In a surprise announcement yesterday Gary Vaynerchuk of the erstwhile Wine Library TV aka “The Thunder Show” and most recently host of Daily Grape announced his retirement from wine.

So what?  Well for those of you who don’t know Gary, he’s been a force in revolutionizing and democratizing the way wine is tasted, reviewed, promoted and sold.  With nearly 900,000 twitter followers and videos viewed by upwards of 90,000 people a day, the guy had some major juice. And don’t forget he also literally wrote the book, ah…books…”Crush It” and “The Thank You Economy” that served as latter day Cluetrain Manifestos on Social Media Marketing.

More important than reach, though, has been his impact not just on consumers, but on the trade and influencer set as well. While some may  have winced at the “F-bombs” he dropped at our USDC last year (and I’m not talking about “Fruit”), his in-your-face, stream of consciousness and high-energy delivery reset the mode button for winespeak.

Now the question becomes, what’s next?  Dr. Vino (Tyler Colman) posted his thoughts yesterday and got me thinking.  Tyler himself caused a tipping point in wine criticism with his outing of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate policies and everybody in the world of citizen wine blogging is still talking about that.

I don’t have the answer to what’s next, but it sure will be fun to watch.