This morning, a link that should make you smile but also may cause you to think twice about what you read.
Wine writer Jamie Goode has a new book out, appropriately enough called, “The Goode Guide to Wine: A Manifesto of Sorts.” I own several of his books because his technical and cultural insights are relevant to beer and brewing as well as wine. This book is less technical, and often draws from his long-running blog.
One chapter is drawn from a 2015 post titled “How to succeed as a wine writer by writing boring wine articles.” Just to make it clear in the book that this is satirical he included a footnote to that effect, while repeating that he thinks wine writing “is a broken system.”
How it starts.
First of all, you need to take a press trip. Two or three days in wine region X, paid for by a generic body, where you get to visit a mix of producers. Travelling with a group of fellow writers, you’ll be taken to see one or two boutique producers, one or two larger producers, and some lousy huge producers who pay a lot of money to support the generic body. The exact itinerary, of course, will mostly be determined by internal politics. [Bad producers, you see, don’t realise that it would be better for them if journalists just visited the best producers in any particular region.]
So how do you write your boring wine article? You haven’t got room to go into depth, so remember: big overview without too many specifics. The good news: it won’t take long to do, especially if you follow my template here.
Commence satire. One example.
Everything is getting just a little bit better. The wines being made today are better than those being made a few years ago, and because everyone is so passionate and motivated we can confidently predict that things will continually to improve, little by little.
Good reading from an author who writes, “Personally, I’d rather drink beer than suffer these dull, dishonest, trick-about wines.” Not sure what alternative he’d suggest for dull, dishonest, tricked-about beer.