Category:Wine Curmudgeon

My post on the sorry state of wine writing was not, it seems, a shot in the dark. Many people feel this way. My post not only elicited a variety of comments here, but in emails and elsewhere. Along the way, I turned up a variety of writers with similar sentiments.

Among those:

? Tim Elliott at Winecast, who wrote: ?Too often, I default to the same sort of clinical reviews you see in the Wine Spectator and other wine pubs. Terse notes on color, aromas and flavors topped off with a rating on some scale. For almost 5 years now, that ?s been what I ?ve been doing. But I ?ve had enough. ?

? Ryan Opaz at WineBlogAtlas, who wrote: ?This is what I see in the wine blog-o-sphere, and while the exceptions are growing, there are still too many websites and blogs that have more in common with wine industry rags than with the new world of which they published in. ?

? Derek Lavallee, a wine critic for The Hill: ?Whether inspired by a sincere but strenuous attempt to describe that which is inherently subjective, or an egotistical outlet for frustrated poets using wine as their muse, most wine-speak typically results in alienation of the reader. ?

? The ever knowledgeable George Rose, writing for Dan Berger ?s Vintage Experiences: ?Much of what passes for wine writing seems more like a stuffy BBC period piece. I keep expecting Dame Judy Dench to pop out from behind the bushes and recite in proper English: ?I like Viognier to show a green-straw color, peachy-dried apricot nose ?

? And Mike Wangbickler, who reprinted Rose ?s essay on his blog, Caveman Wines: ?Why do we as wine writers, bloggers, and wine marketers insist on talking over the heads of our customers

Wine writing in the United States is too serious, too self-absorbed, and too parochial. In the past six weeks, I have seen so many examples of these flaws that I feel compelled to say something. Too many of us want to be famous, and the only way we can do that is to write in winespeak about topics that only appeal to other wine writers who want to be famous.

I don’t write this lightly, and not just because I’m now fair game for every blogger in the universe. I write this because wine writing will never advance the cause of wine in the U.S. unless we understand that most of the stuff that we write about is of little interest to most Americans — including those who drink wine. A friend of mine (who will remain nameless for her protection) is a top-notch food writer who also does some wine. She doesn’t much care for writing about wine. How, she has asked me many times, can anyone read this stuff?

After the jump, what’s going on and how we can fix it:

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