You struggle with sarcasm?
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Who are some of the well known wine influencers that are paid? I follow a bunch of wine people but didnât really think about them being compensated as per below.
âThere are no statistics on the number of wine influencers currently at work in the U.S.âbut we do know this: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for a wine influencer is more than the median base salary for a Napa Valley winemaker.
As of 2022, wine Influencers earned about $73k annually. The base salary for Napa Valley winemakers was $1000 lessâ$72,000âand winery lab techs on average made $23,000 less than wine influencers.â
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"*Wine criticismâas a form of writing that included specific evaluations or scoresâbegan in the late 1970s with Robert M. Parker Jr.âs The Wine Advocate."
I had no idea that wine criticism did not exist anywhere in the world before Robert Parker! So much for Pliny the Elder.
She ought to tell Aurelien Laherte that before he disgorges another batch of Petit Meslier.
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Great post.
She is, of course, dead wrong on that count. There were plenty of wine critics giving reviews and scores (anyone recall the meadow-muffins/puffs of Charlie Olsen & Earl Singer??). Parker was not the first. Just the most famous & influential.
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One can question the âcriticalâ nature of Parkerâs predecessors.
Iâm pretty sure she was making a joke there.
I found this to be an interesting article, but more in the vein of a sad fin de seicle piece than full of important insights. Another dinosaur complaining about those darn mammals. Yea theyâre tasty but so darn small it takes too many to make a meal.
As many have pointed out, conflating the end of wine writing and the end of wine is sloppy at best. And, imho, kind of egotistical. Traditional long form journalism has been dying for 25+ years - the Internet has put a knife in it. I remain hopeful that there will be replacements. Vinous, RPWA, etc. publish articles that are not just about scoring. And some of those blogs and podcasts are pretty decent (like Trink). How many writers can be supported? More than in the glory days pre-Internet? Hard to say but I donât think the answer is obviously no.
Wineâs demise, or reduction in alcohol consumption in the culture, is a whole different set of stories. Seems like there are tons of passionate devoted interesting winemakers who commit to the hard work. The kinds of folks we care about here. To say wine is dying misses all of that. And even if big volume corporate wine were to shrink and morph into a smaller scale, I wouldnât really care. Thatâs not the stuff I drink or the stories Iâm interested in.
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Wine media discussing state of wine media = echo chamber.
Itâs navel gazing or thumb sucking ⌠take your pick âŚ
It would be super easy to check the Iâll Drink to That! RSS feed and see that there are both new episodes and plenty of sponsors before going ahead and posting something like this.
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Havenât read the article and frankly donât have much interest based on the title so not going to comment directly on it. To your points, I agree. Things evolve. As we see from this board, podcasts, and other forms of media, people continue to write and posit about wine. In fact, wine kind of promotes that. As Pliny said: In Vino Veritas.
Re the demise, I think about the current state of beer. I donât know where consumption levels are in historical terms but look at the overall offering of products compared to pre 1990 when there were just a handful of craft breweries in the US and practically no one even knew what an IPA was at that point. Basically since humans caught onto fermented beverages, theyâve been tipping them back with all the joys and tragedies that come with that. Wine still has a deep appeal and prices for many regions hovering close to all time highs. Styles and trends will change. I doubt great wines are in danger of disappearing for generations to come.
I thought exactly the same thing when I read that. Perhaps it was meant to be apocryphal? I donât really care that much for Karen MacNeil , she come off in person as rather intense in a way I donât relate to. But the content of this talk is not wrong. She is spot on in her observations. And the Parker story is quite revealing. How can you rip through 125 wines in a tasting, especially of Rieslings for Godâs sake, and come up with anything more that superficial impressions.
Big tastings are not for me nor am I adept at detailed tasting notes. I do know several people who have an amazing ability to do it. Itâs not simply a matter of training. Some people are naturally built for this.
It was an interesting article, though not at all in the way she intended.
Wine writing that she lauds (ie non-technical) is fundamentally FOMO. You arenât having this experience (waltzing between barrels.) You canât have this wine. So I am going to tell you about it. The issue is that Instagram and other contemporary media deliver that a lot better. More immediate and often richer. It takes a truly great writer to exceed the power of a visual image and she, like nearly all of her peers, arenât that. A somm the other night described a rustic Criolla as being like what Hemingway drank in âThe Sun Also âŚâ Something that still works 100 years later is great writing.
Further driving the irrelevance of that kind of writing, the premise isnât true anymore. We can get those wines far more readily. And, barring pandemics, we can travel to those places and have those experiences on our own terms. We donât need the mediation of those writers. The audience with interest and the audience who can access are a pretty intersected set now. And for the others, again it needs a truly great writer to make a difference.
She is also incredibly blinkered in her wine demi-monde. She asked the elite of Napa âwhy is wine important?â They arenât going to answer. In that world and at that venue, the answer there is self-evident and boring. Go ask literally hundreds of other independent winemakers and sellers out in the world at large and you will get thousands of answers. These people do think hard about the meta of wine and its place in the world. And most of them are actually creating the answers.
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From the article: " Does anyone know the volume of RTDs (Ready to Drink Cocktails) now being sold? The answer is 36.6 million 9-liter cases. Thatâs more than the total volume of all wine sold in the U.S."
From the Wine Institute:
| Year | Total Wine per Resident1 | Total Wine Gallons | Total Table Wine Gallons2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2.86 gals | 964 million | 822 million |
822 million gallons of Table Wine = 345 million 9-liter cases. Not quite 10 times as much as Karen MacNeil quoted.
Iâve met Karen MacNeil briefly. I have enormous respect for her. But this is ridiculous.
Dan Kravitz
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I agree to a point. But no palate is superhuman and fatigue sets in. I have attempted to do these large tastings many times and to push past 50 is an effort. How can anyone come up with reliable impressions at wine #109? Donât care who you are, acid and alcohol take a toll on you palate. Especially in a zoom session as described. The only things that will stick out are the extremely high volume wine parameters. this was not Parkerâs favorite wine region anywayâŚ
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Anyone elseâs favorite âwineâ the Stella Rosa Pineapple and Chili?
I now need to seek this out and try this. It sounds, well, interesting.
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