Disagree. A voice like Antonio’s is needed. The CT and niche area reviewers is not the way it’s going nor should it be, amateur reviews are nice, but end there, nice. The more voices, the more information, and the more feedback for purchases in a day and age where the taste before you buy wish is rarely fulfilled, should be applauded. Especially concise, well written, and passionate voices.
Dr. J, and Mark are another conversation, and with little or no credibility have already rendered themselves obsolete.
The American economy has been run on ever increasing debt for the last 20 years or more, and not real wealth creation. They have kicked the can down the road since Klintoon and Greenscam’s days and now the can is filled with debt that can never be repaid. By deferring the neccessary and healthy recessions we normally need to clear bad debt, they have made the impending implosion of the global financial system that much worse. It may be no one will be buying Barolo or Burgundy when the basic bottle is $500.
Yes yes, I know. I just don’t believe the under 30 crowd is all that different from previous under 30 crowds. For my thoughts on the silly notion that Burgundy reviews must all focus on DRC see my post above.
Kris: I agree. Inartfully I think my post sounded (unintentionally) critical of Antonio. Rather I think it’s the marketplace looking for info something akin to CT but no longer a “one reviewer fits all” subscription plan. Will hordes pony up for it if alternative views are obtainable for free? (Kind of like what’s happening in journalism now–hard to make a living as a writer).
But hordes have never paid for TWA etc. TWA has, what, maybe 50,000 subscribers? And I don’t know that alternative views ARE available for free. There’s a bit of a love affair with free recently, but the ROI logic for a wine newsletter is pretty straightforward. If a subscription costs the equivalent of one nice bottle a year, you don’t need very much to justify that.
CT isn’t a replacement for critics doing reviews of new releases for reasons that are obvious. It’s a complement to them on several levels, but it does not serve the same function, nor will it ever. Blogs… can. But most wine blogs I see again don’t do the broad survey of new releases in a region. That’s where the wine newsletters have been of use - giving people an overview of what a significant chunk of producers have done and doing it in time for those notes to be useful when buying wine.
What WILL change, I think, is the newsletter model. In a decade (and probably MUCH sooner, really) it will be exclusively online, mobile friendly and much more connected (think a technology like Google Goggles that lets you take a snapshot of a bottle and get your critic’s review of that wine, etc).
Well, whether or not it makes sense to you and me, advice on which of the top 20 to 50 wines to buy in various regions has been the Wine Advocate’s bread and butter since its inception. How many thousands of subscriptions have they sold to people who are trying to figure out which of the dozen or two top classified growths they should buy on futures in the latest vintage of the century? Yeah, the eventual score ranges are only slightly less predictable than the sun coming up the next morning, but it doesn’t seem to stop people from anxiously panting over the coverage. Of course the target market isn’t people who are comfortable buying their favorites year-in and year-out. That’s not who the WA is for.
But they’re not journalists… And if multiple writers can live off of a publication with significantly under 50k subscribers… that’s very doable. At $100/year each 10k is $1m. Say you get 25,000… gross revenue of $2.5m.
Ditch the paper version (or make people who want it pay a premium so the entire printing cost is defrayed via that). The electronic, online version would be inexpensive to run - Doing a site that presents your wine newsletter online to subscribers only isn’t expensive and could probably be built from the ground up for well under $100k, probably well under $25k really. A server is MAYBE $100/month so, $1200/year. Pay a stable of 5 writers $100k for each FTE. Add on another $100k per full time writer for expenses. That’s $1m. Leaving $1.5m. Obviously there’s taxes, etc but I also doubt they run $200k/fulltime writer * 5 in expenses. A new publication might have a hard time hitting these numbers, but something like TWA should be able to.
They’re wine writers which I consider a journalist.
Other than TWA (historically) can you tell me another publication (versus magazine such as WS which has a lifestyle focus) that approaches 25,000 subscribers? Even half that? Bob did it but that doesn’t mean others in a different time place and culture can.
Sounds like you’d be an investor. They may want to talk to you.
I don’t know what Tanzer has. Or Meadows. No idea. They might have 5k, might have 15k. Unless someone drops by who knows, speculating on the numbers is a fruitless discussion.
My point in doing the quick math above was two fold:
In talking about TWA’s future, people are putting forward that they’re doomed, due to be replaced by free sources. The numbers don’t bear that out unless they’re far close to 5k than 25k. They’ll need to respond to market changes, but as long as they do that maintaining a subscriber base of somewhere in the 15-50k neighborhood shouldn’t be a huge challenge.
That getting a fairly small number of readers isn’t impossible or even hard if one’s reviewing the larger wine regions. Now, getting 10k for a journal focused on the Jura would be… challenging. But I wonder if someone wanted to do a newsletter on neglected regions and covered Corsica, Sicily, the Jura, etc etc if you could get a few thousand people.
For a new entrant it will take time of course. But someone with a tight focus (Jeb D, Allen, etc) could get 5k subscribers at $75 a year and be grossing north of $350k. That most certainly supports one person, perhaps a couple. And, sorry, but 5000 people is a TINY number. Consider, too, that a much smaller number, say 1000 or 2000 ($75-150k at $75/person/year) starts to be interesting as a solo effort.
A few years ago, TWA was frequently said to have over 50,000 subscribers. Wilfred believes that number has dropped quite a bit, but I’m doubtful that it has. Wilfred, what is behind your thinking on the decline?
Errrr… Kinda like they are doing with Neal Martin right now. Let Antonio cross-cover California for a few years so people can get a sense of his palate, then make the transition. Not really complicated, and certainly a useful approach if you care about keeping paying subscribers.
I won’t be renewing my subscription to WA simply because I don’t find myself referring to the site much anymore. I don’t know the whole story of what happened there that caused this board to start (though I’m glad it did), so I don’t have any grudges to bear. However, I do think they made two major mistakes:
As mentioned by others, closing off the board to non-subscribers. It obviously reduced the traffic over there, which I can’t help but think also reduces the number of new subscriptions they receive. I rarely visit there anymore even though my subscription hasn’t yet run out. I do occasionally when I think of it, but there’s not enough activity to keep me coming back.
Not working with CellarTracker to get their tasting notes integrated. I subscribe to View From the Cellar, which has partnered with CT (along with the IWC, Burghound and others), and having that integration is a big deal to me. This site and CT are by far the two wine-oriented sites I visit the most.
I wonder if RP really does read this board. At 11:20 AM EDT today, he started a thread bemoaning the fact that people under 35 cannot afford classified Bordeaux and maybe never will. That was exactly 45 minutes after Bill Klapp’s post here:
a) the overwhelming majority of those who made the Parkers, Tanzers, etc. what they are today are no doubt over 40 (or older), with too much wine in their cellars already, and less and less use for, and interest in, wine critics, …and (c) Antonio will be lucky if the under-30 set has any interest in anything beyond “the world’s greatest wine values”,
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