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| π π ₯π ° Don't bother they're here π π ₯π ° |
When I look at the “inside baseball” world of wine writing lately, I want to puke. It is as if this little manufactured bubble, which displays little if anything of a natural reality, exists for the simple reason that folks need something to hang onto in regard to the way they identify themselves in the world. Apart from the artifice, the performativity, the virtuousness and the constant scuffling for the top rung, where are the stories? What happened to the story tellers?
I think about photography often when arguments over “art” and technology become heated. In the 1830s, when photography was born, painters were outraged. Here was this imitator, this mechanical intruder, muscling in on what they'd decided art was. Give it a century, though, and we got an Ansel Adams, a Diane Arbus – as different from each other as Monet was from Kandinsky – and nobody was arguing anymore about whether photography was or wasn’t art. Then digital cameras arrived and the film shooters lost their minds over this new usurper. Now digital is as good, technically, maybe better, at making art than film ever was. And here comes AI, and once again everybody's hair is on fire. I often heard this line from a wine colleague of mine, Guy Stout. He loved to say, “It ain’t the wand, it’s the magician.” I took those words to heart. In the same way – AI is a wand – it sure as hell ain’t my magician. It’s a tool, a prop, a pillow to cry on, even – but it is not the story teller we need – we still need the humans, the magicians, to saddle up to the campfire and spin the tale.
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| Spellcheck: There's no "AI" in Guy |
So there's that. It's nothing new. It's the same argument, dressed up for the latest unsuspecting and upcoming generation. The tool changes but the panic rears its ugly head once again. And it's never really about the tool – it's about who has the loudest megaphone to calm us/rile us up while the earth trembles ever so repeatedly.
There is also the general dearth of good storytelling out there. In my freelance writing for Dallas’ flagship monthly magazine, D, (think New York magazine with a slight twang) I’ve gone for short form storytelling while also informing people of trends or unseen gems in my orbit – a neighborhood grocery store worth building a shopping list around, a manufactured coastline worth calling out – they’ve been well received, and gotten good traffic, and while that wasn’t my sole objective, it offers a critical metric which is the needed oxygen for today’s online world.
I can see why so many folks who lay a claim to being a wine writer are lamenting that their platforms have all but been abandoned by people, who a mere 10 or 15 years ago, flocked to the sites in copious amounts, inhaling and ravishing any little tidbit of vinous information, in search of a good glass of wine. It used to be better. Now it’s gotten murky and cloudy and stifling. No wonder the wine mavens now all talk at and past each other – most everyone has left the room years ago.
I’m gonna throw some diesel on the bonfire I’ve already started and state out front that there are too many people trying to monetize their writing and it has caused a huge fragmentation among the readers – they simply cannot afford it in economic terms, and further they do not have the attention bandwidth to absorb and digest all the information that the wine writing community produces‽ There have been several folks who have done a cost analysis, if one were to subscribe to all the major publications and then add the top 10-20 fee-based Substack sites. It’s thousands of dollars a year, not to mention the time it would take to go through all of the material. If it were worth it.
And it doesn’t look like many people are saying it is worth it these days. Look, no one wants to work for free. But a blog, like mine, for instance, while it is free to the readers who come to it weekly for the past 20 years, it does act like a billboard for my writing style and subjects and it does lead to paying gigs. Do I need the money? Well, I do have my vices – I really like to play around with photography equipment – and that can get expensive at times. But I also use that equipment to augment my writing and it has brought me income streams as well. So, while I do not depend upon writing for a living, and while I do understand there are folks out there who would like to support themselves, solely, with their writing, I know (as they do) that there are only a few who actually make enough money to support themselves in a fairly comfortable lifestyle setting. Like actors or artists or athletes, there is only so much room at the top. Do I like that? Well, if I had my druthers, I’d love to see more folks sharing the limelight and the financial rewards. But the market drives those metrics.
I was in sales. Reluctantly. My dad was a salesman. And a good one. But it just didn’t feel like my jam. I did, however, make a study of it and didn’t do too badly at it. But what the commercial world taught me was that there is competition and if you don’t find a way to compete, you get left behind to wail and flail in the wind. Get in and get in the game or get out. I think that might be similar in the writing world. And in the uber-scrunchy miniscule world of wine writing, there are even fewer angels dancing on the head of that pin. Meanwhile in today’s open-media landscape, folks put up a Substack or a WordPress (or a Blogger!) and, like the town criers we all are, peel off and let ‘er rip. And this is where we have landed now, in 2026.
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All this has made me thirsty. We’re finally getting a break in the 100°F weather here in North Texas. Haven’t had rain in months. I can hardly wait for the weather to cool even more, so I can make my Eggplant Parmigiana for Rocco. That’s what I am looking forward to – opening a good bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo to go with the Parmigiana and sharing the food (not the wine) with man’s best friend, my dog.
And dogma be doggoned, just for a blessed moment.
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