Facebook Wine Club

8,165 members strong, the Facebook Wine Club proclaims: “This club will appeal to all wine drinkers, from the seasoned pro to those who just wanna know more!! You can choose to read, discuss, add and request information on wine. Let’s discover wine together, THE MORE THE MERRIER!!!” Reading comments from the News Feed, it’s primarily people plugging their winery or their blog. All fine and good, but there is very little on the News Feed that seemed helpful to me. Examples (at 5 pm today) include:

(i) a plug from Cantine Del Sol winery (www.cantinedelsolrosso.it) in Salerno, Italy, that says they are a “very small winery that produces a very good wine”. Looks great, and the mere thought of Salerno makes my mouth water, but good luck finding their wine at your local bottle shop.

(ii) someone advertising about their wine consulting services.

(iii) some lone person complaining about the high cost of wine (a worthy topic), but no responses.

(iv) some lonelier person who simply posted: “Hi Every one, I simply love a nice fruity red.”

While I was about to abandon this club as having too many folks and no useful information, I did find one area that is very helpful. If you click on the Discussion tab, you’ll be lead to a page that has 117 discussions around specific topics. The topics range from “Viogner” to “cheap wine for us poor people” to “Portuguese Wine”. These small groupings included comments from people who were knowledgeable and interested in the subject – much better than many of the Drunk-Facebook waxings that seem to dominate the News Feed.

Start a Discussion topic or comment on topics that interest you, but always participate. Joe Plonk is on Facebook (no kidding) -- don’t let him have all the fun!

Best, Joe Plonk

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