Jancis Robinson photo courtesy of Allan Bree ©

Page 1: The Interview  |  Page 3: Re: Robert Parker, etc.

c – "How is your website doing?"

JR – "I’m delighted. We have, as you can see, subscribers in more than 35 countries. I mean, everybody said: ‘Forget it. Nobody’s going to pay." That’s the whole ethos of the Internet. But, I started it completely free. We started in November 2000, and I’d been doing it for 13 months – as a charity, with a lot of other things on my plate. So really, it was a sort of ‘do or die’. I’ll try a subscription element to it, and if it doesn’t work, then I may stop feeding quite so much material into the website and just have it as a sort of information board.

We launched it on the first of December – it’s just me and a technical colleague who does the business. Launched on December the first of last year. We put it up live, by mistake, an hour just before that, and got five subscriptions – one of them from Brazil. We got terribly excited, and we thought: ‘Great – we’re going to get five subscriptions every hour.’ (Laughter)

Actually, we’re coming up to six hundred now, which is fine. When I talk to people in Britain in the business of trying to get people to pay for stuff online – (who are) very smart – they are struggling along trying to get a hundred people. So, although the numbers aren’t enormous, it’s enough to keep me going and make me think it’s worth doing…

I don’t sit down and work out how much time I spend on it, and what I would charge for that time, but at least I don’t feel a slave to it. And I love the feedback – and people ask questions and send in stuff. And, well, as you know, there’s the very nice thing of …for instance, food – there’s a food and wine matching aspect to it, and somebody wrote in from Singapore, and said: ‘You haven’t differentiated nearly enough in all the Chinese (food) because this Viognier (matches best) with Shark’s Fin Soup, and this’ – and all that. Which is great, and I think all of that is very positive, and it helps everybody else. You know, that is what the whole thing is about.

I don’t run it like a chat room where everybody just comes in and can add and all that sort of thing. I don’t put up, by any means, everything that I get in. At the moment - and I’m sure it’s not going to go on like this, but – at the moment the whole tone is terribly nice. All the people seem very nice. It’s rather unlike the tone of the average – particularly the American – well, you know, where everybody’s going: ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! I know more than you.’…It’s all very um…quite a lot of the comments are just: ‘Oh, I really like your site’ - but when people have an interesting question or observation, then I certainly put that up. So, that’s nice.

And, the main motivation for me, really – because I’m from the North of England where we don’t believe in waste – I was just learning so much about wine and not using it before I had the site. I’d go to fantastic tastings and it was all just left in a stack of tasting notes in a pile at home and not being shared and being of any use to anybody else. It makes me feel much better. Of course, I’ve created a rod for my own back – everything I do I could be putting on the site. I’m not sure my husband is a huge fan of this (smiling) – because I have spent an awful amount of time writing and being completely wrapped up in big reference books up until now, and I suppose the site is now the alternative – the thing I go and devote myself to now instead."

c – "Do you have a plan to grow the site?"

JR – "I’ve never had a plan in my life. And things have gone pretty well up until now. I’m a little bit superstitious about coming up with a plan, but of course, that’s stupid.
The amount of money I’ve spent on it is has been absolutely minimal – just for design, both technical and esthetic. I haven’t spent any money on promotion. What is very useful, is that I write for the Financial Times, and those are my chief articles – and, of course, they don’t have nearly enough space for detailed tasting notes and things like that. So, I put at the bottom of my FT piece: ‘If you want the detailed tasting notes, see JancisRobinson.com. The FT sells all around the world – I’m sure that’s been a help in getting the subscribers from so many countries.

I’ll tell you, we are planning to do a little ‘Hey! Take notice of us’ in July or early August – we’re putting the whole of the Oxford Companion to Wine on the site. That will be really useful, particularly to people who travel."

c – "Wow. Now, will that be in the Purple Pages?"

JR – "Oh, you bet. (laughter) I’m afraid (so)."

c – "Kimberly Adams, who does our web design and site management, was curious as to what your thoughts might be regarding the Internet and wine education."

JR – "Given that my husband and I own the rights to the television series – Jancis Robinson’s Wine Course – which was shot all around the world, has lovely footage of the vineyards of Australia, Chile, and around Europe, certainly it would be logical to put some of that up at some point. I think we’re waiting for everybody’s machines (computers) to be able to do that quickly and easily.

I’ll tell you what I do have a bee in my bonnet about – Internet technology and all. I’m really irritated by those sites that are too complex. You know, you log on and you’ve got to wait for a door to open, and a key emerging, and then sticking the key in the lock - you just want to be there, don’t you?"

c – "Well, you’ll see what a remarkable difference it makes when you get high speed access. Some of these Flash© applications and other technologies will load almost instantaneously.

But if you have a 28 or a 56K modem, you sit and…it’s the World Wide Wait.

What’s new for Jancis Robinson in the next year?"

JR – "Certainly I’ll be continuing to concentrate on the site. I’m not in a hurry to consign myself to another book, actually.

We’re working on a follow-up TV series, and that looks – so nearly – we were going to do it with the BBC last November, then there was one slip at the last minute. That would be nice. I would like to do one more TV series. I do quite a lot of narration for documentaries. I just think that wine lends itself so well to places that are so beautiful – and the people are interesting. And I think there’s a whole new audience of people who are ready for wine on the screen.

I’ve actually traveled a lot this year – so far this year I’ve been to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bordeaux, Venice and here. I try not to travel quite so much in May and June because England is really awfully nice then. It’s great traveling to the Southern Hemisphere in January. I’m just coming back here in June – I’m not planning any other travel."

c – "You do have a family."

JR – "Exactly, exactly! I do have a saint of a husband, luckily. The oldest one (daughter) is off at the university – we talk and email a lot. The boy is doing some reasonably important exams next month. Then there’s my eleven year old girl who is also a great traveler. We travel together whenever possible."

Page 1: The Interview

Page 3: Re: Robert Parker, etc.

BACK TO THE TOP

© Allan Bree July 2002