May 4, 2011
I strike myself as a pretty nice guy. Easy to get along with. Tolerant. If you agree, forgive me. If you disagree, then what follows should be par for the course. Tom Parnell (of the "Old Parn's Wine Reviews" wine blog) is wrong. In fact, so wrong that his latest post, "Wine Writing is Broken", needs a common sense response. Mr. Parnell is a young Englishman living in Oxford who admits about himself that he, "spends too much time conceiving…
Apr 26, 2011
First, let's admit this: It's the alcohol in wine that makes the beverage of serious interest to human beings. And with this said, we may as well tell the whole truth and admit that it's the effect of alcohol on our mind and bodies that make this substance and, through it, wine of interest to human beings. Second, let's congratulate the San Francisco Chronicle's Wine & Food staff and Jon Bonne, the Wine Editor, for taking the step to print…
Apr 14, 2011
If you have never had the benefit of working with an editor, it might not be perfectly clear that they do far more than check for spelling and grammar errors. The fact is, editing is a creative process that requires the ability to choose among many options. There is a very special form of editing that wine industry professionals need to appreciate: the ability to choose which stories to highlight. This skill is most obviously on display among the various…
Mar 23, 2011
Ben Ratliff is the Jazz Critic for the New York Times. If you look at his self-written bio at the Times he serves up what I've always thought would be a thrilling approach to wine criticism: "Music criticism can be both reporting and conjuring. It’s not just opinion. It’s not just an answer to the question of what something sounded like and who played it. It can also address what music might mean with its abstract gestures and tonal masses…
Mar 14, 2011
Last week one of America's senior wine writers made the point that experience lends more credibility to opinion where wine writing is concerned. Steve Heimoff, long time West Coast editor of Wine Enthusiast who also writes about wine on his blog, put it this way: "the validity of a person’s opinions about wine is directly related to the amount of time and effort that person has put into the study of wine, which includes reading, traveling, learning from others and…