says he gives thumbs down to more wines than most critics do. "I've panned 60 to 70 per cent of the wines that have been on my show," he says. "That's shocking, because I carry 99 per cent of the wines."
He has not only risked foregone sales with his criticisms, but his own credibility. In episode 122, he pans the 2003 vintage of Opus One, a revered $125 Napa Valley red produced by Robert Mondavi of California and the family behind Château Mouton Rothschild of France. "Extremely bitter finish, extremely bitter. I'm completely shocked right now."
If there's a more genuine conflict in his success, it's in Mr. Vaynerchuk's self-appointed role as the oeno-everyman, making Planet Wine safe for neophytes. As Mr. Steinberger wisely points out, he constantly quotes 100-point scores of international critics such as Robert Parker, Stephen Tanzer and the Wine Spectator, which only serves to reinforce their taste dictatorship, not diminish it.
I would also add that many of Mr. Vaynerchuk's preferred wines are hardly populist picks. He's no champion of Yellow Tail shiraz, for example.
When I asked what grapes were turning his crank these days, he raved about albarino, a lean, hyperacidic white from Spain that I adore but that is so infrequently stocked in North America that most wine snobs of my acquaintance either don't know it or dismiss it as too racy. "I'm really drinking a crap-load," Mr. Vaynerchuk said.
Then again, when he puts it that way, it might just catch on yet.
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