What is wine writing missing?

I’ve been spending some time recently pondering how to improve the substance of the writing that passes across my desk.

Photo by Rishabh Dharmani on Unsplash

The bulk of my career, a good 12 years of it, has been writing for professional, trade audiences. Now, much of that was not wildly scintillating stuff.

But it also wasn’t meant to ‘engage the consumer’.

On Twitter in the ‘before-times’, there were semi-frequent discussions over the state of wine communication.

Truth be told, I wasn’t reading a lot of consumer-facing media then. I didn’t have to.

I did read some things, if the topic caught my interest, but just like my writing wasn’t really meant for a lay person, this writing wasn’t aimed at me.

However, that has changed. A short spell as a freelancer and now at a major consumer-facing magazine has seen me shift to much more copy-editing and commissioning aimed at a broader, non-trade audience.

Now I see what everyone was previously complaining about.

Craving something more

Andrew Jefford gave a talk at a symposium last year. I read the transcript, and one part in particular chimed with me.

He said that the two subjects that we need more of are, ‘people’ and ‘place’.

Not wines, he continued, ‘readers can do the wines. Your job is to take them there – by intrigue and inspiration, by joy and astonishment’.

And I think he’s right. There is precious little wine writing right now that is truly evocative.

A big frustration of mine currently is the thrust and substance of both pitches and articles that come my way.

Even pieces that are informative and well-written often just don’t jangle my spurs, don’t ginger my biscuit. There’s something missing.

This is not another piece claiming that wine communication has ‘failed’, however.

There are some incredibly brilliant people writing, presenting and educating about wine, and who have been for decades.

And this is a piece about writing, a very different putton of berries from other forms of communication.

But I know I’m not alone in feeling that wine writing needs something… more.

Engaging writing is vital – and there’s recently been a bit of back-and-forth over this and the necessity of wine education to write about wine.

But simply saying 'write more engagingly' or 'tell better stories' feels a little too – ineffable.

In the spirit of being the change I want to see in the wine writing world, here are three things that I think would help make a difference.

Weather & winemaking

A nice controversial one to start with. I want to see less weather and winemaking chat. To a point, anyway.

Weather and winemaking techniques are essential to wine, and a good summary of the growing season in a given year is important as a matter of reference at the very least.

But there's a bad habit among some writers of filling up their copy with tedious details about both under the assumption that a) it is important to the reader and b) that they understand what it means.

In neither case is this really true.

And it’s not about talking down to readers or thinking they’re stupid. Weather and winemaking in isolation is not ‘storytelling’, it’s a crutch for the unimaginative.

Oak regimes or punch down preferences are uninteresting and pointless to everyone who isn’t an uber-geek or MW student. And even then there’s a limit.

In consumer-facing publications, weather and winemaking details should only feature if they serve to underline a point.

Don’t tell me how something happened. Why does it matter? What are the wines like?

Any summary of a vintage or tasting aimed at a general audience must – must – include a decent overall summary of the wines.

I have seen pieces in excess of 3,000 words that barely address this most basic point.

And this failure to analyse leads me on to…

Personal engagement and creativity

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Likewise, ‘telling better stories’ isn’t just repeating what a winemaker has told you.

As an editor handling a budget, I don't want to commission copy – pay money – for information that came from a press release or can be found on the producer's website.

I want originality, I want personal experience and communication on how you found the wines, the winemaker, the vineyard, the place, etc.

Don’t just tell me the winemaker takes their cues from Burgundy, tell me if they’ve succeeded or not – and how and why.

Engaging writing comes from the writer themselves engaging with the subject and actually creating copy alive with wit and insight, not just parroting.

Which again, leads me to…

Not enough of... everything else.

Too much wine writing sounds like it’s cribbed from a textbook or aspires to be one.

This leads to masses of repetition as everyone just regurgitates their version of (for example) the terroir and grape varieties of Veneto.

Again, as with weather and winemaking, there is a place for these articles as reference material but we seem to talk about so little else that it’s just become repetitive.

What more is really being added to the written wine corpus at this stage?

And with Abominable Intelligence collating everything in its path, the future of these articles is questionable anyway.

As well as rooting wine in the personal, we need to broaden the scope considerably.

Wine is an apex expression of nature and an extension of the human experience.

Wine intersects with history, art, politics, culture, gastronomy, geology, science, environmentalism, music, literature and film.

And yet it's rare that anyone seeks to offer up anything about wine viewed through these lenses or draw upon these subjects to enrich their work.*

I'm a firm believer that any subject can be made interesting to a broad audience if it's presented engagingly.

Even within the ‘classic’ remits of wine writing, there’s an opportunity to look at well-worn topics afresh.

How was the terroir formed? When and why did these winemaking techniques develop? How did this wine get so famous or fall out of favour? Hell, tell me about the unique flora and fauna of a region that’s bouncing back because of greener practices.

We need to be approaching wine from more angles, and bringing in more voices from outside wine to give their perspectives if they have something interesting to say.

Summary

• Cut back on the weather and winemaking jargon, except to give context to your analysis.

• Creative and engaging storytelling requires craft and imagination, not simple repetition.

• Readers want an informed opinion and real expertise. AI can skim the basics off the top but it can’t replicate your personal experience and connection.

• We need whisk readers away to marvellous lands, and fire their imaginations with well-told tales that draw on the immense cultural landscape of the human experience.

Hopefully, you can see how these three points intersect. Without experience, expertise and creativity, we’re just doomed to endless, banal repetitions of the same old thing, which neither properly informs nor delights the reader.

I don’t know if we need to reinvent the wine writing wheel, but we need to stop going in circles.

And here there’s a message to editors too. To open up the stage to new and interesting voices, to be bolder, clearer in our briefs, and more demanding of our writers to help steer the course of wine writing and communication for the better.

Because there are only so many more articles rehashing an introduction to Bordeaux or a vintage report filled with harvest dates that the world can take.

VPQ

*Some writers do, you know who you are.