When Andrew Jefford Talks...

One thing of which there seems to be no shortage is wine bloggers.   There are even conferences for wine bloggers:  one in North America (next year in Penticton) and one in Europe.   I’m not sure why so many of us who appreciate wine feel the passion to write about it.  Perhaps it's the wine that primes the creative pump.  As the ancient Greek poet Cratinius said, "No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water drinkers."

With so many wine writers out there, it’s easy to find writing to admire.  One of my favourites is Andrew Jefford, who writes a blog weekly, published on Mondays, for the Decanter website.  It’s a must read for my Monday mornings.  (And so it must be for many others, as Andrew won the Online Wine Writer of the Year Award at the 2012 International Wine Writer’s Awards.)  It certainly helps that I find myself nodding in agreement with his opinions…and shaking my head with envy at how clearly he expresses them.

Andrew recently gave the keynote address at the European wine bloggers’ conference (aka Digital Wine Communications Conference).  You can read it here and if you’re a fellow wine blogger, consider it compulsory.

My takeaways from Andrew’s keynote address:

• Traditional short-form wine writing is dead.  It’s all digital now.
• Making money from wine writing alone is difficult and getting more so.  (Any blogger can tell you that.)
• You must tell a story well.  That’s the challenge.  Fortunately, there’s no shortage of source material.
• Be distinctive.  Keep faith with whatever it was that ignited your passion to write about wine in the first place.
• If there’s one thing lacking in wine writing, it’s irreverence and humour.   And since bloggers don’t answer to a publisher, that’s where we come in.  (I agree.  But just as most actors think that comedy is the most challenging, I think that humour writing is the most challenging form to do well.  It’s why I think that David Sedaris is a genius.)

But this is said much more eloquently by Andrew himself.   Reading it is time well spent.

Subscribing to this blog through RSS or email is easy! Just click on the subscribe link to the left ←

The Facts, Ma'am, Just the Facts

I’ve been away for a couple of weeks, down south visiting another national capital and tuning up the golf game in anticipation of sunny, warmer days here in Ottawa.

I avoided checking email and Canadian news while I was away. Disconnecting for a while surely does have its charms, although coming home to hundreds and hundreds of emails is somewhat discouraging. And some kind of orange wave apparently is about to swamp Canadian politics.

One goody that I came across while catching up on things was this commentary by Decanter’s Andrew Jeffords, in which he bemoans the abysmal state of winery websites.

I couldn’t agree more.

If it isn’t already so, winery websites are rapidly becoming THE primary medium for how consumers learn more about an individual wine, particularly when portable web technology is at so many fingertips.

As Jeffords points out, people who take the time to visit a winery’s website want to know some fundamental things about the wines: the terroir, the grapes, vinification techniques, tasting notes, and food suggestions. Pretty pictures, music, and stories about winemaker’s dogs…these are all OK as add-ons but if you don’t have the fundamentals on each of your wines, you’re wasting our time.  Canadian wineries are some of the worst offenders.

The second great sin of many winery websites is stale information. I cannot count the number of wineries that have made the “one-shot” effort to launch a website, only to down tools at that point, with their latest vintage reports anywhere from one to ten years out-of-date.

The formula for a good winery website is simple: tell us about the wine, all the wine, and nothing but the wine. Keep it up to date.

Subscribing to this blog through RSS or email is easy! Just click on the subscribe link to the left ←

What Makes a Fine Wine?

Insightful column from Andrew Jeffords this week at Decanter.

Ever wondered what the distinction is between a fine wine and a…well...not-so-fine wine? It's more than just the price. 

Let’s hear from Mr Jeffords:

Fine wines attempt to make the best wine possible, but resist the temptation to hide nature’s imperfections. Letting all those variables come through is what makes a vintage interesting and intriguing.

The attraction of not-so-fine wines is their consistency. The same thing attracts people to McDonalds. No surprises.

Some drinkers, indeed, seek out ‘lesser years’ as a refuge from modish ripeness. The underlying assumption, though, must be that the wine will be a truthful account of the vintage.

Don’t strive to correct nature; select from it instead, so as to deliver the most limpid and resonant account of the year that you can. Otherwise … what’s the point?

Fine wines are usually a snapshot of place, too, as well as being an interpretation of a Varietal (or blended) ideal. They’re also a drinkable weather report: the summary of a season. But to what extent?

In great vintages, of course, you take what nature has given you, and say a private word of thanks when no one’s looking. What, though, do you do when nature has teased and tortured you? Do you allow the excesses and deficiencies of a season to be apparent in the wine, or do you attempt to remedy nature in some way?

Bravo! I couldn’t agree more.

Subscribing to this blog through RSS or email is easy! Just click on the subscribe link to the left ←