A week before Christmas, evidently to brighten the mood and lift the Christmas spirit, the famous British wine writer Jamie Goode published a post that got a lot of attention in the enoblogosphere: “The ill-health of wine writing.”
Here’s an excerpt:
- It’s not been a great year for wine writing. Several fellow writers have lost their newspaper columns and regular gigs. It has been particularly tough for those who rely solely on writing for their living; for many like me who have had quite a good year, it has been the lecturing, judging, consulting, presenting and other communication-related activities that has made the difference.
- The big problem is the continued flight of advertising money away from professionally generated content (newspapers, magazines) onto platforms where the content is user generated (facebook, twitter, google [sic]). There’s no money left to pay writers.
- Is it a tragedy? No one owes me a living. If the market isn’t there for the service I provide, then shouldn’t I just go and get a new job?
I would feel sorry for Jamie but I’m glad to hear that he had “quite a good year… lecturing, judging, consulting, presenting and [engaging in] other communication-related activities.”
It’s still hard for me to wrap my mind around the notion that wine writing is a way to make a good living. In fact, it’s not. I do a substantial amount of “editorial” wine writing but it’s the commercial writing that makes it possible for my wife and I to raise our two young daughters and enjoy a bourgeois lifestyle. The editorial work is extremely gratifying and fun for me. But it simply wouldn’t be enough to support my family in the manner we want to live.
Even at the peak of interest in wine writing in the late 1990s and 2000s (up until the financial crisis of 2007-08), there were very few people who made a real wage through writing about wine. And of those jobs, columns, and once abundant freelance work, there’s not a lot left. I had a job as an editor and a wine writer at a major food magazine in 1999 in New York. Not only does that job not exist anymore but neither does the masthead. It’s the same old story of print media being swept away by the digital era etc.
Before the late 1990s, most of the people who wrote about wine for high-profile mastheads didn’t make their income primarily from wine writing.
Frank Prial, who wrote about wine for the New York Times for more than 30 years, worked primarily as a foreign correspondent and a journalist who focused on international affairs for the paper. Wine writing was a side gig, as it were. And his experience in wine was owed in great part to the fact that paper sent him abroad (notably to live in and report from Paris). R.W. Apple, a pioneering food writer for the paper, had a parallel career writing about international affairs and then filing the occasional piece about a restaurant where he ate or a grappa he tasted (I was a huge fan of his!).
Prial hung up his corkscrew in 2004 when he retired from the Times. I remember another prominent wine writer from that period, Jay McInerney. He was and still is one of the greatest wine writers of our lifetime. But he didn’t make his living from writing about wine. He made it from writing immensely successful novels.
Aside from Jamie (whom I don’t know personally) and literally a handful of full-time wine writers who still have positions with high-profile mastheads, I know very few people who make a living exclusively by creating editorial content about wine. And as Jamie points out, he’s shifted from a focus on wine writing and expanded his activities to include other consulting work.
All things considered, the renaissance of wine writing really only lasted about 10 years, if that. Despite Jamie’s outward despair at the “ill-health of wine writing,” I think he resolves his own conundrum when he reveals that his “good year” was owed to the fact that he diversified and expanded his income streams by looking beyond wine writing. And that’s a model that has emerged in a number of sectors of the new “gig economy.” It’s a good lesson to take away from his post, imho.
In his post, Jamie also talks about the lack of “good wine writers without commercial conflicts of interest who talk about interesting wines and want to help the good guys to win.” Wow! That’s quite a statement. And it will be the topic for a post next week. Thanks for being here and thanks for reading…
Jeremy Parzen
DoBianchi
