Local Wine and My Own Sense of Doom
Over the weekend I finished an article about Kentucky wine. The article is for a local food publication and is built around this familiar contradiction: local food advocates are not also consumers of local wine. A sidebar to the article recommends a half-dozen widely available local wines for readers to try.
And here’s where my sense of doom sets in: the best local wines aren’t as easily available as bad local wines. That is, of course, how the whole wine industry works. But in this case it is not just that particular wines are scarce, but that there is an institutional bias against Kentucky’s best wines. The long-existing market for local wines is dominated by sweet, simple wines usually made out of fruit other than grapes.
I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks visiting wineries and retailers, and the difference between the selections at the two is striking. Wineries taste their whole product lines, from sweet fruit to dry table wines. But the stores tend to carry only the sweet wines, because that’s what consumers of Kentucky wines have traditionally bought.
We’ve all had bad wine, and we explore past it and find wine that we like. But in this case, someone inspired by my article to seek out Kentucky wine will most likely confront a selection of stereotype-confirming bottles that don’t imply the necessity of further exploration. As one Kentucky wine salesman said, “People try one thing and that gives all Kentucky wines a bad rap, and they never try another.”
Given that most of the Kentucky wines in liquor stores are sweet fruit wines, the odds are that the first wine someone tries as result of my article is going to be bad.
Hence, my feeling of foreboding. I feel a little bit like I’m driving people to confirm their bias rather than giving them a realistic option in their wine buying.
April 18th, 2011 at 10:32 AM
That sucks. Similar thing:
Last summer I sat down with the local Edible publisher to discuss wine coverage. Her concern: The magazine is all about local sourcing, but most local (Ohio) wine is sweetened rat poison. She’s between a rock and a hard place. If she covers wine and it’s local, as you point out, she’s inviting people to confirm their bias and thereby potentially compromising the publication’s credibility. It she covers wine and it’s not local, she loses again for being a traitor to local producers.
My (still unheeded) suggestion: cover wine made by natives – even if they’re now elsewhere. Sort of like a hometown heroes thing.
April 18th, 2011 at 1:09 PM
There is good Kentucky wine out there. It’s just hard to find. People need to see it as an exploration, and that’s not what most people do with wine. They just buy the same stuff over and over.
April 18th, 2011 at 2:30 PM
Why write about it here, but not include this concern in your article
April 19th, 2011 at 9:58 AM
I should crack wise along the lines of: “Jeez, Pursuit, the last thing I want to do is be honest about Kentucky wines in print!”
But the truth is less fun than that. In the article, I made a point that the quality of local wine is changing and merits a fresh look. I acknowledged that there is lots of bad wine out there. I urged people to see Kentucky wine as an exploration, and to not let a bad experience get in the way.
The epiphany about the wine available in local retail stores didn’t occur to me until after the article had closed. I visited one of the stores I often visit and looked at their selection of Kentucky wines and there really wasn’t a good wine in the selection — though there were some from wineries whose wines I had recommended. So I worried that someone would grab one of those and assume that’s what I was talking about. Hence, my depression about the whole exercise.
Yesterday I stopped at another store and looked at their selection, and they had several good wines. Looking at the shelves with fresh eyes, it wasn’t hard to guess which ones were worth trying — the labeling conventions of serious vs. not serious wines are pretty distinct, and anyone who chose by the quality of the label would probably choose pretty well.
The nature of blogging is that you, my loyal reader, get a lot of first impulses and gut reactions. Stuff I write for serious publication, either in print or on the web, gets more consideration.
Nice of you to stop by. Boy-howdy to the Mrs.
April 19th, 2011 at 3:49 PM
Couldn’t you recommend specific wines so that people will ask for them, or look for them?
April 20th, 2011 at 11:48 AM
I did that. I list seven wines.
April 20th, 2011 at 12:47 PM
Then, you’ve done your part. In the quest for perfection, writers always second-guess ourselves…