The Wine Curmudgeon Bad News-o-Meter

Worn out from all the negativity? The WC has the solution

If you think you’re tired of reading about all of wine’s bad news, imagine how worn out I am from writing about it. Hence, this solution — the Wine Curmudgeon Bad News-o-Meter. Occasionally, I’ll link to the latest and most depressing wine news and assign it a score from 1 to 10, where 1 is the worst news possible, the equivalent of the Joad family farm in “The Grapes of Wrath.” And 10 (not that we’ll see many)? That’s the best news possible, kind of the way wine was after the “60 Minutes” French paradox story.

And, because I am the WC, I’ll also offer a score, 1 to 10, about how many pairs of rose-colored glasses the writer is wearing when she or he describes the bad news. The more pairs of glasses, the more the author is trying to spin the story.

So no need to read any of the stories — just my ratings:

• How big is the slowdown in the US beverage alcohol market, and how long will it last? 3, 8 pairs of rose-colored glasses. The IWSR consulting group predicts “more subdued growth” even though two of the four categories it measures, including wine, are declining.

• Winejobs Index Falls Nearly 30% 5, 3 pairs of rose-colored glasses. Yes, the news is bad, but as the story points out, the index is “even with two years ago and remains at an historically high level for August.”

• Global Wine Glut: The Return of Crisis Distillation. 5, 2 pairs of glasses. Mike Veseth, the Wine Economist, offers some much needed perspective about Europe’s chronic oversupply of wine.

• No Signs of a Turning Point Yet for Wine. 2, 10 pairs of glasses. “The good news is that the contraction in wine sales does not appear to be steepening. The less good news is that there are no tangible signs of improvement either — the market seems to have settled into a state of steady decline.” A steady decline is good news?