Over the past year there has been quite a bit of talk about wine bloggers that receive wine and then write a review of the wine. Receiving free wine to review happens more than you probably think. The controversy comes from some wine bloggers that receive free wine and write a review for the wine but fail to disclose that they received the wine for free.

This all changes as of December 1, 2009 as a new FTC ruling has come down saying that the relationship must now be disclosed. This is the first change to the law since the 1980s. I think it is going to be interesting to see what shakes out as a blogger failing to disclose the relationship "may be subject to fines of $11,000 per instance."

On a side note, all those ads you see (often get rich quick schemes) that say so and so made big money or so and so lost 50 pounds on our diet and then marked it with "these results are not typical" will be gone too. They now have to advertise typical results from their products.

So, we have two questions: how will this be enforced? Upon report of a violation? Going to be difficult, until there is a complaint.
Second - do you think it will change the herat of the reviewing process? Personally, as @Pullingthecork stated on twitter - integrity is all a reviewer has, so really, it won't be changing the way I do my reviews.

I do not think it will change how people review wine but you will probably see a lot more blog posts that say, "I received this wine to review from XYZ winery...." Enforcement is another issue entirely but wineries, under ABC laws, probably have to keep track of all their wine and where it went.

I think what the FTC ruling is really about is people who get PAID to review something. And while the value of the wine being reviewed may be a "consideration", I doubt that's what they'll go after. If you give Joe Blogger a $50 bottle of wine and he reviews it, that is one thing. If you give Joe Blogger $50 in cash to write a good review, that's another thing entirely.

What I wonder is if the "reviewer" would have to make the statement with each review, or just once on his blog, that he received free wine. If the latter, doesn't seem like a big deal to place a disclaimer on your blog that you accept wine for review, or if you are one of the other kind, that you have received compensation for your "review" (advertisement).
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Since the fine is set per instance If the disclosure was in the header or footer of the site, that shows on every page, I can see that probably sufficing but if it is not I expect it will have to be mentioned in the post.