Is Rowan Gormley right about wine critics?
Whenever Rowan Gormley criticises the wine trade, the backlash doesn’t take long. His opinions, and those of his company Naked Wine, get repudiated with splenetic enthusiasm. But does such defensiveness reveal that Gormley has in fact uncovered some uncomfortable truths?
In this recent Telegraph interview, Gormley describes wine critics as a nest of vipers, spurning a rapid (albeit relatively mild) reaction on Twitter.
Hmm as I see it, this is the guy who helped himself to millions from Majestic then removed some of the best UK buyers from their roles and now thinks he knows better than the critics. Not sure trade will be bothered by his views, But what do I know with my countless awards....
— Daniel Lambert (@DanielLambert29) October 26, 2019
A badge of honour.....if Torygraph likes Naked Wines then I do not rate their opinion. Half the Naked Wines I tried were truly terrible. So be proud.
— Diana Lyalle (@winetimedi) October 26, 2019
While Gormley may be a wilful provocateur, there is indeed a great deal of truth behind to what he says, painful though it may be for us vipers to admit it.
“The truth is, we’re sitting here in the sun, enjoying great food and having a nice chat,” says Gormley. “We could be drinking just about anything and it would still taste delicious.”
By anyone’s standards this is a pretty benign and truthful observation, and any wine professional would be arrogant to deny it. After all, the enjoyment of wine is a personal experience, and is inextricably linked with its social context.
“It’s not [at this point he swills his glass ostentatiously and sniffs]: ‘I’ve got notes of damson berries and bicycle saddles.’ I find all that stuff pompous, pretentious and tedious.”
And he’s right about this too. The professional language of wine is frequently ridiculous, and it’s easy for those of us who use it daily to become inured to its absurdity.
There is an important qualification to make, however, about who is talking to whom. Most casual wine drinkers have absolutely no interest in tasting notes, and wine professionals often make the mistake of thinking they can communicate with non-engaged drinkers in the same way we talk to each other.
However, for the 0.1% of wine drinkers who are highly engaged, this sort of language has an important function. It might sound pompous, but it is still the best (and only) way that there is to communicate about wine at a complex level. It certainly isn’t a perfect system, but it has endured because, like any system of language, it is invaluable to those who understand and care about it.
Incidentally, something that Naked do brilliantly well is appeal to the subset of wine drinkers that fall between the two extremes: those who find fluent winespeak off-putting, but who are interested enough to seek a closer connection with wine than they get from buying discounted bottles at the supermarket. Ridiculing wine professionals as a marketing tactic might get up our noses but it’s self-evidently effective as a way of appealing to this niche demographic.
Gormley continues:
“One of the things that I learnt quite early in the business is that the wines that critics get frothy at the mouth about don’t interest consumers. [The criticism] used to worry me until one of the famous wine critics wrote a positive piece about us. And sales of those wines did not budge an inch. Sadly, the public are not paying attention to wine critics. Whereas James Martin on Saturday Kitchen… he shifts a lot of wine.”
It may well be true that when a critic wrote positively about Naked, sales weren’t affected. That’s probably because the types of wine drinker that read critics are the highly engaged ones who aren’t interested in the wines that Naked sell (which are nearly all private label with opaque pricing structure).
There are many, many instances I know of where newspaper wine critics have made a seismic difference to wine sales – not least those I witnessed first hand as a manager at Majestic Wine (although that was over ten years ago now, admittedly).
Gormley’s dislike of wine critics hardly seems rational, but perhaps it’s provoked by the industry’s scorn of his business model and irreverent marketing tactics. Incidentally, a telling insight into this philosophy can be made with another quote from the Telegraph piece, when Gormley talks about an early job fitting burglar alarms:
“He quickly realised [...] that most people didn’t want to spend loads on a burglar alarm, they just wanted to be able to put up a sign saying their house was fitted with one.”
I would posit that many Naked Wines customers feel a similar reassurance from signing up as a Naked ‘angel’, and buying into the club-like mindset that Naked offers, providing them with the appearance of wine knowledge, if not the actual reality of it – and there is arguably nothing wrong with that, assuming you never get burgled.
Later in the piece, there is evidence that Gormley’s attitude to wine is inconsistent.
“At one point, he says, “This obsession with buying, storing and cellaring wine – I just don’t get it.” But when I confess to having bought some wine to lay down, he turns on a dime and says, ‘There is something lovely about putting wine away and pulling it out in the future. You can’t buy age.”
As the journalist observes, perhaps this hypocrisy is simply an expedient response to feedback. Anyone who has ever sold wine for a living will know the feeling of giving absolutely contradictory opinions to different customers in order to make a sale.
The British wine trade majority have a tendency to despise Naked, and the feeling is apparently mutual. Yet Naked Wine are hugely successful in practicing exactly what the wine trade so often preaches: demystifying wine and bringing it to a new audience.
Yes, their tactics might be unpalatable to some of us, but perhaps rather than reacting with disgust, we should respect the truths behind their success.