Fintan Kerr: Integrity in wine writing

Over the millenia of our recorded consumption of alcohol, wine has been written about more than any other drink. From the writings of Pliny the Elder (23 – 79 AD) to the modern day, it seems we’ve always recognized that wine is different to most alcoholic beverages and as such, invites more description, more exploration and of course, more story-telling. However, the rise of dedicated wine writing is very much a creation of the 20^th century. What started off as the labour-of-love for a few wealthy, passionate wine lovers has become its own industry, with multiple, though waning, physical magazines and newspapers and countless online outlets. Increasingly, individuals specialize and either create reports or permit paid access to exclusive content through models such as substack or website subscriptions, whilst larger publications have sadly, but arguably inevitably, moved more towards an advertorial model.

The issue with this of course, is that easily accessible, genuine content is harder and harder to find. In a world awash with information, finding articles is easier than ever. Regrettably, knowing whether it’ s a paid advert disguised as an article is not. The business model of most publications doesn’t allow for a lot of free thought; typically, advertisers pay for a specific article to be written in a very specific way. I know this because I’ve written a good few of them, admittedly without my name attached to it, but contributing to the issue nonetheless. Even more experienced wine writers in a more stable financial position find themselves in this space at one point or another; trying to find the balance between paying your bills and writing genuinely and from the heart is one of the most difficult tight-ropes to walk.

We don’t help ourselves, of course. There are some ingrained issues in wine writing that we don’t address, even if they’ re blatantly obvious, whilst making a big noise about other, less relevant problems. It’ s not uncommon to see an established wine writer make a big song and dance about natural wine, for example. “It’s not really natural because it doesn’t make itself, hur hur hur”. What wonderful insight. Or long-winded discussions about whether terroir is an important consideration in wine or not.  For the record, anyone who actually drinks wine on a regular basis with some thought, knows that it is, but it makes for good column inches if you’re struggling to find something to write about.

One of the biggest repetitive red-flags that wine writers and critics are constantly involved in is the Bordeaux En Primeur campaign. Of late, articles are finally starting to be written explaining why buying Bordeaux EP is no longer a good financial decision, with so many mature back-vintages available for much less and laughably ambitious release prices for new vintages. However, this is far from the biggest problem. The main issue is that the judging and scoring of Bordeaux EP is, frankly, a scam.

This is not to say that anyone who judges and scores Bordeaux EP is doing anything intentionally nefarious, but that the system itself is absolutely nonsense. Every year, at the end of March and the beginning of April, critics from the major publications from around the world, and some individuals, descend on Bordeaux to taste barrel samples from the previous vintage. They move from Chateau to Chateau, spending sometimes as little as 20 minutes in each, tasting, evaluating and judging. They taste barrel samples that are not even an exact reflection of the finished wine. Some of these samples have barely finished MLF, yet they’ re being judged in this maniacal fashion so that the critics can advise their readers on which wines to buy, with speculated drinking windows that often stretch 30-40 years into the future. I taste barrel samples hundreds of times throughout a year; I would never, ever publish a score for one.

What an utter farce. Yet with the exception of a few sniggers within the industry, this is something we simply accept on a year-by-year basis. Some of the critics involved are financially well off and don’ t need any associated pay cheques from this work, but there is a real and genuine FOMO. If you don’t write about Bordeaux En Primeur, your readers will go somewhere else to someone who does. Wine writing has been hijacked by the Bordeaux EP circus to give credibility to something that isn’t truly real. We are the Credit Ratings Agency of this particular financial institution; unable to extricate ourselves and seemingly unable to be transparent about the realities of it. I once received advice from someone I respect highly to get involved in the EP Campaigns because “There´s no quicker boost to your writing career”. As I said, ingrained issues.

There isn’t a simple solution, but I’ve still yet to even see a disclaimer on EP scores explaining that the samples tasted are not the finished wine and should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are many stories of critics who have the courage to score famous wineries poorly in certain vintages, being excluded from future tastings, not to mention the lavish dinners and lunches that punctuate the EP campaign, yet I don’ t believe I’ve ever seen one published. Would we accept this is a newer wine region? I suspect not. If Andrew Jefford was told he couldn’t visit an estate in Spain again because he wasn’t scoring the wines highly enough, there would be outrage.

There are other large issues in wine writing; the lamentable lack of investigative journalism for one. The fact that we never talk about the reliance of the wine industry on cheap labour from other countries; the power dynamics of large distribution networks and their impact on the wines we’ re actually able to drink; the greenwashing campaigns of wineries who are not practicing what they preach. The list goes on. However, until we’ re able to knock something on the head as blatantly egregious to integrity in our industry as the EP Campaigns, I don’ t believe we’ll ever come close to getting here.

• Fintan Kerr, DipWSET, lives in Barcelona and is a wine writer, educator and founder of Wine Cuentista (Cuentista is Spanish for “storyteller”.) Follow him on Twitter: @Wine_Cuentista