It’s not enough that your product is despairingly bad, Le Tourment, and that people everywhere have to pay for the privilege of such bottled evil before realizing it. It’s not enough that you’ve put a sub-standard product on the market that is riding the coattails of ever-growing absinthe appreciation and enthusiasm and on the backs of quality brands such as Marteau, Obsello, St. George, and others. It’s not enough that your product barely resembles anything remotely related to absinthe much less something potable. No, you have to spam my comments and burn 10-15 minutes of each of my days for the past few weeks filtering it out. Shame on you, on both counts.

As a cocktail blogger and writer I can tell you that some PR firms “get” it. They understand that to gain our attention requires time, respect, and communication. You know, like any other human with self-respect. Sure, blogging is a labor of love, first and foremost, but it also requires time and effort and attention and a good many of us also write in some professional capacity. That you would think, essentially, taking a dump on our doorstep every day and making us clean it up would engender some sort of good will, admiration, or desire to promote your product only illustrates your ignorance, disregard, and, I suspect, your secretly-held disdain for bloggers in general. After all, if I shit on *your* doorstep every day, you might take it that I don’t like you either.

Let me provide this illustration by example. You know those folks going door-to-door trying to get you to attend their church, subscribe to The Watchtower, or generally asking you personal questions about your relationship with God which is none of their damned business? Off-putting at best, and insulting at worst. Now, take that example, have them arrive every day for the past 3-4 weeks and then add a kicker. Not only do they make daily visits, they also have an associate that writes “Jesus is the awesomezt, have you tried him?,” or, “I’ve heard Shiva is nice, but have you tried Jesus? Americans are crazy for him!” on your front door in dry-erase marker. Every…single…fucking….day. Some days two or three times. Yes, easy enough to clean off. Yes, it’s not really *hurting* anyone. But, what does it say about how they feel about you, your home , and your time? It says, to me, “Fuck you, our message is more important than you and you’re not deserving of the respect or time it would require to actually key your interest in our message, product, or business.” And, what does it make you think of that church, religion, or publication? Nothing good, I assure you. So, thanks Le Tourment. I didn’t like your product in the first place but was willing to equivocate a bit. Then you had to spam me. All your PR firm has done is prove that it has no respect for me, and, I would venture, no faith in your product.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there are firms that do this right. I’ve had great experiences with Brand Action Team, The Baddish Group, and Brown-Forman and would put them in front of anyone looking for best practices on how to work with the cocktail blogging community to build influence and exposure for a product . Each of them, in different ways, has taken our influence seriously, taken their time to speak with us personally and inquire after their product(s) after sending it to us, and sought our feedback and insights on those products. I’m willing to listen carefully to them about their products, share my issues, and take their feedback into account when they disagree with my assessment. I would think this should be any firm’s goal.

Spamming my comments , sending me unsolicited emails asking me to feature a crappy batch of recipes that I can tell by looking at them didn’t have mixological principles in mind, just the heavy use of XYZ product for its own sake, or emailing me a lamely-worded press release in-toto and asking me to run it on my site is telling me that you either don’t know me, don’t read my site, or, if you do, don’t take me seriously. I can live with that. But, please, do me the favor and be honest in your not respecting me and my ilk. In other words, leave me the fuck alone. Pretend I don’t exist, and I’ll pretend you don’t either.

Because, when you act like I exist, here’s what I get:

And this is only what I can dredge up from my history in the past week or so. Sad, alarming, and completely unnecessary. I hope any brands reading this know that I’ll be happy to give your product a fair shake and its due. I just hope you’ve selected a PR firm that can treat us with respect, forthrightness, and dignity. As for you, Cashmere, the IP addresses from which the above come have been permanently banned. Well done for you, and well done for your client.

Speak Out, Bloggers!:

Darcy at The Art of Drink

Jon at DrinkPlanner

SeanMike at Scofflaw’s Den

Marleigh at SLOSHED!

Blair at Trader Tiki’s Booze Blog

Chris at An Exercise in Hospitality

Stevi at Two at the Most

Tiare at A Mountain of Crushed Ice

Paul at the Cocktail Chronicles

Chuck at Looka!

Matt at A Jigger of Blog

I throw quite a few shindigs and I like to think I bring together the right type and range of people that will generally enjoy one another deeply for an evening and yet not become such close friends that, after some time, they abandon….me. A few years ago I held a New Year’s Eve Party and a lot of old friends that had moved to, and remain in, California were visiting Tulsa and were invited. I was very excited to see them and wanted things to go off well. I also invited local friends and family which, necessarily, includes my brother-in-law. Unfortunately for me, specifically, and the party, generally, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend at the time also had an out-of-town friend visiting and asked, sheepishly, if I minded if they brought this friend along. Well, why not, right?

Why not, indeed. While this was before my more enlightened drinking days I still liked to put a good spread of alcohol and this begat ‘The Shittiest Toilet in Scotland’. A drink born of woe, ignorance, and boorishness. All of the below is true. I leave you to it: Read More »

First, a caveat to this, I think that Gary Vaynerchuk does absolutely fine work on his site tv.winelibrary.com, a wine video blog (vlog) which attempts to demystify wine and make it more accessible in a down-to-earth and direct way than the way many wine aesthetes approach it.

That out-of-the-way however, this is the sort of attention-grabbing, publicity-stuntish, and misguided attempt at “education” that drives me batshit loco. It’s like that doofus Will Cramer who yells at you and through his exuberance hides the fact that he’s giving you information that any broker on Wall Street had at least 24 hours before and whose value is now diminshed to the point of being moot; except in this case it’s trying to get you to do shit my 5-year-old will tell you is retarded. I understand what he’s trying to do; yes, different varietals have basic flavor profiles that are shared across vintages, terroirs, etc. and you can train your palate to identify those core characteristics and better evaluate wines from those baseline flavors. But, and let me make this clear, *ahem* you shouldn’t have to eat bacteria-ridden dirt, eat rank-ass tobacco, lick rocks, et al to understand the tones and flavor profiles of wine. When 80-90% of our sense of taste (only bitter, sweet, salt, and sour aside – and umami if you want to get real damned technical) is derived from the sense of smell, this is completely useless and counterintuitive and is more likely to turn people off from exploring wine than turn them on. That is, Conan’s reaction is just about on-target with how the majority of people would react in this situation, ‘You’re an idiot…’

This defeats Vaynerchuk’s core mission which is noble and well-handled through his vlog. All that aside, I bet his traffic spiked a good amount after this sort of visibility, and more power to him on that score. I just hope people get past this foolhardiness and stay for the well-reasoned and informative look at wine his vlog provides. Slate online magazine also has a great profile of Vaynerchuk here; definitely worth a read.

WARNING: This post contains harsh language and is a self-indulgent harangue against poorly-executed marketing and idiocy in general. Therefore, if you are sensitive to strong language, a fan of ’Mike’s Hard Lemonade’, or an idiot, you will be offended and should proceed at your own risk. Read More »

My wife, Joana, will occasionally call upstairs to me (where I work), ‘GAAaaaaaabe! They’re doing something on bartending down here!’. ‘Down here’ means downstairs, and more specifically, on Food Network, morning talk shows, or some other food-related piece. Often, this is a very good thing (see: Good Eats’ episode ‘Raising the Bar’ – though that Mint Julep piece leaves a lot to be desired, Alton made a smash more than anything) or it’s a very very awful and heart-wrenching thing. In this particular case upon bounding down the steps I found myself confronted with… ‘Extreme Bartending’.
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