A Change In Wine Writing

Ink-stained wretch plying his trade...So I've ran across two, count 'em, two mentions of the sad state of affairs in wine writing.  The first was here at vinography.com and the second was here at slingingjuice.com, where I also stole the graphic (thanks Tannat for letting me use it here).

Are there problems with wine writing as it stands today?  Definitely.  Two major areas of concern, which have been addressed by these two websites are the areas of tired and cliched writing, and laziness.

The first is the one we see the most of around special events where wine is tacked on like an afterthought, a kind of sign that wine writers either 1) think that wine drinkers need an excuse to make wine relevant to any and all of life's daily affairs, or 2) these same wine writers really have nothing to write about so they just look at the calendar and begin writing about Thanksgiving dinner wine selections, then Christmas, then New Year's, then the Inauguration, then Valentine's Day...

As both a writer and a consumer, I could really care less about what wines you think I should drink for a given event, dinner, foodgroup, etc... and as a writer I hope that I could write more challenging and thought-provoking things about wine that just a few themed anecdotes on wine and whatever "other" subject I am trying to marry to wine to make my article relevant, even in the most inexplicable of ways.

Both of these posts seem to hit on the sad state of affairs in the publishing world.  And the publishing world is indeed in a sad state.  But the shakeup can be seen as a good thing.  Get rid of some of these lazy writers, get some new blood into the market, and the readers will follow.

There will always be a need for good writing about the subject of wine.