(PalatePress) - The pipeline has dried up. Five or six years ago, almost any casual wine enthusiast could launch a WordPress or Blogger blog, write a post about each new wine he drank—from the plonk to the good stuff—and wait for wine samples to come pouring in. And pour in they did. At the time, American wineries and their PR agencies were making a sincere effort to become au fait with social media and its usefulness for propagating a brand. Many began compiling their own house list of the top two or three hundred bloggers and automatically sending them samples with each new release.