Should you invite VinoForDinner.com over for dinner?

The Wine Curmudgeon gets scads of news releases, so it really takes something different to get my attention. And this one did, for a Web site called VinoForDinner.com: ?Vinofordinner.com will soon eclipse over 250,000 food and wine pairings enabling both web and iPhone application users to effectively choose wines under 30 dollars per bottle with ease. ?

We ?ll ignore that the sentence ain ?t all that well constructed and that the Wine Curmudgeon has insisted, for years, that anyone can drink whatever wine they want with dinner.

What got my attention is that this concept, no matter how noble in purpose, seems to be nothing more than the usual sort of wine industry effort to give wine drinkers not what they need, but what the industry thinks they should have. More, after the jump:

There are a variety of problems with VinoForDinner.com:

? There is no real explanation about how the wines that are listed are chosen and who reviews them. There ?s nothing on the Web site that I could find, save for an assurance that the reviews are independent and done in a blind tasting. All the release said was that ?The site works with vineyards and distributors and is expanding at a rapid pace to bring affordable and great wine to its growing consumer base. ? That hardly says anything at all. The first rule of credible wine reviewing is to explain your criteria and explain where you get the wine. There ?s nothing wrong with reviewing wine that people give you or ask you to review. Just say so.

? Who is VinoForDinner.com? Again, transparency is all, and there isn ?t any. Click on the About Us tab, and you get some boilerplate signed by a PR person.

? Very little knowledge about who drinks wine. From the release: ?The site specializes in wines the average consumer can afford, find readily available, and enjoy. ? No, it doesn ?t. It includes wines that cost up to $30. The average price of a bottle of wine sold in the U.S. is about $6. Most of the 30 most popular brands in the U.S. in 2008, based on sales, cost $10 or less, and 16 of them cost $5 or less.

? Scores. Scores are bad enough, but scores that are given without any explanation or reference are even worse. How does this wine — ?The finish is disappointing with a tart, short finish ? get an 83, but this wine — ?Once you take a sip, flavors of cherry jam, cranberry and a hint of white pepper dance across your palate ? ? also get an 83?

Is VinoForDinner.com the worst thing to ever happen to the wine business? Of course not. What it is is annoying, and that its approach is so common is even more annoying. And that ?s why I ?m spending time on it instead of sipping some chilled Gascon white or arguing about the merits of regional wine (which, obviously, I ?d rather do). When will the wine industry learn that wine drinkers should be treated like adults, and not like sheep to be grazed here and there on whichever advertising- or technology-driven meadow seems most promising?

Want to do a wine review and wine pairing site? Be my guest. Want to sell advertising? Get as much as you can. Want to make bundles of money doing it? More power to you. But treat your visitors with respect. Aren ?t they the ones you ?re supposed to be doing it for?