Who is in Judgment of Whom?
Since Robert Parker issued a sharp rebuke of online wine writers in April of this year, it has become fashionable for members of the wine establishment to offer up ponderous questions and cautionary tales regarding the legitimacy of online wine writers and the changing wine media landscape.
Regrettably, respected and erudite writer Matt Kramer is the latest to do so in the October 15th issue of Wine Spectator with the equally regrettable headline, “Judgment Day.”
I’m a betting man, and I’d be willing to bet Kramer doesn’t write his own headlines and wishes somebody would have given him a better one for his latest column. It takes a certain kind of hubris to use a headline like, “Judgment Day,” and suggest that you’re standing in judgment of people who write for little more than the satisfaction that comes with a passion for the written word and wine.
And, while Kramer’s comments are reasonably innocent, he’s not alone. He joins a long line of folks that includes the aforementioned Parker, Steve Heimoff, Jim Gordon, Anthony Dias Blue, and others who have used their platform to issue a cautionary clarion call with varying degrees of bellow. And, ironically enough, Kramer’s column trades on some of the same ideas that blogger Tom Wark wrote in a blog post from early August where he analyzed a column from the email newsletter of mainstream wine writer Dan Berger.
This on and offline writer thing gets confusing pretty quickly because the medium is no longer the message. This is why most mainstream writers play the “credibility” card. And, in another interesting bit of irony, since 2007, major wine magazines who once intermittently gave recommendations for good wine blogs to read, have largely gone silent—implicitly supporting the fact that they don’t view blogs as complementary to their work, but rather supplementary. Given that, there’s not much else to affront except for the tenure and credibility of the “free” they’re fighting against.
This ongoing mainstream wine writer public service announcement about online writers can be distilled into two simple messages: “Who are these guys?” and “Don’t be so quick to give your trust.”
The crux of Kramer’s Spectator column falls into this familiar boilerplate, as well, when he notes:
Many tasters—most, even—are adept at dissecting a wine. It’s good, it’s bad, it’s humdrum. This is the “flat earth” approach. You only go as far as the wine takes you and declare that you have reached the limit of the knowable world. There is no dot-connecting involved.
Kramer continues, “Is it enough that the person went to a big tasting? Or once samples a vertical of the wine? The challenge today for those wish to acquire credibility is to demonstrate a foundation of knowledge … now give us some reason to credit your judgment. And that takes more – a lot more—than a sip, a spit and a quick tasting note.”
With all of this meta-analysis in between on and offline wine writing you’d think that navel-gazing, a distinctly blogger-like symptom, was the H1N1 virus in the traditional wine writer’s dorm room. This ongoing, thinking-out-loud questioning smacks of an interfamilial, brother-in-arms conversation amongst the old guard; an “I’m in the foxhole with you” statement of flying bullets bravado.
Even more peculiar, if you are to believe the established wine writers, is the fact that their target, the enemy as it were, is seemingly invisible – Al Qaeda in the hills of Afghanistan. None of these established writers cite specifics when they mention online wine media; instead they offer broad proclamations and veiled allusions like George W. Bush and his “weapons of mass destruction” circa 2002. Those that are active with a blog, a message board presence, or a tasting note account are left to wonder who and what these mainstream wine personalities are actually referring to. Their neutered commentary is not just akin to a gun without bullets, but a gun that also has a visible safety catch on.
Some might call this message delivery from the paid professionals a form of mentoring, others might call it defensive, yet others may call it a “Swan Song.” I don’t believe it’s any of those—I simply believe it’s misguided.
Each of these mainstream wine writer’s miss several very key points in their ongoing analysis of online wine media, including:
1) Amongst the inevitable drivel is significant quality, particularly in areas of coverage that is more niche-oriented.
2) Many (most?) of the old guard of wine writers are predominantly male and have been in the game for 25 years or more. What these guys don’t say is that they started somewhere and it took them an immeasurably longer trip on the road to individual respectability than the five or so years that wine blogs have been in existence (the amount of time they are affording before standing in “judgment”).
3) While they talk about credibility, they don’t acknowledge the brand boost that they get writing for Spectator, Enthusiast, or other traditional outlets. Speaking of credibility, I really have no idea what gives Kramer and the rest of them any more individual credibility then Joe Blogger down the street, but I know that they write for outlets that help burnish their own image. With due respect to Matt Kramer, without Wine Spectator he probably doesn’t get a chance to write books. Ditto that for others. I’d hazard a guess and say that the Wine Spectator masthead has done more for affording wine writer’s ancillary opportunities than anything else in the modern wine era, 1970’s – to present day.
On the other hand, you want an act of credibility? Start a blog out of nowhere, for virtually no money, earning virtually no money and earn a readership. That’s very credible in its sheer difficulty.
4) Most of this us v. them mentality is a result of unacknowledged friction based on content. Mainstream wine writers largely write for an audience that doesn’t live online. I’ll go one step further and say that most literate wine readers and writers of wine blogs find mainstream wine content deadly dull, contrived and pedantically insulting. This creates an environment where bloggers take shots and the magazines respond with commentary couched in the veil of questioning credulousness.
This has nothing to do with anything other than good old neighborly sniping.
Overall, I’m weary of the credibility card and the “up-on-high” pontificating from the mainstream wine press.
The reality is that an existing highway and an onramp are merging and the sooner that the speeding car moves over a lane, and the merging vehicle drives defensively, the better off (and safer) we’ll all be – and, that’s the only judgment I’m willing to concede.
*Ed. Note* Because of page length limitations in my system set-up, additional comments to this post are not displaying. I’m working on a longer-term fix. Thanks!