Tag Archives: Lifehacker

Come on, Lifehacker — enough with the Internet wine “clubs” already

woman at computer
“Seriously? Free shipping?”

There’s a difference between quality cheap wine and wine cheaply made

Lifehacker offers some of the best lifestyle-related advice on the Internet (as well as the priceless “Out of Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture” for those of us of a certain age). But it doesn’t always do wine well.

I’ve tried to fix that. Several years ago, its inestimable senior food editor, Claire Lower, asked me to offer some WC-style advice for Thanksgiving. “I really need someone who can make this easy to understand,” she emailed me.

But, then, sadly, the dreaded “Sorry. They’ve cut the freelance budget” email.

So I’ve tried, since then, to offer my unique perspective in the comments, lurking in the background when I see a particularity egregious wine post. There have been several of those recently, with pieces advocating buying wine from the kind of Internet wine “clubs” we’ve warned people about over the years.

Now, a couple of caveats. First, Lifehacker was recently sold, and its new owners seem hyped on cyber-commerce and selling discounted items through the website. So these posts may have nothing to do with quality wine; they’re just there because they’re cheap. Second, some of these wine “clubs” like to sue people. So my point here is about these clubs in general and not specifically directed at any of the sites that are recommended.

Hence. the WC’s guide for telling whether you’ll get quality wine from a site offering to sell you something that works out to less than $5 or $6 a bottle — and includes shipping. Because there’s a difference between cheap wine and wine that’s cheaply made.

• Have you heard of the wineries before? Typically, these kinds of wines are made to sell for these clubs, and the wineries may exist in name only. That’s a sign of wine cheaply made.

• Are the wines listed on wine-searcher? They probably aren’t, since they’re made just for the clubs.

• Are the vintages listed? And how old are the wines if they are listed? Wines sold through these clubs are often bulk wine that never sold, leftovers from other producers that may have been re-labled, or who knows what else. In this case, a 10-year-old bottle is a sign of wine cheaply made.

• Are there other purchasing requirements – the dreaded mail-order record club scam? Back then, you got tapes (or vinyl, even) for pennies, the catch being something called negative option billing. This made you liable even if you didn’t order the music after the first shipment, when the music and shipping cost more.

So, Lifehacker, I hope this helps. And if the freelance budget gets beefed up, I know some terrific $10 wine for Thanksgiving this year.

Photo: “Aerial view of a woman using computer laptop on wooden table” by Rawpixel Ltd is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Winebits 751: The “more about wine and health” edition, because everybody’s talkin’ at me

Harry Nilson playing guitar
“Everybody’s talk’ at me. …“

This week’s wine news: More from the cyber-ether about wine and health — with sound effects

• Scientific proof? Lifehacker’s wine content has often come in for criticism on the blog, so I was quite pleased to find this, in a post called “7 Things Science Hasn’t Actually Proven are Healthy or Unhealthy” – drinking wine. Writes Stephen Johnson: ”Ultimately, it seems most accurate to say that the effect of having a glass of wine with dinner on your heart probably will be drowned out by the millions of other things you do when you’re not eating dinner.” In other words, fast food and Starbucks! Which, of course, I wish the Neo-Prohibitionists understood.

• Prohibition in India: The Indian state of Bihar, fed up with alcoholism and domestic violence, turned to prohibition in 2016. The results have been predictable, reports the New York Times: Bihar’s “judiciary is clogged with alcohol cases. The state is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year in alcohol taxes. And liquor is still available — smuggled in and sold at double or triple the price.” The point here is not to defend alcoholism and domestic violence, but to remind everyone that the solution is not outlawing alcohol. The solution is education, as Mothers Against Drunk Driving have so amply demonstrated.

• Diageo and health: Diageo, one of the world’s biggest alcohol producers, says it cares about responsible drinking – really. It’s the key to retaining consumer loyalty in the post-pandemic world, according to the company’s new Spirit of Progress 2030 business plan. We can argue whether there’s a bit of a wink and a nudge going on here; does a $17 billion company actually care about this, unless it’s as a smokescreen for increased government regulation? But what’s more important, as we have also noted often on the blog, is that Diageo is going to get credit for something almost no wine company does save for the warning label on the back of the bottle.

Winebits 562: Smoke taint, wine advice, non-alcoholic booze

smoke taint
I’m just not going to worry about smoke taint, no matter how much I read about it.

This week’s wine news: The cyber-ether is awash in smoke taint controversy, while we get more not very good wine advice from the Mainstream Media and non-alcoholic booze gets more popular

• Fire damage? Wildfires in California and the Pacific Northwest the past two summers may have damaged grapes with something called smoke taint — or they may not have. And, even if the fires caused smoke taint, it may not affect most of the wine sold in the U.S. Ain’t writing about the wine industry grand? Smoke taint, say researchers, is caused by smoke from fires, leaving the wine with unpleasant “ashtray” smells and flavors. But no one is quite sure how to detect it or even if it can be detected before the grapes are crushed. Confused? Growers, especially after last summer’s fires, swore smoke taint wouldn’t be a problem. But some producers insist they’re wrong. More perplexing? The fantastic amount of coverage in print and the Internet, given that the grapes under scrutiny are used to make wine costing at least $20, which most of us don’t drink. But that’s how the Winestream Media rolls.

• Stop me before I advise again: The Wine Curmudgeon keeps a weather eye out for wine advice in the mainstream media, where good intentions too often lead to bad advice. Witness this post from Lifehacker, which makes no sense at all and seems mostly to be a plug for the retailer doing the recommending. Please, editors: Make sure your reporters know the basics of wine before you let them write about it. You wouldn’t let them write that way about brain surgery, would you?

• No more buzz: Will the non-alcoholic wine and beer market be worth will $25 billion by 2024? That’s the estimate from the Global Markets Insight consultancy. It cites several reasons: Improved brewing and fermenting techniques, which give the products the same taste and feel as those with alcohol, as well as increasing health concerns about booze from younger consumers. By comparison, wine sales in the U.S. total about $36 billion a year.