The decline of wine guides redux

I come back to this topic after a year also because this time I am directly involved, since I have come out with my own wine guide. My original editorial raised a lot of fuss and Gambero Rossi even made a veiled threat and demanded I rectify what I had written. On the other hand, I remember getting support even from Stefano Bonilli, who agreed with what I had written and dedicated an article to it in Papero Giallo that I appreciated greatly and which marked the beginning of our repacification. What did I say to cause such a stir? I argued that wine guides were in a crisis for a series of reasons. The first was the drop in sales, down over 7% in one year alone. The second was the excessive number of wines which were given prizes. The third was the excessive number of wines tasted which forced those doing the evaluations to perform a ‘tour de force’, tasting over 100 wines a day for weeks on end with the result of not dedicating enough time to each wine. There are those who can do this but there are more who get lost in a succession of repeated tastings and cannot efficiently accomplish what they set out to do. The fourth reason is deontological and regards the number of samples sent for tasting, some of which are used for other purposes and end up on the market.

Some people have pointed out how I used to be one of those who complied guides this way when I worked elsewhere. While this is true, when I realized that I was exaggerating I invented a ‘Three Glasses Plus’ category for wines of outstanding quality, which changed year by year and made not only communication easier but also enhanced the value of the prize rating. Some of those who criticized me for my past sins apparently forgot this but that’s the way it goes and it’s a waste of time to expect logic or intellectual honesty from certain people.

To this criticism and other points I have sought to respond with facts, creating a guide that was inspired by those principles I considered correct and which were in contrast with those followed by most of the other publications. The guide has fewer prizes, fewer wines are tasted and fewer wineries examined in order to pay greater attention and have more time to do a proper job. Furthermore, the wines reviewed were those available on the retail market when the guide came out, which meant including some wines that other guides had evaluated before they came out. When possible, we never requested samples directly from producers. In other words, when samples were not available through wine cooperatives or chambers of commerce, or no public or preview tastings were organized or we were unable to visit the wineries in question, only then did we ask for samples. But only one bottle per type of wine, in order to avoid any suspicion. And so we tasted the wines when and where possible the way a common consumer would, those who are our targeted public. While The Essential Guide to Italian Wines will not reverse the negative trend in sales, it is undeniably a novel and perhaps modern approach and the first results appear to prove us right. And while it will not significantly change the overall picture, at least it introduced some new principles that go in direction I indicated a year ago and those who wish to understand this, will understand this. Those who do not will do so by choice, one which for me may not be logical but must be accepted in respect of the freedom of opinion, which is always sacred.