Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Are you serious?

I'm almost afraid to post something today in case it is taken to be a joke, being April Fools Day and all, so I'll risk making a few statements today about some ongoing discussions about wine. I will go on to explore them in more detail when, hopefully, I might be taken more seriously (but I doubt it):

1. The results of the American Wine Blog Awards have been announced

2. Kids should be allowed to explore alcohol at home with the family

3. We need to keep refreshing the wine blogging gene pool with more readers' comments

4. Bloggers need to refocus on the consumer or risk being distracted by the cool toys

5. And while we are at it, how is Gary like Oz & James?

4 comments:

Peter F May said...

OK, I'll be controversial. :)

You risk making some statements; one is that Kids should be allowed to explore alcohol at home with the family - well, they are allowed and I reckon most of us had the opportunity to sip some wine with our parents.

Your link is to a US site and in the US even adults can't have a drink if they're under 21.

Indeed, all your links refer to US sites. Your blog's tagline is
Thoughts on wine's role in our culture. Maybe its time to change it to 'Thoughts on wine's role in American culture'?

(one of your statements is abour having more readers comments :)

Robert McIntosh said...

always appreciate your comments, and they always require an answer - isn't that the start of a conversation?! You are, after all, my most frequent and long-standing commentator.

it may be legal to allow your kids to drink whilst supervised at home in the UK, but it is growing ever more unpopular and we are heading in the same puritanical direction the US has gone, so their situation is relevant, if only for comparison.

the links in this post may all be US ones as, to be honest, quite a lot of the interesting stuff seems to be happening over there at the moment. I think you'll find many more posts, including the one immediately preceding this one, are about the UK, so I claim some extenuating circumstances.

In any case, "our culture" is purposely vague as much of this applies to any reader, although many of my examples will be based on my experience in the UK.

thanks for your comments, and do keep visiting! I promise to think about pinotage in the near future!!

Robert McIntosh said...

oh, and point 3 is from Spain rather than the US (although I admit they are Americans)

Andrew Brown said...

On the point about young people drinking at home (wine or any other alcoholic drink) you might find this report from the Centre for Public Health helpful.

They are talking about young people in England (although their focus is on the North East) and on of their conclusions is that there are:

"some protective effects against the development of damaging drinking behaviours associated with children drinking moderately in family environments."

They put some caveats around this but it's something to hang your hat on.