Are some wine writers afraid to write certain things because they don ?t want to offend the powerful in the wine business? Are they sometimes manipulated by the same people they don ?t want to offend?
Two recent developments make this newsworthy: First, a blog post by British wine writer Jamie Good, noting that he comes ?across people trying to control the media all the time. ? Many companies clearly have a policy that no communication is released to journalists without being manicured and censored by the comms people. ?
The second came during an interview with Mark Feldman, the co-author of ?Grape-a-hol: How Big Business is Subverting Artisan Winemaking and the Future of Fine Wine. ? The book pulls no punches, describing the wine made by the world ?s biggest wine companies ? the wine that most of us drink ? as little better than bathtub swill.
It ?s an intriguing thesis, but one very few people have heard about. Feldman says that ?s because many of the writers he approached to review the book were afraid to. They told him they agreed with what Feldman and Michael Spratt wrote, but didn ?t want to offend the wine companies that the book criticizes. The writers relied on those companies for samples, interview access, consulting jobs, and the like, they told him; hence, no review.
More, after the jump: