Death of a Newspaper Wine Critic?

I wish I was aesthetically pleasing, or that I had a better voice, and could be entertaining when being filmed. Doing a lot of this blog would be a hell of a lot easier if I could video myself having a rant or tasting wine and post the video. Then I wouldn’t have to type everything and be forever playing catch up when it comes to typing up my tasting notes. I’d simply tape myself on my mobile phone or digital camera, or even invest a few hundred quid in a video camera and cut down on the amount of time it takes.

Problem is, I am not much to look at, my voice, apparently, sounds like a woman’s on the phone so God only knows what people would think I sound like on film and I am not very charismatic. To be honest, I look a bit of a cock on film! My friends appear to like me, and they tell me I can be quite entertaining, but I know that whilst I’d like to be like Gary Vaynerchuk, I’m never going to be, so I continue writing.

Before I go any further, I’m not saying I’m a great writer. My grammar and spelling is terrible, I tend to wander off on tangents and my vocabulary is very limited. However, and this is according to people a lot more educated in English than I, if you write articles and your acquaintances can hear you speak when they read your words, you are onto a good thing, and my friends tell me they can hear me speak when they read this blog so I must be doing something right. I’m also told that my writing is entertaining and not full of pretentious waffle, so again, I must be ticking a few boxes with my readers.

So I persevere, trying to write articles, not knowing who, if anyone, is reading them and, if they are reading them, few folk actually comment. Generally the only people that do comment are those who I have angered in some way by ripping into fruit wines or by saying that everyone who drinks an obscure cream liqueur from Bangladesh should be rounded up and shot.

But, according to Decanter, magazine and newspaper wine writing may be heading the way of the Dodo. The increase in online blogs and professional news sites, means that the traditional newspaper wine hack is becoming surplus to requirements. If this is true, it means that written internet articles, like mine, could be next.

But I’m not sure about the demise of the wine columnist. The reason that a lot of critics are becoming surplus to requirements is that they are so monumentally boring and don't attract the majority of the newspapers readership to their column and it's surrounding advertising. They tread the safe road, never upsetting anyone and always recommending average wines for people with average lives. What the British press lacks is a wine writer who runs the risk of being sued, and makes it known when a wine being peddled by a big retailer is rubbish. Newspaper wine writers make no effort to open this wonderful world of booze to the general populous and make the reader enjoy the article, it is always the same dull template of 'introduce the region/grape/style of wine you are tasting and then produce some boring tasting notes, and put a price, that is inevitably wrong, and a list of retailers which then results in the aforementioned average people phoning up or visiting the establishment and arguing with the sales staff that it was advertised a pound cheaper in the paper.'

They also never mention fine wine, which really annoys me. I’m not saying they should do it every week, but occasionally throw in an article about Latour or a series of tasting notes about DRC. I’m off to Champagne in a fortnight and you can be damned sure I’m going to write about visiting Moet, Veuve, Krug and Ruinart! There is nothing wrong with writing about wines that people have to dream about, but newspaper columnists shy away from doing so. Maybe their editor won’t let them, fearing fine wine would put people off reading about wines they cannot afford in these credit crunching times.

Decanter sights various literary publications merging their wine section in with food, or have them entirely going on line. It also quotes Jane MacQuitty saying “Sadly wine continues to be perceived as a luxury and as a drink for toffs. In a recession, newspaper editors tend to hang onto their gardening colums, cookery writers and the like but wine somehow is always the first to be axed”. Well I’m sorry, but have you ever read her wine articles in the Times? It is hardly writing that is going to entertain you over your bacon and eggs. As the majority of wine writers follow her style of formulaic writing, they are all hardly enticing new readers to the newspapers they write for and they certainly aren’t doing anything to stop the myth that wine is for “toffs”.

Take a similarly geeky subject – cars. In the very newspaper MacQuitty writes for, you find Jeremy Clarkson. He too reviews products, and whilst many people would say that a writer like him would “dumb down” the subject of wine, if MacQuitty is right, all wine writers need to dumb down to stop being elitist and attract new readers, who in turn see the adverts surrounding the article, which pays the scribe's wages. People read Clarkson’s articles, regardless of whether they are into cars or not, because he is entertaining and controversial to read. This cannot be said for any wine writer.

Clarkson can also review a £50,000 Lotus without worrying about the fact that his readers are unlikely to be able to afford one. Yet when MacQuitty, a fortnight earlier, didn’t go above £13 when reviewing German wines, which are some of the best wines, and best value fine wines, in the world! She even started her article talking about some of the world's "greatest and aristocratic wines", yet didn't rate above a Kabinett!

For too long, wine writers have sat back, producing the same article week in, week out, which make the reader fall asleep in their cornflakes. If they are worried for their jobs it is about time that they wrote articles that anyone would enjoy reading, not just the “toffs” that MacQuitty refers to.

By the way, I am available for hire…