Welcome to the fight, Wine Spectator

No, this isn’t a Dry January joke – the most Winestream of all the Winestream Media is endorsing “cheap” wine

Who says, to paraphrase the great Shirley Povich, that hell can’t freeze over?

The Wine Spectator, perhaps the most Winestream of all the Winestream Media, is endorsing “cheap” wine. On Friday, the magazine announced its first ever “Top 10 Values” list and its 2021 “Wine Value of the Year.”

Sound familiar?

Of course, because it is the Spectator, scores are involved and the wines on the best value list can cost as much as $40. Which, of course, is cheap only for people who read the Wine Spectator. But the 2021 top value wine is a $17 New Zealand sauvignon blanc, which wouldn’t be out of place in a review posted on a website run by a certain cranky ex-newspaperman.

So who am I to quibble?

And, no, I don’t know why the Spectator is doing this. Does it mean someone there actually knows who I am and thinks that what I do has merit? Which is actually kind of terrifying – the wine business is screwed up enough without the Spectator borrowing from me. What’s next? Someone in California admitting that premiumization is destroying wine as we know it?

Or, and which is more likely, someone did a marketing study and saw a need to focus on labels other than the stereotypical Spectator wine – which always seem to be red, made in Napa, and cost $80. Because, of course, young people.

Regardless, welcome to the fight, Wine Spectator. It’s good to see you acknowledge that wine doesn’t have to cost as much as a laptop to be worth drinking. Who knows? Maybe we can work out some sort of joint thing next year when I do the Hall of Fame and you do your next value list.

And, then to paraphrase my pal Dave McIntyre, I can declare victory in the cheap wine wars and retire to my back porch, where I will drink Gascon wine and tell long, boring stories about the old days.

Photo: Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash