So I’ve been watching a lot of Wine Library TV recently. A little too much, maybe. But I tell you, once you’ve gotten to the point where you are disagreeing on the particulars rather than the parameters of each specific wine that is tasted, you know that you’re dealing with someone who is dealing with wine on the same level that you are. And that’s a good thing.

For those who haven’t been exposed to WLTV, it’s a video blog run by Wine Library, a wine store in New Jersey, and hosted by the store’s director of operations, Gary Vaynerchuk. Each weekday, he sits down with a few wines, tastes them on camera, and gives his honest opinion on their worth, usually ending with a traditional score on the 100-point scale.

It doesn’t sound like much, and if you watch an episode at random, you may not walk away impressed. But Vaynerchuk has a strangely fascinating appeal on camera – very ebullient, quick-witted, and extremely candid. Rather than using his forum to shill for his company, he really tells you what he thinks – if it’s plonk, he says so. And frankly, my favorite moments of the show are almost never the actual tastings, but rather the small moments of humanity that pop up – the playoff beard for the Jets during the NFL playoffs,  the odd response to a comment in the Wine Library forums, etc. It’s fun to see someone who is clearly as comfortable in front of the camera as Vaynerchuk. Like Eric Asimov, I’m occasionally left wondering where he pulls his incredibly varied and nuanced list of aromatics from when describing how a certain wine smells, but I respect his palate and his taste, so who cares?

It’s also exciting to see food and wine blogging starting to branch out a little. As the internet takes its first dive into the Youtube era, we’ve really started to see a change in the way that the web affects the world – now there’s video if everything, and you can see it right now if you want to. While the implications are sometimes scary, the power and democracy of it all is pretty awesome. So I’m very happy to see some wine love in this video wave – especially to see it thrive like Wine Library TV has. If I had any equipment at all, I’d love to contribute to the vlog world, but I guess I’ll have to leave that to the professionals. In the meantime, I’ll keep browsing the WLTV archives, looking for great wines (or duds) that I’ve had or wines that I’ve been waiting to try. Check one out if you can – good times for all.