NY Times Outs the Wine Geeks

Leaving aside suppositions or impressions, what is the basis for the following claims, current on http://www.wineloverspage.com ?

"The Web's original wine discussion groups."

"the Internet's original wine forum"

Hi Max and welcome. I'm not Robin but here's a link:
http://www.wineloverspage.com/mediakit/ Be sure to click on "Press Clips" and "About Robin Garr".

[Robin Garr]

Leaving aside suppositions or impressions, what is the basis for the following claims, current on http://www.wineloverspage.com ?

"The Web's original wine discussion groups."

"the Internet's original wine forum"

Max, welcome to the forum. These statements aren't suppositions or claims but simple statements of fact, and you'll find quite a few remaining members of this community who've been there throughout the period.

Simply put, although we've passed through several software iterations and a couple of URLs, this forum (WineLovers Discussion Group) was the first wine-discussion group on the World Wide Web. It started in 1995 using a beta version of Matt Wright's old WWWBoard, and was one of the first 100 or so Web-based forums on any subject and the only one focusing on wine.

The associated Website, originally Robin Garr's Wine Bargain Page, started in late 1993 or early 1994 at http://www.iglou.com/wine (a URL that still works and still redirects to WineLoversPage.com). There was only a handful of wine-appreciation sites in those days, and we all knew each other through E-mail and mutually linked. I added the Wine-Lovers-Page.com URL (with hyphens) around 1996 or '97, and retrieved WineLoversPage.com from a German cybersquatter in 1998 or '99.

I spun off the site and forum in turn from CompuServe, where I had been a member of the management group (along with some other folks still here in the forum) since it was founded in 1985.

So depending on how you count it, WLDG is both the first Web-based Internet wine discussion forum and, through its ancestry on CompuServe (which preceded Prodigy by about four years and AOL by five or six), the oldest on public computer networks.

As I said, this history has been continuous and without a break, and a few folks around here have been with us since the start.

Wow! Quite a history there, Howie and Robin!

Well, I think that's why my plan for a PhD dissertation on disco and Foucault was such a huge hit back in the day...

But seriously, I've seen lots of books from academic presses these days that sound a lot more trivial (not to say loony) than A Perfectly Honest Bit of Crazy; A Brief History of the Wine Internet by Dr. Rahsaan Maxwell, PhD.

Hey, my ex-brother-in-law who is the chariman of a Classics Department somewhere in Illinois wrote on Homer (not Simpson, but the Greek dude) and Rap.

Thanks for the replies, Robin and Howie. (I might have expressed myself better -- I sought only to avoid suppositions in the explanation.) Here's a follow-up after (much earlier tonight) an interesting 2005 Burgundy blind tasting at Claude Kolm's place up in San Francisco.

Please bear with a little Internet history. This is not always accurate in casual sources. (Some of which even veer into thrilling but fictional confusions of the early ARPAnet with the "survivable" AUTOVON/AUTODIN defense communication networks.)

"ARPAnet" protocols rolled over to so-called "ARPA Internet" protocols in (if I remember) January 1980 (the "ARPA" later disappeared from the name). As you may know, at heart these networks were defined by protocols, which many people could use. Certain basic tools, including email and (from 1979) newsgroups (the Internet's public discussion fora) were available to computer users well beyond the Internet per se. By the middle 1980s this informal "greater Internet" community embraced thousands of sites and tens of thousands of users in US and Canada (I have maps) and by the early 1990s the user count, now worldwide, was in the millions.

The view from the Internet itself over those years differs from the impressions many people have who did not then participate. It was an ongoing activity that the general public increasingly joined, as tools evolved. By the middle 1980s (as you can see in archives) the "greater Internet," as I called it above, included growing numbers of the US public, via "public-access" providers offering, at minimum, email and newsgroup access. (These providers tended to be local, independent, ad-hoc.) If you had a computer (and not just a dumb terminal), you could freely access the greater-Internet communication services using widely available software (which many sys-admins installed, informally, on computers of various kinds).

In the same time period and for some time after, several private firms offered services to paid subscribers, essentially in competition with this existing greater Internet. Salus's history (ISBN 0201876744), published in the middle 1990s, identifies CompuServe as the oldest of these large private networking firms. Others included Prodigy (IBM and Sears), AOL, DELPHI, GEnie (General Electric), and smaller or regional firms. As of the end of 1994, Salus reported, these firms, except DELPHI, did not yet allow their subscribers full Internet access; most offered Internet email, sometimes for a surcharge. (Salus ran into that when trying to circulate his book drafts to people on CompuServe!) Eventually these firms too merged into, and added more users to, the already substantial Internet population. I cite all of this because discussion-forum services on the private networking firms on the one hand, and on the greater Internet on the other, operated in parallel, not always aware of each other.

Bringing me to wine. Among discussion fora freely available to the greater Internet were the food newsgroup, from 29 January 1982*, and the companion wine forum, 27 February 1982 (their formative messages, and part of their traffic, have been publicly available on Internet archives ever since). The wine forum was called net.wines until late 1986 and rec.food.drink after that, and is now known as alt.food.wine. Many people who have heard of these fora, or joined them later, do not have a sense of what they were like in the past. The wine forum carried all public wine discussion on the greater Internet from 1982 until the proliferation of "Web sites" in the middle 1990s and consequently it was often lively, with traffic volume by late 1980s comparable to this (WLDG) and other HTTP-based wine fora today. (Missing content in public Internet archives unfortunately obscures that particular era today, though archives exist privately.) For example, the Internet public wine forum discussed Robert Parker's wine criticism, years before he himself appeared on the (private) Prodigy firm. A few 1986 examples Here, Here, and Here.

Berners-Lee's new "Hypertext" tools, announced to the greater Internet in 1991 Here (note his coinage there of "Web," later garbled by the public) led to browsers in 1993 and then to popular Web sites. The existing Internet wine forum, rec.food.drink, carried over of course into Web-based access tools. Various people who would later operate wine Web sites surfaced on this Internet wine forum: Squires by 1994, Brad Harrington and Allen Meadows ("aka Burg Hound") by 1997. A number of postings by Robin Garr appeared in the middle 1990s. This one from 1993 incidentally illustrates in its header the "public-access" Internet providers I mentioned earlier. Another, from 1994.

By that time (1994), the existing Internet wine forum had operated continuously, and with some of the same contributors, for a dozen years (some of these people still post online). All of this is the context in which I wondered about the historical claims about the WLDG.

-- Max Hauser


* I wrote the official history of the food forum, a couple of years back. It operates unchanged after 25 years and was the prototype for many later food fora on the Internet.

[Robin Garr]

Thanks for the replies, Robin and Howie. ...
By that time (1994), the existing Internet wine forum had operated continuously, and with some of the same contributors, for a dozen years (some of these people still post online). All of this is the context in which I wondered about the historical claims about the WLDG.

Interesting stuff, Mex, and thanks for sharing it.

I'll accept Usenet as an asterisked exception, but to be honest, it's hard for me to define the early ARPAnet/Internet as a general public venue. Certainly none of us involved with the CompuServe forum in the early days were even aware of it. And even after I finally heard of it in the late 80s or early 90s, it was another year or two before I was finally able to get consumer access to it, not being in academe or the defense industry. (I was so interested in giving it a try that I paid then-prevailing - high - long-distance charges to explore it using a dialup account on Software Tool & Die in Boston from my then-home in NYC. When Panix.com started in NYC around 1992, I was one of the first members, and spent a lot more time exploring once it was a local call.) But I was a very early adopter, and was fairly computer literate for an English major.

Point being, from the standpoint of a consumer in the general public, "the Internet" wasn't available as a genuine option for more than a small minority of Americans, and the online wine community (and online Internet community) as we know it now simply wasn't available to consumers in general in those days.

Frankly, and I don't say this to hurt your feelings, around the time I was starting out on the internet, getting my hands on an early copy of Mosaic and launching this site (which I did within a few weeks of installing Mosaic), I found my way to Usenet, discovered that it had food and wine communities, looked them over for a day or two and, frankly, said, "Eeeeuuuw. No competition there." My recollection is that - AT THAT POINT - most of the content was spam, and what wasn't spam seemed to be college kids talking about whether Thunderbird or Wild Irish Rose gave the better high. Probably an unjust judgement on my part, but at that point, with almost a decade of serious wine talk on CompuServe behind us and the whole potential of the graphical Web just opening up, unmoderated Usenet groups looked to me like an idea whose time had already come and passed.

an interesting 2005 Burgundy blind tasting at Claude Kolm's place

Do tell.

What was the consensus?

Surprising results?

Interesting stuff, Mex, and thanks for sharing it.

You are welcome (though everything I mentioned has long been public). A quirk of Internet history is that perceptions of it are strongly, unconsciously, colored by the individual's experience. (Thus many people assume that the Internet came into existence shortly before they heard about it, whenever that was -- I encounter a 15-year span of notions. That is what I meant by suppositions or impressions.)

In fact, regardless of your individual experience (again, not my perspective, it's in the Google archive, itself incomplete) "public-access" sites became prominent ca. 1985 and were more available to general consumers in North America than many people perceived at the time or (evidently!) still perceive. (To repeat, they were random and localized, not advertised on national TV.) The greater Internet also never was restricted to universities (which did contribute many users) and the "defense industry" (which did not); archives display a random cross-section of users at interested private firms (AT&T, General Radio, countless software houses, others) and government offices whose sys-admins had installed the software.

But without any question, the greater Internet was minority activity in the 1980s, I didn't mean otherwise. The point was that it existed. And subscribers of the private networking firms (CompuServe, AOL, etc.) eventually joined up with it, not vice versa.

An unmoderated forum has definite limitations -- more evident as a wider public came to the Internet. But the Internet wine forum's first 12 years (and thousands of serious threads, starting with its first content in 1982) are hardly characterized by a later glance that found students talking Thunderbird, which, frankly, shows scant regard for the actual history. (More so, when the few 1980s examples I already linked contrast with it.) Google also contradicts it, by the way. (Google's archive finds one reference to Thunderbird on net.wines and a few more under the later forum name rec.food.drink -- all facetious.) I believe that particular comment unworthy of WLDG and I hope that it is unrepresentative.

But again (setting aside individual impressions and recollections), the very public history is that the Internet has had a continuous wine forum since February 1982, much of its content still archived. Considering that history I (actually, not just I) have long wondered, not about the merits of this respected WLDG forum, but only at the striking claims that it is "the Internet's original wine forum."

an interesting 2005 Burgundy blind tasting at Claude Kolm's place

Do tell. / What was the consensus? / Surprising results?

Hi Rahsaan, we checked out recent reds which some members had also tasted in barrel at the producers. Heresztyn Perrières, Potel Clos St-Denis, Groffier Amoureuses, Jean Tardy Boudots and Grand Maupertuis, Drouhin Echézeaux, d'Ardhuy Hautes Mourottes, Henri Bouillot Beaune-Epenottes. (No Thunderbird, alas. )

Consensus? The wines were concentrated and disjointed, the group liked the Tardy Grand Maupertuis a lot, gossip from Burgundy was retailed as usual.

Surprising results? Yes, for once I did not spot the Amoureuses blind (though I got some others) which cost me $20. I bet with another taster, who did get the Amoureuses right. (I like to put my money where my mouth is.)

an interesting 2005 Burgundy blind tasting at Claude Kolm's place

Do tell.

What was the consensus?

Surprising results?

I'm with Rahsaan, here. The history of the wine internet is pretty fascinating, but a blind tasting of 05 Burgundy w/ Claude is irresistable.
Unless its proprietary stuff for The Fine Wine Review, I'd love to hear the results.

edit: Max, we
must have been typing at the same time, thanks for the reply.

[Robin Garr]

only at the striking claims that it is "the Internet's original wine forum."

Fair enough, Max.

I'll break my brief response into two parts.

1. As far as the assertion that we are, and were, the first wine forum on the <i>Web</i>, that stands clearly beyond challenge. WLDG, always under that name, was the first Web-based wine community and one of the first Web-based forums on any subject, and virtually all of the other current Web wine forums spun off from us.

2. As for the Internet, I was certainly aware of it by the middle 1980s, but had little incentive to find it or sign on. By the time I became interested, even though I lived in Metro NYC at the time and was fairly computer-savvy, it was the early '90s before I finally found a way to do it. I don't think I'm atypical. And, as I think we've both agreed, without quibbling over minutiae, the number of individual consumer users on the Internet was very small compared with CompuServe (and, when they came along, Prodigy and eventually AOL). So I could make a Jesuitical case that most consumers had no real access to wine discussion online until the CompuServe forum launched in 1985.

More to the honest point, though, the "internet" claim is a poorly worded restatement of "first on the Web" that's been on the site (and Googlable) since the middle 1990s. You're the first to bring it up.

As for the Thunderbird comment, no, it wasn't meant to be mean. I probably misremember the brand name. I do distinctly remember a discussion that I took to be among college kids comparing the virtues of low-end mass-market labels.

I can tell you very frankly that I dropped in on the Usenet wine and food groups periodically in the 1992-94 period, mostly because I was interested, and partly because, as I started thinking about starting a wine Web site, I wanted to know what was out there and whether the potential competition was already strong. What I saw during that period - and I believe the much-debated shift from REC to ALT had occurred at just about that time - I reasoned that Usenet was falling apart under the assault of the barbarian hordes (spammers and AOLers) and wouldn't last long, and that the refugees would probably be looking for a new, moderated home. And that did prove to be the case, as we got a good batch of participants who came from just that direction and were delighted to find us.

None of the above is meant to denigrate the Usenet communities or the people who loved them (and still do) in any way; and the lawyers did not make me say that.

I agree, wine is more the point.

I can't comment on Claude's publication (it does so for itself!). I've tasted with him for a long time as well as with other groups, consequently I devote too much time to wine tastings and am reluctant to spend more writing them up, except occasionally or if they are very remarkable, in which event I post them in various places. Including the aforementioned internet wine forum, as in this recent example with 1998 red Burgs.

(Background: It is taken for granted among Burgundy enthusiasts I know that 1998 was and maybe remains a relatively good value, because it was dismissed with a broad brush by some critics, therefore disproportionately ignored by the wine-buying public. But even some of us among said public who bought these wines when new, based as usual on tasting them, were pleased with how they showed recently.)

The wines were concentrated and disjointed

Aha, interesting. Thanks. I guess some are showing better than others at this early stage.

Would be interesting to hear what Claude has to say about Groffier, although I suppose I could do searches or just ask him on other forums.

But in theory not his kind of producer I imagine.

1. As far as the assertion that we are, and were, the first wine forum on the <i>Web</i>, that stands clearly beyond challenge.

For the record (and with credit to your ack of ambiguity in the "Internet" assertion), this situation resembles that of a commercial frozen savory I encountered, claiming "Real Parmesan Cheese." On inspection, it contained no cheese from Italy (so what exactly would be "unreal" Parmesan cheese?). In other words, to agree with the marketing statement demanded a selective interpretation.

I don't question credit as first wine forum created in WWW (i.e., Hypertext) format. That's not at issue. The wording above admits multiple readings though, fairly obviously. Preexisting (newsgroup) Internet wine fora became also usable via WWW interfaces immediately. "First wine forum on the <i>Web</i>" might be understood by some readers to mean first created for WWW, but it will be taken by others to mean the first wine forum accessible via WWW (despite WWW access to preexisting fora), and by far more people to mean the first wine forum on the Internet. (Because many people now casually read "Web" and "Internet" as the same thing.*)

I could make a Jesuitical case that most consumers had no real access to wine discussion online until the CompuServe forum launched in 1985.

This is really outside the point of my posting. What I've been trying to tell you though (or what you can research for yourself) is that this is an intuitive impression from personal experience, possibly true for you, and for many Compuserve users. But contradicted as a more general situation by the record of widespread growth of "public-access sites" in that era which (I gather from this thread) you are unfamiliar with. In common with most consumers who were not aware of public Internet opportunities at that time. (The distinction is one of the famous misconceptions of Internet history.)

You're the first to bring it up.

On this forum. What triggered my query here was this site -- domain name created 1999 by record -- claiming to be "Internet's original wine forum," whereas you'd posted to another Internet wine forum in 1993. You've explained that this one actually had older roots. The claims' ambiguity remains, and would do so even if no one brought it up.


*Despite Berners-Lee's 1991 coinage of "a web" to mean any group of linked documents. Technical standards bodies and other formal users still carefully distinguish WWW protocols from the Internet itself. A friend who wrote a best-selling Internet guide in the early 1990s (still selling in later editions) once harangued over the phone "there is no 'the' World Wide Web. It's a class of tools for the Internet. Why don't people get that?" (He no longer argues the point.) I also avoid "Usenet" for the newsgroups, to escape seductively confusing misinterpretations.