It’s official: Cheap wine is irrelevant

To quote a leading wine website, “What the $10 bottle of wine will save you in dollars, it might cost you in anxiety”

The Wine Curmudgeon long ago accepted that many in the wine business think that what I do is a waste of time. Having said that, I still get irritated when the Winestream Media treats cheap wine as if it will poison anyone who drinks it,

The latest occurrence? This post from VinePair, a leading wine website (and especially for younger consumers), which takes cheap wine trashing to levels not even I thought possible.

As near as I can tell, cheap wine is only good for cooking, parties, and getting drunk. Now, maybe I’m missing something – the piece is poorly written, so perhaps the expert was misquoted or the writer was edited so heavily that the gist of the story vanished in a flurry of cutting and pasting. For instance, this bit makes no sense at all: “bottles that are lighter and more affordable tend to be more alcoholic and less flavorful.” I’m not sure what the lighter bottle business means, and the sentence ignores almost every quality $10 rose on the market, which are neither alcoholic nor less flavorful.

The advice is sort of OK, though why anyone would recommend Lebanese or Georgian wines – neither of which are readily available in most of the country – is beyond me. And it reinforces the myth that all wine companies with more than four employees are evil and can’t make quality cheap wine. Which ignores this wine and this wine.

So, once again, the WC offers his expertise to any writer – Winestream, mainstream, or lifestyle – who has to do a wine story and isn’t quite sure how to proceed. Because our job should be about helping consumers find something enjoyable to drink, and not trying to score style points with the wine business.