There is a ton of wine content available on a daily basis and frankly, most of it is not very good, which is why I do not spend very much time reading it. A couple of months ago, however, two items, from people I respect, caught my attention and caused me to think about what I am doing on this little blog. And I wondered: “Am I part of the problem?”
The two writers who piqued my interest, Karen MacNeil and Meg Maker, are well-respected in the world of wine writing, and they both published pieces on how difficult it is to make a living as a wine writer in 2024.
Karen, one of the most well-known wine writers in the world and author of The Wine Bible, published an article on her website: Nothing Left to Say? The End of Wine Writing. She spent the first portion of the article enumerating several statistics about wine consumption (it’s down) and the rise of RTDs (Ready to Drink Cocktails; think White Claw or High Noon).
For the rest of the piece, Karen laments the decline of wine writing, which she distinguishes from wine criticism (in brief, she sees the latter as the evaluation of wine through tasting notes and the former as more in-depth views on winemaking and wine regions [and, although without stating it explicitly, she seemed to imply that wine writing is inherently more valuable]). She points out that while there used to be hundreds of newspapers nationwide with a dedicated wine journalist, today there are only two (although she did not elaborate, I believe they are Eric Asimov at the New York Times and Lettie Teague at the Wall Street Journal).
She also chronicles the decline in pay for wine writers. Several years ago, she states, numerous publications paid quite well for well-written and properly researched articles on wine, with outlets such as Good Housekeeping, Newsweek, and Playboy often paying several thousand dollars per piece.
Now? Many of them won’t pay anything.
Meg Maker, an über-talented and accomplished wine writer as well, presented her experience through a video on Instagram. In it, she recounts that while she received close to $2,000 a story a dozen years ago, today, she is fortunate to receive a quarter of that, with the range often between $250-500 for a “medium-length journalistic wine piece in a reasonably successful publication” (she also did a series “of lengthy reported pieces” for a publication with seven million subscribers, for a mere $75/piece).
A few other wine writers and I sharing lunch at George Tondi in Sicily back in 2017 (Meg Maker is to my immediate left).
Meg then broke down the math: say you want to make a rather modest $50,000 a year (I made more than that teaching). That would mean 2-4 such articles a week, every week to eke out what most would consider a lower-middle class existence. (To provide a bit of context, the poverty level, for a family of four, is officially $30,000.)
Yikes.
While it is certainly sad that wine writers such as Karen MacNeil and Meg Maker can’t rely on their beautifully written and well-researched articles to make a living, it is hard for me to assess any blame. When was the last time you bought a physical magazine? A newspaper? An actual book? And then add: when was the last time you bought any of the previous for the wine content? I personally can’t remember. And my 21-year-old son? Other than textbooks, the answer is easy: never.
Karen MacNeil spent the latter portion of her piece subtly pointing her finger at bloggers (who largely work for free) and not-so-subtly at influencers who are pulling in six-figure salaries promoting wine on social media.
While I agree with her premise that the demise of wine writing is regrettable, her ignoring the drastic changes in how most consumers obtain information has a distinct “Get off my damn lawn” feel to it.
Twelve and a half years ago, I launched this blog for two (well, maybe three) reasons: I love to write and I love wine (the third reason involves cycling, but I quickly abandoned any cycling content). From day one, I really had one goal regarding the economics of this blog: I hoped it wouldn’t cost me too much.
After gaining a bit of traction and a few followers, it became clear that I could at least break even (if one excludes the amount of time I put in) and perhaps even net a few dollars through ads and the occasional side writing gig.
I stopped short, however, of seeking out actual paid gigs for one reason: I did not want to take any money off the table of writers who are working incredibly hard to hopefully scrape by every month. I am fortunate enough to be in a situation financially that I do not need to make money at what I love to do, so I figured, why should I?
And there, right there, might make me part of the problem.
Or does it?
The argument can clearly be made. Why should a producer, region, or importer pay the likes of Karen MacNeil or Meg Maker (or the scores of others) to write about their product when schlubs like me will do it for a few bottles of wine?
One could argue about the “value added” by professional writers but as Karen MacNeil suggests, does that even matter today? When most consumers digest information in 20 second clips on YouTube or TikTok or a quick 2 second look at an image on Instagram, where is the value in a 700-2000 word article about soil types and terroir driven wines?
Sure, some still appreciate the written word, but fewer people by the day are willing to pay for it (and I am not even going to touch on AI, which is where all of this seems to be going).
Fifty years ago, there were a handful of wine writers across the globe. In the early 1980s, Robert Parker came along and changed everything. Another twenty years after that, the internet allowed just about anyone to write about wine. Today, we have pretty much all the information we need for our daily lives in our pocket.
Many other professions have been reduced or eliminated by the incredible changes in information technology (librarians, travel agents, and perhaps even used car salespeople), why should wine writing be any different?
So am I really a part of the “problem”?
the drunken cyclist 