Naming Names and Being Bad..Is it Good?
The post right below this one spurred on Fred Koeppel of KoeppelOnWine to make this comment:
"Tom, I know that you don’t review wines on Fermentation, but you owe it to your readers and fans AND to the winery that disappointed you to tell us what the winery and the wine are. These people should understand that longtime consumers of that wine are disappointed and they should know why. It’s when we DON’T speak up that such dumbing down of products continues."
He’s right. We don’t review wines. But his comment brings up an issue that I’ve never absolutely come down on one way or another: Should those who do review wines, in print or on blogs, publish Bad reviews?
Let’s be clear that there is no question that a bad review of a wine is just as useful to readers as a good review. And as Fred points out, a bad review also puts a winery on notice. Both these are compelling reasons to name names and publish bad reviews. But, you might say, "why waste time talking or writing about bad wines when there are so many really good wines out there to alert a reader to?" There are a number of reasons to take this view. Why take the space to hammer a winery when you could use that space to praise another’s efforts? Why piss off advertisers…or potential advertisers?
It is possible to write a review without coming straight out and saying, "this wine is no good". For example you might write:
This popular Dry Rose seems to be more in the the style of the sweet genre of "White Zinfandels". It’s a crystal clear red in appearance that might be announcing a light Gamay as much as a Rose. The nose is fruity with ripe strawberries, and that’s about all. On the palate there is a fleshy, soft quality with no bracing acidity that you find in many dry roses. It verges on obviously sweet and even is a bit cloying. Fresh strawberries make up the flavor. Cool this one way down before drinking.
This isn’t necessarily a "bad" review of the wine. It merely tells us what to expect. Of course there’s something missing isn’t there. The score. With most reviewers delivering scores alongside their descriptions its pretty hard to put a score on this wine and not give away the fact that it disappointed me. I’d have to give it 2 out of 5 Stars…at most.
If I were a wine reviewer, and if I didn’t put scores or rankings alongside my descriptions, then I could publish this review. If I did use scores or rankings I’d have to decide if I wanted to publish this review at all.
Interestingly, Fred Koeppel, who wrote the comment in the post below that I reference above, IS someone who publishes lots of reviews, has been doing so for quite a long time and most certainly has encountered this issue of whether or not to publish reviews of wines that are average or less than average. In addition to his unusually extensive descriptions of wines, Fred uses what I think is the equivalent of a rough 10 points system that allows these levels of ranking:
Exceptional
Excellent +
Excellent
Very Good +
Very Good
Good +
Good
I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen Fred describe a wine as perfect and it seems that he does not care to publish reviews of wines that are less than "good" or poor.
It’s a nice compromise between simple descriptions and more emphasis on scores. But what does a description that only falls into the "good" category on Fred’s rankings read like? Like this:
Gallo Family Vineyards
Twin Valley Moscato
(non-vintage)
100% moscato
California
"GOOD"
For people who like a little sweetness in a wine – and I know there are
pockets of you here and there – here’s a sweetheart of a moscato that
features a winsome bouquet of orange blossom, jasmine, almond, peach
and pear. In the mouth, it’s soft, round and slightly sweet, with peach
and pear flavors and a modestly lush texture. It’s appealing in a
simple way, like someone you send a valentine to in the third grade.
Drink up.
I’m guessing this is not a wine that Fred is going to go out and buy for himself. In fact, I’d bet he’d be unlikely to recommend this wine to someone who likes their wines white and sweet. I could be wrong. But I don’t think I am. Yet, it’s not a bad review is it. It simply describes the wine.
It’s a nice way to approach this business of writing about wines.
At Fred’s website, KoeppelOnWine.com you can read many other reviews of wines here, here and here, as well as articles (this current article on less expensive Burgundy is a real heads up).
So what do we do about this issue of naming names, publishing bad reviews, etc? I don’t know. I know I don’t review wines so I don’t have to care about it other than in a purely academic sense. But those of you who do publish reviews do have to think about this issue. I’d love to know how you handle it.
I think it’s a waste of time writing bad wine reviews, and for the most part I don’t see very many on the wine blogs that I visit. Good wines get publicity, bad wines get none, and that in itself is enough. Another thing to consider is that wine tasting is subjective to the taster. To be fair, a reviewer should offer both commemts or descriptions, and a rating. That way the reader can decide based on the review if she/he wants to try the wine based on her/his own taste buds. Writing bad reviews in my opinion exerts negative energy, and I’m under the impression that the intention of winemakers is to make the best wine she/he can. Why dog them with bad reviews when so much hard work goes into winemaking?
I have 0 problems writing a bad review (naturally, this excludes wines that are corked or flawed in a way that’s probably not the winery’s fault). Isn’t this Tish’s whole point about the uselessness of a scoring system where we only see the above averages? We live in an era when criticism is notoriously gunshy about being too negative, and what kind of honest critic avoids telling the truth because the advertisers might be unhappy? This is why newspapers don’t publish anything about factory farming, to use a different example. I tell PR people who contact me about samples/book reviews that in addition to not promising a review, I don’t promise to only write good reviews.
That said, rarely do I find a wine that’s so bad that it gets a negative review. Often, it just gets a lackluster comment.
In general, Derrick, I don’t see a lack of negativity in the business of American Criticism. You need only look to iterary, cinema, restaurant and art criticism to see that the negative side is alive and well.
That said, I’m going to argue that wine criticism is a unique form of the genre. To begin with, it tends to occur in 10 sentences or less, and most often less. This provides very little room for opining on the flaws of a wine, let alone a movie, painting or restaurant. It’s get in and get out in most wine review venues.
Also, when you consider that the main wine publications and wine review newsletters really have nothing close to enough space to review every wine that crosses their palates you have to ask, how should you choose what gets printed and what does not? There’s a strong argument to be made for publishing the good to great reviews over the bad ones.
This is why I enjoy the reviews and recommendations coming out of places like KoeppelOnWine, Appellation America, and a number of places on the Internet, such as blogs. They give serious space to a review. Granted, not the kind of space that tends to go into a reivew of a film or a newly discovered Pollack, but much more than normal. In the hands of a good writers with instinctive wit and perceptive palate, this much space given to a review of a single wine can be a thing of beauty, whether the review is good or bad.
The classic dilemma with “bad” reviews of wine, as I see it, has nothing to do with scores ore lack of scores, but rather two constant wine bugaboos: context and taste.
Any given wine will be better or worse depending on context, and reviews simply cannot fully account for this (though they should try, as in pointing out when a wine needs decanting or cellaring, or that another would be better on a picnic than a formal table).
And then, of course, there is taste. There are no bad wines, only wines you may not like. Just ask a loyal White Zin drinker (they still exist). Within circles of like-minded, thinking wine fans, it makes sense to talk about wines in terms of “bad” and “good” and “great,” but when it comes to written reviews devoid of discussion, “bad” reviews make zero sense.
To push the debate here even further, I find limited value even in organopleptic descriptions. My apple, your pear. It is extremely improbable, as Tom has noted before on this blog, for palates to be insynch. And if that is impossible, the only sensible fallback is to follow certin critics over time so that you understand their tastes. Better yet, trust and frequent certain retailers; then you understand their tastes and they understand yours. A good retailer is more valuable than any critics in my book.
I write an occasional negative review, and the reasons I have given on my blog are pretty simple: buyer beware and, oh, yeah, I pay for almost every wine I drink. And trust me, I’m no moneybags. If you’re a member of the general public and not a wine biz insider, you occasionally need someone to tell you to stay away from something, especially if it is a fairly well distributed product.
That said, blogs that are nothing but point-system reviews aren’t too interesting. You want back stories, contexts, points of view, some sort of personal connection with the blogger.
My friend Fredric is not, strictly speaking, a blogger (yet!), so he’s off the hook on that one. Actually, I think he reviews beautifully without, as you say, Tom, a hard-and-fast point system. I can sure as hell relate better to “exceptional” or “excellent” or “good” than to the exquisite differences between an 86 and an 87, for example.
And he writes so damned well.
Tish:
Your point about context and taste ARE well taken. Yet, it doesn’t address the issue of which reviewers do you publish.
If you have room for 4 reviews and you’ve tasted five of which 2 of the wines you just love, one you find very good, another is good and another you find, say, not undrinkable but really not to your liking at all…which do you publish
I wonder if you ever encountered this dilemma when you were in editorship game. But it seems to me that some sort of formula is needed. Suppose the wine you really don’t like at all has a suggested retail price of $150. Seems it would be a real service to offer up your opinion. But that means another wine you liked better doesn’t get its review published. In essence, the winery that, in your mind, made a more pleasing wine gets punished because another winery, again in your mind, failed miserably to match quality to price.
Better yet, imagine if you have reviewed five wines but have room for only four. Imagine if four of them are well distributed around the country and all of them were quite pleasing in their way. Meanwhile, imagine that the fifth wine is, in your mind, perfect in every way. Yet, they only made 50 cases. It’s the best wine you’ve ever tasted. But, printing the review is purely academic because the chances of your readers getting to taste or acquire it is highly unlikely. If you publish your review of this wine you’ll turn your readers on to the best wine you’ve ever put down your gullet, but a wine they are much more likely to purchase is left out.
I’m inclined to think a publisher or reviewer needs to take on these issues on a case by case basis now that I think about it.
It’s not a hard & fast rule for me, but usually on my blog if I don’t like it I don’t write it up. If I visit a winery and only like one wine I usually only mention that one. A careful reader might be able to read between the lines and get the point.
Tom, good points. Everyone has to find their own comfort zone, obviously. For me, I review fewer and fewer wines, period. Much rather be able to accentuate the positive and highlight what i consider reliable producers rather than specific bottlings.
I’d be far more likely to publish a bad review if the wine was in wide distribution and if the wine’s flaws represented a clear departure from previous vintages. I think this approach serves readers best, although they certainly can go out and try the wines for themselves and see whether they think I’m hallucinating or dead-on. As for “Why piss off advertisers or potential advertisers” … if a wine reviewer worries about that, it will show, readers will notice, and the reviewer’s credibility will soon be eroded to the point that his reviews will be meaningless.
I always love this discussion…and I waffle back and forth on my feelings about it.
On one hand, I pride myself in honesty in all things. It’s part of my personal style…or at least I like to think so.
And, as the only person who writes about Long Island wine as often as I do (several times a week) I feel like it’s important to give my readers as much information as possible. In a region this size, it IS possible for one person to taste everything and offer opinions. I’d say I’ve tasted 99% of the wines available right now.
My question is this: Should I write up every last wine, or can people assume that I only write about the stuff I like?
Again, in such a small industry, I’m pretty well known now. I’d obviously never bow to pressure from a winery to not publish a bad review, but at the same time, I do need to maintain my relationships. It’s a balancing act that many bloggers probably don’t have to face because they aren’t print columnists and/or editors of local wine publications.
I should probably explain my comment about “not pissing off advertisers”.
This would not be my main reason for not publishing “bad” reviews. However, it would be one of many benefits of choosing, as a policy, to only publish average or better reviews.
If I taste it and don’t like it, I write it up anyway, I try to put in the flavors I taste and a description of the wine, some young wineries here in colorado are tasting wine that’s still not great, so I try to be a little tactful about it at least.
Wow! First, thanks, Tom, for taking my comment and using it to start this very interesting discussion. And thanks to all of you, Tish and Terry, whom I know, and Mark for whom I have written one post on his blog, and the rest of you whom I know through the Internet. Now — my college and grad school background is in English and American lit, creative writing, history and art history. After my 17-year career teaching in college, I jumped to journalism, and most of my work has been in reviewing and criticism, books, visual arts, movies and plays occasionally, restaurants and of course wine. My point is that all my training and experience is in being fair, honest and critical. (Just for reference, I began writing about wine late in 1983 and went to the newspaper here as wine writer and feature writer in 1984; my national weekly wine column was canceled in Jan. 2004; that’s why I’m on the internet.) O.K. Back in the early 1990s, I was on a bus from Milan to Verona for VinItaly and heard a well-known free-lance writer say to a group of writers and judges that he never said anything negative about the California wine industry because “they need all the help we can give them.” My point in what I said in Tom’s post last week about the disappointing wine was that we don’t help the wine industry in any state or region or country by only praising; the real help comes in the form of fair and honest criticism, whether in reviews or essay form (now blog postings), keeping winemakers and producers on their toes. It’s true that probably 90% of the wines that I review on KoeppelOnWine.com rate from Good+ to Excellent; the site is mainly a vehicle for recommending wines. occasionally I will review a wine favorably (at whatever level) but include in that review the notation that while I like this wine, two others from the same winery were over-oaked or dank or whatever. A friend of mine at the newspaper chastises me and says that i need to include more negative reviews so people know what (in my opinion of course) they should not buy. Why should this (warning people away from wines) not be as great a service as recommending the wines we do like? I don’t agree that there are no bad wines, only different palates; there are plenty of bland, dull, generic wines out there, and I think it’s especially important, as with the case of the wine that Tom found to be made in a different (obviously sweeter) style that wineries should know we’re watching them and letting our readers know. Tom makes an excellent point about deciding what wines to review and what standards we use; is it more important to review a wine that sells for $10, rates Very Good and is available in 100,000 cases or a wine that sells for $100, rates excellent and is available in, oh, 1,000 cases? The first wine seems more important to me in terms of wide readership and consumer advocacy, but that’s why the website is divided into different pages and also why I try to change pages often (not always succeeding) and keep 50 or 60 wines on the site all the time.
Yes, Tish, the whole situation does come down to context and taste, but so does every aspect of art, consumerism and criticism. Last week in the NYTimes, Michiko Kakutani eviscerated Richard Ford’s new novel “The Lay of the Land;” in Sunday’s NYTimes Book Review, A.O. Scott praised the book to the skies. Is she a bitch and he a whore? Is one wrong and the other right? No on both counts. It’s just taste and context and the courage of one’s convictions. In fact, I have found over two decades that winemakers and producers will respect us more for honesty (ok, maybe they get their feelings hurt sometimes) than for dealing out praise all the time and avoiding what’s difficult in judgment.
And Terry is correct in his hint. My blog is being designed now and I hope will debut next month. It will take critical looks at all aspects of the food and wine and dining experiences.
Sorry this post is so long, but these are important and provocative issues.