By now, many of you will have heard of, read about, and/or actually watched the documentary Bitter Grapes, a film that examines harsh conditions for workers in some areas of the South African wine industry. The Washington Post has an excellent summary of the film, its impacts on the image of South African wine worldwide,…
Category: commentary
In Defense Of White Wine (Thoughts On Expert Scores And Red Wine Bias)
A little over a week ago, my friend Jeff Siegel published details by PhD Suneal Chaudhary, who analyzed over 64,000 wine scores, dating to the `70s, from “major wine magazines.” The study’s aim was to ascertain if red wines routinely receive higher point score reviews than white wines (other styles were presumably ignored). Long-time 1WD…
Hey, Wine Ladies! Take The Power Back!
How many of you caught the recent diatribes by both Guy Woodward (of Harpers) and Monika Elling (of Foundations Marketing Group in New York City) regarding the under-representation of women in the wine biz? This quote from Elling summarizes the view pretty succinctly: “I’ve been in the business some time and experienced it from several…
In Other Words, The Wine Biz Is Pretty F*cked Up (Thoughts On The Closure Of IPOB)
The wine media world has been tripping over itself to cover the recently-announced ceasing of operations by In Pursuit of Balance (IPOB), an organization of producers that held tastings of wines that fit what the organizers and their tasting panel deemed to be New World wines of particularly elegant expression. In other words, wines that…