The History of Wine Forums and Social Networking

UK wine forum for me (wine-pages.com) from about 99 and still going strong.
eRP (whatever it was called back then) from about 01 (but lurking for longer) until the putsch. I took out a months subscription to ‘update’ as many of my posts as possible and change my signature - but Mao had already archived (stolen!) most our our freely generated content.
Wine Disorder from just before the eRP putsch, but I rarely visit now
WB a bit later - had to overcome my completely rational irritation with the name (in the same class as people who say Moose or Monty instead of Musigny or Montrachet darlings…!)

I came to bordeauxwineenthusiasts.com originally (early 2000s) and from there found Parker/Squires’ place (about 2006). Then I came here. I still check bordeaux wine enthusiasts occasionally, but there is not much going on over there.

I signed up with the Squires board in 1999 IIRC as member number 191, after a certain Bob Sisak alerted me to it on another board which I can’t for the life of me remember the name of.
Unlike most others, I had no problems with Msr. Squires whatsoever and when he came over to Europe for a vacation in 2003, we had quite a nice dinner in Amsterdam with some of the other Dutch posters. As the years progressed, I did get a little annoyed at times with the blow-hard element gaining a foothold on the board. That turned out to be a harbinger for things to come and at some point I stopped posting on E-Bob for 18 months. Just as I returned, the big freeze-out happened which ultimately led me here.
As a publication, TWA is pretty much useless to me and I refuse to pay for the right to salvage my own TN’s! Bastids!

Yes, she was like a cousin of the owner of a winery called I believe Gabrielli, even though she didn’t drink wine (due to her meds) she constantly posted re the winery (much to the winery’s embarrassment, I felt bad for them, an ill relative generating so much ill will).

I started off as a lurker and eventually a poster on AFW,then discovered WLDG (Garr), and eventually eBob (about the time Squires became eBob). Posted on all 3. Spent some time on BWE as well (it’s a wonder I got any work done). Like many I stopped eBob when it became subscriber only, though I had been reading less for a while as folks exited (or were thrown out).

It is funny to see the same people having the same arguments 15 years later.


Don’t think so, Robin had no affiliation for years at that point. I think basically the old proprietary WLDG software (with threaded discussion!) was not set up to require registering to post. A shall we say deranged poster (who posted here for a while, but I haven’t seen since he got some bad publicity in his hometown) starting posting weird stuff, and when some got deleted he went on manic posting sprees, posting hundreds of messages a night re the FBI investigating, accused people of child porn, etc. Volunteer moderators were taking overnight shifts just deleting posts. So Robin moved the forum to Netscape wine forum out of exhaustion. Which lowered number of people. I guess that forum still exists, but Robin then reformed WLDG on his own site using phpBB. That is the current WLDG (which I enjoy posting on, though it is a much smaller community than the old WLDG).

The Emperor of Wine book has some interesting tidbits about the old prodigy board. It discusses bot the Robin Callahan tasting, and quotes a post of yours (I assume it’s the same Bob Foster) wondering about Parker’s conflict of interest with regard to a barrel he bought at Hospice du Beuane for which Jadot was doing the elevage. There’s also discussion of heated arguments about points, new world vs. old world, etc. There’s also a funny moment where the Prodigy admins start referring to some of the wine-board denizens as “get a lifers” because they’re spending so much time on the board.

What I found most amusing about all of this is how little has changed. 20+ years later, people are still basically arguing about the same things. The more things change …

For me that killed the board. It became a dialog among about six people, pretty incomprehensible to anyone else. Sad, because there had been a lot of good content there.

That’s funny. I had a similar issue when I made my log-on JMSQUIRES, or something like that – a mnemonic of my initials and the name of the board. He accused me of trying to impersonate me. I eventually convinced him it was just something I could remember. But what a short fuse he had!

With his moderating hat on, he was not only heavyhanded but consistently thick. But I have to say my opinion of him improved markedly when he took on the reviewing responsibilities. He took those seriously, I found our palates often agreed and he made every effort be moderate and thoughtful. I thought some of that carried over to his management of the board, too. So by the end I thought better of him than I did in my early years on the board.

I started out on the Wine Commune forum boards. It was a great resource of knowledge and very friendly folks. They closed it down after members found out that WC turned over a list of wine sellers to the Feds in search of tax revenue and the tone turned ugly.

alt.food.wine was where I started too. Did my first wine sales there. Was very proud of the $350 I got for a bottle of 1990 La Tache that had only cost me $200.

I generally agree with the timeline of “who’s who” in subsequent forums that John S posted, though there were some private email lists along the way that arose to serve a temporary need and then perished as better forums came along.

It has varied a bit with each individual case, but overall the demise- in full or in part- of the importance of most forums has been that point where a lot of the membership begins to crap on expensive wines and the people who can afford them and drink them. This is still a great place, but just take that as food for thought next time you read a post about Asians overspending on wine and mixing it with Coke or how “stupid” it is to pay 4 figures for a grand cru burgundy…

As for stories- not sure I want to go there. On the bad stuff I generally prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, the good stuff you guys would find boring.

That said, no discussion of online wine history is complete without mentioning ROSAPHILIA!

Hi Tom,

Rosaphilia was a great character. There was also a guy in the WS board who went my Asterix du Gaul who was quite the character as well. I also recall poor John Gilman having to report some apology every day on alt.food.wine due to a Parker I think. Poor guy! A list of characters and events would be another fun one to compile. Drama has never been in short supply in wine forums.

“(I assume it’s the same Bob Foster)”

It is. We talked for 2 hours and she only used that tiny bit. My objection was that Parker had that business deal with Jadot, took their free guest invite to the auction, and then tasted their wines unblind later that week. I thought it an ethical violation. Parker did not.

Almost everyone on Prodigy had a nickname. Mine was JPB (Just Plain Bob) It was given to me after someone called me Mr Foster and I told them it was just Bob.

Mark, I may have coined ITB; I thought TN started on Prodigy but I could be wrong.

Yup. I was in the compuserve wine community and the AOL wine community Mark - not sure if you ever went to the Elliot Apter offlines - those were the days. No idea where Elliot ended up. But the tastings were epic. I think that is when Adam Lee was just getting started with Siduri as well - it was fun meeting Adam in person back in the day when the Lees were just starting out on their own (mid 90s).

The AOL community is where Allen Meadows became BurgHound. he was just a guy back then and of course everyone on AOL used fake names like that! I remember 2 guys that really dominated the AOl forum - a guy who called himself Chambolle and another guy named Eno. And a guy from the NW that just went by Randy, if I recall correctly. Very interesting back and forth on that board. Funny that at the time, Chambolle was the big burg guy on that board and Burghound was something of a dilettante.

Robin Garr was also on the compuserve forum before splitting off, I think. We had many off-lines together at Mina’s Tavern and Luzias on the UWS.

Made lots of friends on compuserve that I still see once a year at an offline we have. Includes Dave Sit, Don/Melissa Rice, Robb Gordon and Michelle Miles (who is now on this board too). I wish we could get them on this forum as they have amazing palates and an amazing depth of knowledge.

Spent some time on eBob after a long hiatus and Posner finally directed me here.

I found Squires’ E-Zine and the the Squires board in the mid to late 90’s via Arthur Johnson’s Wine People (site’s still there, but claims no update since 2009). It took me a couple of years to get up the gumption to post and I’ve never been that prolific in my volume. I stuck with the transition to eRP despite having never subscribed and having no real use for the Wine Advocate given my favored regions and buying habits. Once exiled, I had to go through the same adjustment Bill Nanson cites to start here.

I think it is a sign of the times when the cycle times for our favorite arguments to return to another 5+ page thread are shorter with each generation. I’m not sure what the sign points to, but it is an interesting side-effect of this era.

Cheers,
fred

I go back to the Prodigy days, albeit the end of their days. When that forum collapsed, Ron Kramer directed me to Mark Squires board where I think I was one of the first 200 to have signed on, I also followed West Coast Wine Lovers and Robin Garr’s board for a while. I remember going to offlines in the late 90’s in Northern Jersey with Ed Assidio and his Shiraz loving cult. Man, we had fun back then!

I joined EBob in the early-90s and stayed until they required a subscription to Wine Advocate. I had always disagreed with Parker; his tastes in wine were way different from mine.

I think I have the distinction of being the first second generation wine BBer… My father being a member of the old Prodigy boards and then myself registering for the old Squires board back in 2000. Those North Jersey and Philadelphia offlines were so much fun and I met a lot of folks that I still am in contact with today.

If you told that 22 year old kid 11 years ago that he would be out in the Russian River Valley making Pinot Noir for a living I would have never believed you!

What were the offlines like?

Have you joined us on a BerserkerFest or Offline yet? I’d imagine some of those would be REALLY hard to beat!

Started on the AOL boards and a fair amount of them are now here. I was on Robin Garr’s for a bit, too. Then Squires/Parker then ended up here.

Good to see Arthur Johnson’s name in this history thread, as no history of wine forums would be complete without it. I was on Prodigy, I believe, when Arthur first became interested in wine. (It could have been later, in the Squires era, can’t remember the timing exactly.) Arthur had rather limited wine knowledge, but was a prolific poster who was also a very accomplished wordsmith. He just wrote beautifully, and his posts were so numerous and so well-crafted that his limited knowledge and palate were overlooked by most. It seemed likely to me that he would be a “shooting star wino” and that his new-found wine interest would burn out in due course… but that did not happen. Over the years, his knowledge and experience expanded greatly. I did an offline with him in Baltimore at some point. I’ve lost touch with Arthur, but I believe he had some health issues…?

We had one Prodigy off line (very small) in San Rafael which concluded with a tour of Martine’s warehouse, one at the picnic grounds at Callaway in Temecula and a couple in the Napa Valley. Lots of fun-a sense of us against the paid Prodigy monitors (one of whom was a vegetarian and didn’t drink wine).