He can’t be the first person to review a wine he has not tasted, but is now a very public example of why the world of journalism and writing needs to change … I did not go to Rioja last week, but I feel very well connected with what happened because of the variety of ‘social media’ tools that people were using. I watched Gary Vaynerchuck’s speech minutes after it happened, I heard what Jancis had to say, I followed the Parker tasting via photographs, some videos and by Ryan Opaz posting his tasting notes on adegga.com and I was alerted to all of these by various Tweets!

Really Matt, you’re a young guy .. why are you publishing a book?

It’s made me think … it would be a sad day if we stopped organising real life, real time tastings where real people connect, but we could post them on FACEBOOK too and reach out and share our passion with many others who cannot make it or would prefer not to …

I love love twitter etc but the challenge for the future will be to stay connected with the real world too!