This January will mark the thirteenth anniversary of this blog, and over the course of those (nearly) thirteen years, I have published north of 3,000 posts. While I harbor no illusions that many (most?) of those posts were less than stellar, I like to think that at least a few were well-written and, hopefully, thought provoking.

All these years and all those posts have also proved that coming up with unique and thought-provoking posts can be challenging, even daunting. Fortunately, wine as a topic is ever-evolving with each vintage providing countless opportunities for new and hopefully interesting stories.

More recently, I have used this space to discuss what many see as a crisis in journalism in general and wine reporting in particular: the decline in an emphasis on the written word. Without getting too much into it again here, talented writers are being replaced, in effect, by “influencers” and written articles supplanted by thirty second videos.

Parallel to (or perhaps as a result of) this shift in wine media, it seems as though wine writing has suffered in quality. I do not pretend to be any great arbiter, judging what is or what is not “good” writing, but it honestly seems that writers now are, at best, grasping at straws to get articles published, or worse, seemingly making stuff up.

Here are a few recent examples of articles I have come across that had me throwing up my arms in disbelief: 

• I clicked on an article with the title “the 10 best under the radar wines right now”. The author included some wines from Sicily, but from some rather small producers that likely never make it out of Italy. Fine. I guess. Then she had a $50 wine from Iran. It is illegal to make wine in Iran, it has been illegal to make wine in Iran for over forty years. Apparently, the fruit is flown to Finland to be made into wine. Instead of “under the radar” she should have said “10 wines you will never be able to find in your life, but I am going to flex regardless, since I got to taste them”
• Another writer proclaimed that it was “Time to Ditch the Malbec and Steak Pairing!” While I wouldn’t say that my first thought when grilling a steak is “Malbec” I nonetheless clicked on the article with the question: “Why?” The author never gave a reason other than the fact that she was not a big fan of Malbec. And she offered another juicy tidbit: she rarely orders red meat. Thanks for the advice, you really have demonstrated your expertise and a command of the subject.
  

  I need to take a breath. This is one of my favorite photos: Domaine des Quatre Vents in Beaujolais.

• A third writer spent over 1000 words talking about the Mimosa. The flipping Mimosa. Not the history of it, mind you, or even the country of origin. Nor did she point out that Mimosas are usually consumed at brunch when you’re nursing a hangover or you’re with a bunch of people that are driving you to morning drink. No, the thousand plus words were on how to make a Mimosa. Here’s the recipe in case you don’t know: half-fill a glass with sparkling wine. Fill the rest with orange juice. Thirteen words. It’s arguably the easiest cocktail on the planet (does it even qualify as a “cocktail”). A thousand words. My goodness.
• One writer felt the need to write over 600 words answering the question: how many glasses of wine are in a bottle? The big revelation? It depends on what you consider a “glass” of wine to be. In other words, if you pour less into each glass, she discovered, you will get more glasses out of each bottle. Genius! Absolute magic! And she added another revelatory gem: bigger bottles (e.g., magnums and the like) will have more glasses of wine in them. Shut the you-know-what up! It was not clear if this person had a Ph.D. in mathematics or economics.
  

  Another break: I love doors, particularly when red. This one is in the medieval town of Oignt.

• Even “respected’ writers are succumbing to this click-bait journalism. To wit: a writer, whom I respect, offered up an article claiming “You don’t truly know California wine unless you’ve tasted these 11 bottles”. OK, if buying eleven bottles can give me a more complete understanding of a state that has over 6,000 wineries, I’ll click. Everything was going swimmingly (I had already tried most of the wines) when the author listed this wine: 2020 Harlan Estate. Well, I’ve never tried a Harlan. Why not? Well, other than it’s exceedingly difficult to find (the winery waiting list is years-long), it goes for a cool $1,700 retail and much more than that on the secondary markets. Well, I guess I can’t afford to “truly know” California wines at this point.
• Perhaps the piece that took the cake, however, was an article that ranked “12 cheap ‘Champagnes'”. As any casual reader of this blog knows all too well, I am a champagne snob and they also know that the term “champagne” should not be thrown around loosely as it should only be applied to wines from the region of Champagne (another pet peeve: when talking about the region, it is capitalized, when talking about the beverage, it is not). The Champenois (the people of Champagne) even take umbrage with the term “méthode champenoise” being used for wines made using the same process, those should be referred to as “méthode traditionelle”, but I digress. To the author’s credit, she did mention this point, but still referred to all the wines in her piece as ‘Champagne’. Double-cringe (this is not an article about punctuation since that is not a personal strength). But that is not all. In her “Methodology” section, she stated that she focused on “André, Barefoot, and Cook’s”. There is a ton of inexpensive or “cheap” bubbly out there. A ton. Why solely focus on these three producers? I have no idea. Barefoot is generally bad, but almost palatable. But both André and Cook’s scream to even the novice wine aficionado: “Switch to Bud Light”.

I need more doors. Preferably red. Help appreciated….