In a fit of curiosity (and market research) we’ve been exploring various options for pouring wine for customers. This is hypothetical, of course, since we’re purely clicks at this point, not clicks and bricks. However, this hasn’t quelled our interest in exploring this topic.

Personally, we’re intrigued by their efficiency, and the sleek Jetsons-like look of the Enomatic dispensers that provide 1oz pours to customers without a smidgen of human interaction; but we think taking away personal communication customers leaves a lot to be desired. And, less rational, we’re also skeptical of the argon preservation system…no matter how neutral we’re told it is, we still have a psychological block against the stuff, and are convinced we can taste a chemical layer on our wine when we know it’s been gassed. Yes, we know that’s totally irrational and wrong.

Now we’d like to hear what you think about the Enomatic systems and similar automated wine-pouring devices?

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As a follow up to last week’s poll, which was met with overwhelming apathy, we thought we’d pose our question about reviewing wines on web retail sites in a slightly different manner. If it were really easy to do so, do you think you’d post more reviews on domaine547, or other retailer websites for that matter (like, if you didn’t have to sign in, if you could click a few stars like you do on Netflix, or something of that nature)

Please pipe in with your response to this poll!

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We’re not sure what the impediment to posting reviews is. There was overwhelming response to our poll on what you use to guide your wine purchases, with Cellartracker coming in a strong 3rd with 12% of the vote. That leads us to believe that many of you probably enter notes into Cellartracker (see the article in Good Wine Under $20 from just yesterday), in addition to reading notes posted by other Cellatracker users — so we know you’re willing to write notes in a community context.

We think it probably comes down to a couple of things: the lack of ease of use, and perhaps lack of critical mass on retail sites. We’re going to try and work on a way to remedy this…someday!

People seem to post reviews frequently on Amazon, and wine seems as conducive to user-feedback as books do…but our customer review feature almost never gets used.

Partially it’s the fault of our system…it’s not the easiest to navigate, and it’s not completely obvious that you can even write a review of a wine you’ve had. But it’s something we’d hoped would see more activity. So, in general, we’d love to know whether you write reviews on any wine retail sites. In the comments, feel free to elaborate on the reasons why you do or don’t, or what you’d like to see in this kind of feature.

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We’ve been thinking about this a lot. Forget the whole discussion of who’s a critic and who’s not. What matters is who you trust. We all have various methods for making purchases of all sizes, and wine is so subjective, so variable, that a guide you trust in navigating this world is truly invaluable.

We realize that you might have several go-to sources when deciding whether to buy a particular bottle, but for the sake of simplicity, please select the ONE that is most likely to seal the deal in your wine purchases. As always, your participation and comments are much appreciated.

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