The History of Wine Forums and Social Networking

LOL, I can’t remember my log-in handle on Prodigy. I do remember Parker always being referred to as “42b”. In fact, somewhere I have one of his books, personally autographed to me and signed “42b”.

I may be wrong on this, but I’m pretty sure I coined the term “trophy wine” back about 1994 or so, in response to a photo of Marvin Shanken and his young “trophy wife”.

I’m missing the 42b reference. Date of birth? Waist size?

All of the various experts on Prodigy had numbers. We never could figure out the meaning. But Parker, god as we called him (lower case g), was expert 42B

Started out mainly on the Spectator boards in the late 90’s and while mainly posting at WS, found Brad’s West Coast Wine and Robin’s WLDG. Russel Bevan was like the Pied Piper on the Spectator boards where he posted travelogues several of his wine expeditions to Napa/Sonoma. Those also got covered over at Gang of Pour by Alan Bree. After a while the Specator boards go very hostile so most of us migrated over to West Coast Wine.

That really took off in the lates 90’s and early 2000’s and was pretty popular. It got pretty heated at times but Brad and the gang were pretty good at keeping a lid on things. Once Squires teamed up with Parker they pretty much sucked all the air out of Brad’s board. One of the moderators on WCWN was not too unhappy because it got rid of many of the Type-A folks that caused them headeaches. I still participate over there.

I spent time over on the Parker board and got a lot of chuckles when Parker posted and the huge number of people would reply looking to be the teacher’s pet. Once it went pay to play I decided not to play. Squires was waaay too heavy handed and essentially called me a liar one day. I never understood the fetish against outside links or content or even referring to people Squires didn’t like.

WLDG seems to have trailed off and still has a hard core of posters. But I go there maybe once a year.

I used to check out Wine Therapy but I think’s dead.

So I’ve ended up at Beserekers and West Coast Wine.

And Steve Levy those were insane OL’s; BTW,that nomenclature was coined by moi.

He is OK and I still communicate with him. I have a great story about attending the MacArthur future TN with him and then we went on the Chadsford (sp?)Inn for an OL and I’ll have to figure where to insert it.

alt.food.wine (usenet)
winespectator forum

Lurked on Therapy, UK posters before signing up in around 2000 on Squires. I had my first OL a few weeks after 9/11 at Le Perigord in NY, where I met some folks I’m still friends with (Bill Lawrence, Asher Rubinstein, I think Paul Jaouen) where Squires brought a blind Araujo Syrah to a French Rhone-themed dinner. We all hated the wine, and at the time I was still drinking much more CA wine than I am now.

As the EBoob board degraded, I began hanging out more and more at the UK site and Therapy until Therapy became too clever for its own good. Disorder popped up around the time Eboob fell apart, but they weren’t the most welcoming of people who liked different wines than they did (I have no issues with them, I have a somewhat similar palate), so Berserkers was an easy choice.

Happy to be here and have felt at home now for several years with all you nut bags. Not sure what that says of me…

IIRC, Wine Therapy went down to software issues. Wine Disorder was built on the ashes so to speak. While I don’t get most of the inside jokes (seems to be fewer of late) I like reading the notes over there.

Re Therapy / Disorder: didn’t someone manage to crash / destroy Therapy’s entire data base losing all the content then Disorder was the same folks coming back from the ashes?

let the puppy sleep!

Some of us from the old CompuServe Wine Forum have long felt that the reason for the move to Netscape (as opposed to many other available options at the time) was done as a parting shot at Jim Kronman. It’s why you don’t see us on WLDG today.

Loren, I went to one Elliot Apter event in Chicago, held in his hotel suite after a TCWC Bordeaux vintage debut dinner. Yeah, those were the days…it’s not often you get the opportunity to talk to Paul Pontellier one-on-one while drinking '53 Margaux, and '27 and '48 Taylor port.

I still own a couple bottles of the '92 Emily Kestrel, though I haven’t opened one in more than 10 years. I also still have a couple cases of White Cottage wines from the mid-90s…the last one I opened ('93 cab) was fabulous! I also recently opened my last bottle of '95 Coffaro Estate Cuvee…also fabulous, and BY FAR the best wine of Dave’s I’ve ever tasted.

I haven’t spoken with Adam, or pretty much anyone in Napa/Sonoma, in the past few years. My interest in wine has diminished considerably as my life has taken a different direction. And yes, it was a lot of fun meeting so many people who were just getting their start. My first visit with Adam was back in the fall of '94 when he was working for Lambert Bridge. After tasting through the L-B wines, he introduced us to another L-B employee named Dianna Novy, and they said they had new project called Siduri. We tried barrel samples of the '94 Rose pinot, and so it began…

I should add that most of Adam and Dianna’s Oregon pinots have aged extremely well. I’ll also add that in the past three months, I’ve had four bottles of '99 Christian David that were all outstanding.

‘Gave’, or sold?

For some period of time, the WS board admins (as well as another site called WinoDepot) used the word censor to map “Serge” to “monkey”. I personally thought that was a cheap shot, but then again, in that era the WS boards more resembled a playpen than a wine discussion site. The WS boards IMO improved dramatically when Robert Taylor took over admin duties…

There is some country song with lyrics to the effect of “the one thing all your failed relationships have in common is you.”

Yes.

That said, I’ll incorporate it into my timeline.

I started on wine boards back in the late spring of '96. First on the AOL wine baords, which, as others have said, was a very lively place and there were a lot of good posters there and good discussions. Allen Meadows used to post these incredible tomes about Burgundy there before he started Burghound. In fact, that was his screen name. Allen actually used to im me suggestions of red Burgs that I might like. Gerry Dawes also used to post there and made the Spanish folder there a good place to learn. Charlie Olken was a moderator, who, of course writes the Connoisseur’s Guide to California Wine, as was Dick Peterson, who used to be the winemaker at BV. A number of folks here used to participate there, though I got tired of the fights and the lack of a real names policy. Btw, for whoever was wondering about Eno (Enophile),) that was Marshall Manning and Randy “Bucko” Buckner was a regular participant there before eventually becoming a moderator on the WLDG.

At the same time I started participating on alt.food.wine, that also had some interesting discussions, but too much spam. I remember back then John Gilman posted something about a NY wholesaler having poor storage and then having their lawyers having a word with him and then him having to post something nice about said distributor every two weeks or month. Something like that. My first interaction with John was asking him how many times he had to bend over.

Also in '96, Peter Hirdt told me about Robin Garr’s Wine Lover’s Discussion group, which ended being my favorite place to hang out for awhile and I met a bunch of folks there.

Technically, my first offline was I think either the end of '96, or beginning of '97 and it was an AOL wine board affair. It was at Paul Napolitano’s house, ( he who got kicked off of Squire’s board for calling Mark a hypocrite and I think elicited Parker’s famous “pleasure police” line) with Laurent Drogin and Peter Hirdt. Later that year, afaik, I organized the first NY WLDG offline (with some Compuserve folks there) that Robin Garr came in for. Notes from that event are still up here.

In '99, Squires added a wine bulletin board to his site and it was a good board in its youth, with a number of knowledgeable people and good discussions. I believe it was in '02 when it became a part of the Parker site and the number of participants exploded. Still, for a while the discussions there were terrific and, imho, it became the best place for wine discussions on the web. That, as we all know, changed later.

In 2000, a few folks had a falling out with Robin Garr and started Wine Therapy. Sort of the root cause was that some members of NY group of participants, petitioned Robin to create a spot at the bottom of all the posts in the forum called “The Basement,” where they could have fun creating fake personalities, being quite clever in their discussions of wine and poking anonymous fun at some of the board participants. Hey, NYers are a snarky bunch. Robin even used to participate there. Eventually, however, Robin received a lot of flak over the basement and I think he shut it down. So, some folks created Wine Therapy. Robert Callahan actually started the board ( as some can tell you, he had a very contentious relationship with both Parker and Squires from their Prodigy days) and most of the folks there tended to like wines we now think of as “natural wines,” with a great deal of discussion about Loire wines. Of course, Joe Dressner was a frequent participant there.

Unfortunately, Rob developed some health issues and stopped participating after awhile and also let any site security updates go, so it became a bit outdated. In '07, when an unwanted participant was told to go away and not come back, or so I’m told, said person apparently went into the code and managed to delete all the tasting notes and discussions on the board up to that point. Seven years worth. It was a huge loss. The board managed on for about another year, but with Robert out of commission and still holding onto the keys, so to speak, and with Albanian spammers starting to run amok due to the lack of updated software, a few folks from Therapy generously created Wine Disorder out of the ashes around August/September of '08. Wine Disorder is still very cliquish and there are a lot of inside jokes that go back to the Basement days of the WLDG, but the level of wine knowledge there is extremely high and it pretty much is the hub for discussions of cutting edge and “natural” wines, with a lot of emphasis on Loire discussions, but hardly exclusively. Indeed, it seems like much of what’s discussed by Asimov and other wine writers and bloggers these days have origins in what’s discussed there. Be forewarned, though, to participate you have to gain access by contacting the ruling Politburo (a surly lot, to be sure), there is a rather severe hazing ritual for newbies (just ask Frenchie or Leenda!) and it’s pretty much the anti-spoof board. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I consider many of the folks there dear friends.

As for here, I joined the exodus from Squire’s board and joined Berserkers in March of '09 and, well, ya’ll know my story here. So many good peeps and discussions here with a broad range of tastes.

My experience:First was Wine Spectator in the mid/late 90s…everyone used “handles” …for example Russell Bevan was “Bacchus” and was a major presence. But as that got a little heated and/or regimented by WS itself a lot of us drifted over to Brad Harrington’s WCWN…I have met an extraordinary number of superb folks from my participation on that board (WCWN). In 2001/02/03 Jim Cowan and I made three road trips all over the country and met a lot of folks for what we called “off-lines” then. That board is a lot quieter now but I still am a regular poster. I checked Wine Therapy a little at one time but it seemed a bit full of inside jokes and references for my taste. Recently I have been reading this board too and enjoy the posts although I rarely post.

Cheers, Bob

FWIW, I was on the usenet version, and from there went to WLDG and then quickly to WCWN. Still recall the WS meltdown that had WCWN going crazy with posts. Stopped paid subscription to WA that I’d had since '83. Just wasn’t worth it anymore. Segued to the Parker board, increasing participation until the pay wall went up. Followed the great unwashed over to WB.

Does anyone from the old AOL board remember when someone spoofed my handle by inserting a “1” in place of the “I” in WINE EXPO (which were indistinguishable in the font they used) and then posted stuff to make it look like me?

That’s when you need to write an open letter and take a time out…

Yep. There was a bunch of stuff like that going on there, which is why I eventually left. Plus, AOL eventually killed the boards by mucking around with the folders.

I’m sure BerserkerFest is a blast and will be joining many in the future! There was a very rowdy Shiraz contingent in north Jersey that pulled corks without reason, German wine society tastings with Beth and Joe. Just a great time with some really great people!