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Is wine writing boring?
A few days ago a meme popped up on Twitter to wide acclaim. Headed ‘The state of wine coverage - hot or not?’ it gave some tongue-in-cheek examples of articles wine writers might submit or be asked to write. “Is this the great sherry revival? Five great wines for barbecues because the editor insisted. A barely tampered press release about a newly invented grape variety day. 5000 words on minerality. Canned wine ‘not shit'’”
Twitter piled in, as it does. "You forgot the 'everything is getting a little bit better' article. Often indistinguishable from advertorials.” “Branded wines can't be good' and 'here are 5 branded wines which are actually ok’. "New Zealand is more than sauvignon."
I had a good laugh too but the underlying idea that the sort of things that readers might want to know about are just rather banal. showing a lack of imagination in the publication which prints it and the journalist who writes it, made me feel a bit uneasy.
And it hit home particularly in a week when the Labour party was mauled at the polls for failing to understand their voters. ‘Do you not KNOW that there’s only 40p of wine in that £5 bottle you buy’ we write. Well, probably yes but that’s irrelevant if that’s all you can afford. ‘Do you not REALISE just how sweet prosecco is.”Mmmm" our reader might counter "but it’s rather nice.” If prosecco were a biscuit no-one would bat an eyelid.
The truth is that with national newspapers at least there more than one audience, broadly divided into those who are passionately keen about wine and others for whom it’s just a drink. There are readers who don’t want to pay over £7 a bottle (ideally less) and those who are happy to pay £15 or more. Should we only write for the latter? I’d be out of a job if I did.
Maybe newspaper editors who typically don’t have a massive interest in and knowledge of wine are more in touch than we are when they ask us to write articles on rosé and barbecue wine. We may roll our eyes at the idea that there’s a ‘great sherry revival’ (it's been mooted for the last 20 years) but if they’ve just visited their local tapas bar and been amazed by the selection on offer chances are our readers might not have realised what's out there either.
People who mock often have an agenda - maybe a niche magazine which if it is to survive needs to focus on those who really want to dig deep - and will have the space to pursue it. “Attempts at beginner science education on YouTube quickly die, while extremely geeky info that's delivered well gets huge audiences" commented publisher Felicity Carter. "People who aren't interested don't go looking, people who are want expert content."
To which I’d say some do, some don’t and the latter group is a good deal smaller than the former. Most just want to be informed (whatever form that takes - recommendations or insights) and, ideally, entertained.
To purse the political analogy you could argue a wine writer is like an MP: there, whatever their personal preferences in wine (and those can be freely expressed) to service their readers just as an MP represents their constituents. Or that’s how I see it anyway.
How about you? What do you want from a wine column?
Image by Dean Drobot at shutterstock.com
Should wine writers pay for the wines they recommend?
One of the hoariest old chestnuts in discussions about the ethics of wine writing is whether wine writers should buy the wines they write about themselves rather than attending tastings or being sent samples.
In an ideal world we would but if you think about it for a nanosecond it’s simply not practical. Most of us taste at least 50 wines a week on average - considerably more at certain times of the year, a number of which are going to be quite pricey. No wine writer has pockets deep enough or gets paid a salary large enough to fund that nor - these days - do the publications they write for. (Do motoring correspondents pay for their own cars or travel writers meet the costs of getting to long haul destinations their editors want them to write about? I think not.)
Obviously that runs the risk that the samples can be selected to impress (don’t tell me that doesn’t happen with the primeurs or tank samples) but finished bottles are harder to manipulate and more often than not don’t pass muster anyway. I would guess I rate about one in 8 of the wines I try at a supermarket tasting - or at the very least feel they would be better in a few months’ time. (That’s happening at the moment with 2014 northern hemisphere whites many of which would benefit from a later release).
Buying off the shelf has its drawbacks too. A perfectly good wine may show poorly because it’s been stored in less than ideal conditions - under hot bright lights for instance. Or be at the tail end of its shelf life before a vintage change. So maybe we should be buying three, at different times and in different shops? Simply can’t be done.
My policy for what it’s worth is that I go to tastings as often as I can, sometimes call in samples when I can’t and occasionally receive unsolicited samples but don’t feel obliged to write positively about any wine as a result. I try to find wines that I think my readers will enjoy and regard as good value for money (and that doesn’t necessarily mean cheap).
However to improve my hit rate and hopefully uncover some new gems I’ve introduced a feature called Off the Shelf which, as the name suggests, reports on a random bottle I've plucked from a shop display. You’ll find the first one under Wine Finds (renamed from Drink of the Week) here.
And in the interests of transparency I will try and remember to state where the bottles I recommend come from - requested sample, unsolicited sample, press tasting, producer visit or whatever. You’ll have to make up your own mind whether that’s affected my judgement!
Is Wotwine the UKIP of the wine world?
The news that an organisation called Wotwine has nominated Lidl their supermarket of the year - and M & S the worst for value - inevitably hit the headlines this week. There’s nothing the tabloid press likes better than a story claiming that wine is overpriced.
My initial reaction was to dismiss it as an attention-grabbing publicity stunt from a headline-seeking startup but the story is a bit more complicated than that. The tasting panel includes a number of of Masters of Wine and sommeliers and even a winemaker. They meet weekly to taste a certain category of wine - say Chablis or Malbec - from all the major supermarkets and give the ‘would pay’ price they think they’re worth. You then evaluate if what the supermarket is charging for them is fair. They buy all the wine they taste (for which brownie points) but I wonder who pays for it? According to one of the regular panel, Nayan Gowda, it's funded "by a group of private individuals". With deep pockets, presumably.
It’s a clever anti-establishment idea which arguably has more merit than wine competitions where companies pay to enter wines and can therefore pick the stock they choose to submit. (Supermarket wines could have been languishing on the shelf in less than ideal conditions) It’s ideal for people who buy the same wine regularly and simply buy it on price.
But isn’t wine a little bit more complicated - and rewarding - than that? Unless we're on a particularly tight budget we don’t buy our food simply on price. Do you want to know where you can buy the best value chicken? I suspect you don’t. You want to know where it comes from and how it’s been treated. Some of us want someone to talk to about that, hence the survival of butchers - and in the case of wine, local wine merchants. Naked Wines - whatever you think of them - has shown there’s a huge appeal in selling wines with a story behind them, not necessarily at the cheapest price.
And what of more adventurous wine drinkers - a minority but a growing one. Does the team tackle wines like the Txakoli I was raving about the other day for example? Or orange wines (one of the more commendably off-piste wines in Wotwine's much maligned M & S)? Or natural wines - on which I’m sure most MWs would disagree. Isn’t it right that a winemaker who takes inordinate time and care cultivating his vineyards, hand-harvesting his grapes and ageing them in just the right kind of barrels shouldn’t charge more for them? Wine is not just about price.
The actual experience of using wotwine also doesn't quite stack up to the headlines. I did a random search on the site for white wines from M & S and got a selection that included a "real go-to" burgundy (their words) they valued at £16 for which M & S was only charging £14.99, an "excellent, proper" £42 Puligny Montrachet they also valued at £42 (value?) and a "crisp, bright, balanced" Hautes Côtes de Beaune "with nice intensity and character" they valued at £13 and for which M & S was charging £13.99. Hardly a rip-off.
But make no mistake it’s a sign of the times. Just as Aldi and Lidl have shaken up the world of wine retailing, wotwine could shake up the world of wine judging and wine criticism. The future in my view will be all about “trusted voices”. But I’ll come back to that.
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