The wine critics dilemma – to publish or not?
Being a wine blogger/critic/writer/whatever sounds like a sweet life. All you do is drink (typically) free booze, often accompanied by fine (free) food and with the only obligation being to bash out a couple of lines talking about whether you liked said booze or not. Straightforward right?
Not quite.
What that idyllic description fails to convey is the inherent challenge of the free sample. The challenging power dynamic that underpins anything free and tends to beleaguer even the finest critic. It’s a dynamic that actually seems very simple until you come to one question:
What do you do if you come across a real dud?
If you are a typical mainstream reviewer (mainstream in the nicest possible way) you simply don’t write about it. End of story. Or if you do, you only write about it if – as the wise Rory from Story Wines put it – ‘the winery should know better’ or you’ve got a point to prove/axe to grind/story idea/etc.
The justification for many reviewers – and it is largely driven by publishers and editors – is that there are too many wines out there and not enough time to review them all. So the instruction is thus to just talk about the good ones. Or something like that.
That attitude, however, leaves behind a lingering, unspoken question – what about those average wines? They are still out there, aren’t they? And how will people know that they are – when compared to their peers – average (and poor value) if no one is saying so?
That is when the ‘good bits’ only argument starts to look a bit fragile. Until, of course, you are that reviewer, and suddenly it all begins to make sense.
For when you are that reviewer, or any reviewer really, you begin to understand what goes into every bottle. The blood and sweat and more sweat and more blood, all squeezed out of people who spend every day out there in the vineyard, work shit hard, pay their bills on time and are genuinely good people, trying to make the absolute best booze they can.
That’s when you stop and think – do I really need to write this nasty review? Or do I just quietly jot down an average review in my ‘non publishing notebook’ and open something else? It is much easier to do the latter for everyone involved, so why dwell on negatives? Mum always said that if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all, right?
But that’s a cop-out, no? A blow to objective integrity? The question then is at what point do you decide to cut someone some slack? Or don’t you? It’s complicated!
Which brings me to the point of this story.
I’ve got in front of me 3 South Australian reds, from a producer I’ve never heard of before (or at least I hadn’t until the samples turned up) and I’m really struggling to find positive things to say about them. All 3 are north of 14.5% alcohol, are not particularly cheap and all 3 look overripe, strained and, to my tastes at least, unattractive.
Now if these three wines came from a known producer – someone who should know better – then I would have no trouble writing them up and calling them shit (or not quite shit, but average) and do it with a clear conscience.
But these wines aren’t from a known producer. They are from a tiny family operation that sound (from the notes on the website) just like the aforementioned hard working wine people. What’s more, the production is so tiny that if everyone who visited this website on a daily basis bought a case, the whole annual production would be gone in one hit.
Which is where it begins to get messy. My question then to you, reading this right now, is do you really want to read some rather average reviews of wines that you’ll probably never see? Is that what we really want?
For me, I’m in a holding pattern, currently sitting on them as I’m still undecided what to do. On one hand, the critic in me just wants to publish them, largely as it feels more honest to do so. It’s a feeling that will get stronger in time too, that desire for absolute blunt honesty, burning like a wad of pineapples in your pocket after payday.
On the other hand though, the human in me realises that I’m just another arsehole with an opinion, that publishing these notes would do more harm than good, supporting my aforementioned prejudice against boozy reds perhaps but really just sticking the knife into some hardworking wine family.
So where to go from here?
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14 Comments
Great post Andrew.
I think you should contact the family that own the winery and advise them of your reviews giving them the opportunity to improve the quality of their wines next year. A negative review for a small operation starting out can be soul destroying and economically damaging but they need to know what you think to improve.
Yes, a great post and I agree with the first comment about contacting the maker.
I’d begin by asking why the same “rules” have to be applied to every producer? I’d have no problem if you pulled a bad review for a small family producer as opposed to a corporate. I guess my main reason for saying this is that I think a lot of small company wine sales are not based on objective scores but instead on some emotional connection that the buyer makes with the producer. A buyer’s perception of the wine is as likely to be affected by what they think of the producer and whether they had a good cellar door experience as much as by a good review (I think this is relational marketing?) Anyway, why not leave the smaller makers to try and build their business that way, but with the benefit of a quiet word in their ear (i.e. from the reviewer). Following the logic of this argument, a score for a small producer should really be neither here nor there, which doesn’t really help answer your question.
Andrew,
what a thorny issue…I have winemakers ring up quite often asking did you get that wine? Then a pregnant pause expecting feedback. The latest example was a small producer that made a Clare Riesling and Cabernet. The booze was of bronze if not silver standard but the labeling was horrendous.
It looked like the kind of wine that removalists would give you as a freebie or what you might find at a wedding reception venue. I told them this. They said "oh we were trying to capture the youth market." It was like a middle aged man saying he could breakdance, misguided and the end result was cringeworthy. I hope they took the advice which was to re-evaluate, it certainly did the booze in the bottle no favours.
I guess what I'm getting at is that people like feedback, and can learn from it.
If you were to dismiss these wines as over-ripe, porty, high alcohol monsters and publish the notes, will anyone gain? The family will be crestfallen for a second but will no doubt get over it and you will feel liberated for doing the right thing according to the niggling critic within.
However I guess another consideration is who is your audience. Mostly wine savvy people I imagine?
Chances are, these people are intelligent wine buyers already,they probably would never really come across or wish to buy soupy high alcohol Barossan reds anyway.
So whose to gain? maybe it's just three more wines that slip beneath the radar and you move on or perhaps you have a moral imperative to tell it like it is.
You have to fundamentally believe that people need to be told if you think they are going to waste their money I suppose.
I imagine anyway that these winemakers will have visitors to the Barossa who taste their wines in situ and sell their whole vintage by "making a connection" as Stuart says. These people who visit regions and buy from cellar doors probably don't read blogs about wine and so it goes on…
I'm rambling now but the thing to consider is this. If you were reviewing for a national newspaper would you be slamming three wines in one go? I doubt it. You risk damaging a small family business and potentially alienating your readers. Which is why in traditional print you don't see the negative reviews punblished.
I don't think there is an answer to this one, you've just got to trust what you believe.
Having said that if it was an esteemed producer who'd you expect more of, get stuck into them.
The issue is emotive. Small, struggling producer, probably nice hard-working folks, making bad product. But why does the industry need small, struggling producer making bad product? Might they not be wasting their time, wasting resources, wasting money? We've all got dreams, it's just that some of these dreams really aren't all that realistic (I'd like to be a Formula 1 driver)
It's a bit like American Idol auditions. Peggy Sue has been a singin' all her life, 'cause she loves to sing, and everyone has told her that she has the voice of an angel, because she really is such a sweet girl and you couldn't help but like her. But now she's 18, and wants to be a star – and she's tone deaf. She doesn't know that. Then she goes on American Idol, the judges say that she sings like a tomcat being eviscerated, bursts into tears, runs off the stage, and then complains sobbingly to the camera about how unfairly she has been treated by those awful, nasty judges, especially since everyone has told her how wonderful she is every other day of her life.
The point is that sometimes the most helpful thing is to tell it how it is. Whether you choose to do that in a public place or private is up to you. But the producer didn't send you the wine to keep it quiet if it's shit hot, now did they? Publicity is a two-way street and when you ask a person to review your wine – they should be mature enough to grin and bear it. They also have the liberty to regard your thoughts as a matter of opinion.
Overall, it's a tricky issue and it probably depends on the degree to which you think your audience wants to look at car crashes, or at least is likely to buy the wine unawares. From my point of view, if you though there might be a danger that I'll by the wine, I'd very much like you to warn me!
MichaelC
I'm with everyone else … contact the producer, explain (in the nicest possible way) your thoughts on the wines and see what their response is.
The response might tell you everything you need to know in terms of whether or not to publish. In fact, they may even encourage you to publish your thoughts. Or they may take your opinions on board as constructive criticism but express a preference for you not to publish. Or they may just be belligerent & ungracious, in which case YOU may wish to publish.
An update.
These three wines have all got mid 90's scores from Halliday.
I'm publishing.
Sounds like Linfield. I'll review em for you, you pansy 🙂
GW
As long as you provide "honest opinions on wine" then as the Duke of Wellington said "Publish and be damned!"
Andrew, another great topic.
As mentioned earlier by someone else, most people who read you are more interested in wine than those that just visit the cellar door. What you are building with this page is an archive that people who respect your opinion will use as a reference for some of their purchases. As such I think it is better to be honest with your readers rather than consider the feelings of the producer. That's not to say that your review should kick them to the floor and drag them around like an old mop. Just that maybe you should keep a bad review short and gentle, but nonetheless a bad review.
Thanks for the honesty here, Andrew, on all counts. I have never heard of the winery so will have a look in my Wine Companion tomorrow. Interesting isn't it? Wine shows/wine reviews, all so variable and quite scary really from a producer's point of view but if our (any winery) wines are awful and we can't admit it, there's not much chance of selling them, is there, unless they are five dollars a bottle? A wise man told me that I would have no trouble selling our wines if I believe in them. Good advice.
Good post mate and yes, always a delicate issue.
Think of it from this perspective, do restaurant critics hesitate about writing a bad review of a restaurant? No, they don't. Can that review hurt the business? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Regardless, it is still an opinion and one that is subjective. All opinion is subjective. You, me, we may not like it, but someone will for the same reason we don't.
What's that saying '…the only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about'.
Yes, its a delicate matter and should be done with respect but it still should be done nonetheless. Again, good post.
Halliday or the mysterious "BE"?
Information asymmetry tends to have an adverse effect on efficient markets. So I feel that, by publishing your thoughts, you will be mitigating this clear deficiency in market knowledge.
Or at least that's how I'd rationalize it!!
MichaelC
Always a tricky situation, and one we have come across on a number of occassions. Our response is "what are we here to do"? By the tag line of your blog I assume its to provide honest opinions on wine.
Publish, and be gentle, but still get the message across.
Hi mate great post. What i would do is find out if the producer is trying to do the right things or just out to make a quick buck with no interest in making quality wine. If they are in it for the right reasons, then give them your feed back and see if they improve next year when you review them again. If there is no improvement then review away.