The state of wine writing in 2019
My assessment of how wine writing is faring across print, books and online platforms. See also my reports on wine writing in 2018, 2017 and 2016.
As the year draws to a close, here’s my annual health check of the state of wine writing. As usual, it focuses on the UK, although it includes some references to my new base in Singapore, which provide some interesting comparisons.
No news is only good news if you’re not a newspaper editor.
There have been no changes in the UK wine writing roster for the main papers this year, which means that the nine major British wine columnists (see the list here) have now had their columns for 146 years collectively, which seems like a pretty good run.
On the other hand, my four-year tenure at Living France magazine has now come to an end, while Drinks Retailing News is moving onto a bi-monthly print schedule in 2020 (it was fortnightly when I took the column in 2013). Print is therefore accounting for less and less of my income, although online publishing is faring better (see below).
Decanter continues to survive in printed form, supported by a business model that has the DWWA to rely on, although they are increasingly emphasising their online content, including the recently launched Decanter Premium app.
Credit: Decanter.com
In Singapore, epicure magazine is the closest equivalent to Decanter, although it has a broader remit covering food, wine and other drinks, as does Wine + Dine magazine. Along with Club Oenologique, Noble Rot and other titles, it seems that print is not yet dead.
Word rates continue to be woeful, however. Joe Fattorini recently bemoaned a rate of £0.75/word for writing in a mainstream British magazine with a readership of one million. In my experience, £0.35/word is a far more common rate, although this year I’ve been offered lows of £0.23/word (that was a no) and highs of £0.50/word.
Meanwhile in Singapore, freelance rates range between SGD0.20 and 0.50 per word, which is roughly half the UK going rate - and this in a city where cost of living is generally double the British equivalent, if not triple.
Books
Despite the difficulties of profiting from print, wine books continue to thrive. This year, Stephen Spurrier’s Académie du Vin Library was launched, declaring that
“In the coming months we’ll be publishing reissues of classic works, starting with Michael Broadbent’s seminal Wine Tasting, and the Christie’s Bordeaux First Growths books by Cyril Ray and Nicholas Faith. We’re also working on a brand-new series of Guides to grape varieties and wine styles written by acknowledged experts in their fields. Collectively, they represent some of the most informed and evocative wine writing ever published.”
The Infinite Ideas Classic Wine Library continues to produce in-depth regional guides, including titles on Jura, Chablis, Great Britain, South-West France and Portugal this year.
In fact, I know of at least 28 new wine books that have been published this year, which is quite extraordinary really, especially when you consider that only one of is likely to make any significant profit: the eighth edition of The World Atlas Of Wine, which has now sold almost five million copies since it was first published.
Online
For most wine writers, online publication is the most viable route to market. The biggest development in this field is that the Michelin group has now bought the entirety of The Wine Advocate, prompting speculation about how it might change in the future.
One new appointment is Edward Ragg MW as their Chinese reviewer, which indicates how important the Asian wine consumer is becoming. There are also several new additions to the team at JancisRobinson.com (covering some of the London tastings that I am no longer able to attend), while Vinous.com, TimAtkin.com and JamesSuckling.com continue to generate plenty of content that they sell to readers in various forms.
But most online wine content remains free, which makes it unprofitable for the vast majority of budding writers. There is also a strange side-effect from this wealth of free online content, relating to how search engine optimisation (SEO) works.
In order to gain high rankings in Google search results, creating new, regular, quality content is vital. Nobody is quite sure about how Google’s algorithms work, but everyone agrees that to increase search engine visibility you need plenty of writing. For wine-related websites, whether they are retailers, publishers, blogs or producers, it has become essential to publish content.
In some cases, that results in new commissions, creating good, original work from specialised writers. This year, I’ve been approached by several different wine industry start-ups asking me about providing content for their websites and apps, although in many cases they are unprepared to pay for it.
That fact often results in a much more worrying symptom, as recently highlighted by Oliver Styles on Wine-Searcher: blatant plagiarism. It is far easier for sites to rip off original content and post it on their own pages in an attempt to drive traffic. Just one example I experienced was an article about the podcast I produce, which was originally published on DailyMail.co.uk, but soon after appeared in crudely pasted form on two spammy sites that exist solely to get sell advertising space (you can see them here and here - and see the screengrabs below for comparison.
The original Daily Mail article on the left, and the two rip-offs on the right
Writing about wine is becoming an increasingly endangered activity, although it is far from extinct. The prospects of survival for the next few years may not appear to be hugely encouraging, but the nature of wine - and the people that work with it - means that wine writing will always exist in one form or another.