THE DAILY

For Thursday August 22, 1996

VIRTUAL VINTAGE

Oenophiles bring taste to the Web


Taste and the Internet might often miss one another, but recently the Net found itself the toast of a vintage highbrow event: a Web wine tasting. On Sunday, nine wine experts, including The New York Times wine editor Frank J. Prial, attended what was reportedly the first wine tasting held over the Internet and, while he noted in a column that technology had overshadowed the occasion, Prial found the tasting to be at least "an ambitious one."

Authorities swirled the contents of flights (jargon for samples) in their mouths in Manhattan, while growers watched Xing's Streamlined video and awaited the verdict in the Arroyo Grande valley in California, where many of the samples had originated. The verdict: "They toasted the camera a lot," Robert Gould, president of Webcast producer Websine, tells PEOPLE Online.

A list of the wines to be tasted was available ahead of time for anyone who had the resources to seek out the selections and purchase them. "Wine-tasting is a very select, high-end market," says Gould, 28. "But this allowed anyone who could log on a chance to taste the same wines, ask questions and follow the comments." Hopeful sommeliers from 20 countries, including Japan and Norway, logged on during the event, he says.

But what is the result when a ruddy "terroir" is mixed with the Internet's chaos, when all caution is thrown to the Web wind? "Well, there's a certain decorum to wine tasting," Gould says. "So when I brought the tasters some questions from e-mail, they weren't always ready for them." Graphic language? "No. Their mouths were full."

***Copyright People Online . Reprinted with permission.
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