September 18 2006
Elitism, the Zinquisition and Enough Wine to Go Around for Everybody
Sometimelate in 2004 I started poking around blogs and, in particular, a site calledHuge Johnson--presumably a pseudonym and a play on words with noted wine criticHugh Johnson.
Writtenby an insider, and now called The Zinquisition after, apparently, some legalfolks took exception to the name, I still keep up with his posts, though hedoesn’t write nearly often enough.
Setin wine country somewhere, he usually has a bottom line perspective without alot of artifice or b.s.
It’sa perspective I find refreshing and in many ways has influenced my blog.
Hismost recent post, then, is interesting as he calls out the wine blogosphere forbeing elitist, and perhaps, not paying our tithe to the Church of Wine.
Belowis a healthy excerpt from his post which can be found in full here.
I’mdeeply saddened to see the continued trend of elitism that pervades many blogsand those who comment on them. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great bottle ofwine more than the next guy, but as I have mentioned many times before, theelitism of the wine culture creates a real "barrier to entry" formany now-insecure consumers who would otherwise happily drink whatever fairlygeneric varietal the get on sale from their local megamart. I read numerouscomments like "well, I wish people wouldn’t drink yellow tail" and"most wine is insipid plonk not worthy of being poured down my drain"and "only certain regions of the world should even be producing wine atall (followed by a highly subjective assessment of climate, topography, andsoils)".
Iheartily agree that some wine is better than others, but let’s just focus for amoment on what would happen if we were to wave our magic wand and eliminate allthe "generic" wines that are so hated by wine geeks. We would loseall Vin de Table, all wines with broad appellations ...
BasicEconomics tells us that scarcity drives prices up (basic supply/demand curve).If we were to eliminate all "generic" wines, the resulting scarcitywould pretty much destroy the wine business for most of us. Why? Simply becausethe economies of scale in production and distribution would be completely lost.Wines would be $30 and up and would only be available in limited outlets as thenow-lower profits from broad market distribution would make it uneconomic tosustain the current infrastructure.
Youknow what? He’s spot-on correct.
Idon’t necessarily mind the perceived elitism because folks that are passionateabout wine and happen to have and/or read wine related blogs represent apercentage of the population that is predisposed to be a bit more finicky abouttheir consumables—if you don’t believe me check out this post from Tom atFermentation where his reader poll indicates that 60% of his readers earn morethen $100K a year. As a reference point,I think 5% of the U.S. population earns over 100Ka year. By virtue of demographics, you’llget the kind of content that appeals to people that are more discriminating.
And while I don’t consider myself as a part of the elitism,his overall point about elitism and scarcity resonates. I recently saw a stat that said that 2/3’s ofall wine in the U.S. comes from four companies—Gallo,Constellation, The Wine Group, and Bronco.
Wereit not for those fine folks, producing technically correct wine in most cases,the smaller, terroir driven wines would be prohibitively expensive for mostpeople on a day-to-day basis.
TheZinquisition is a good read, and a good reminder that Yellowtail (which I have slagged in the past) is a decent if not good product that meets a customer need.
And,now, what we can really hope for is that the current Australian wine glutcreates not 8 million cases of Yellowtail, but about 14 million and hopefully thatfrees up a lot of the better quality stuff at the $14 - $16 price point for me.
digg this
| toast this!
| add to del.icio.us
| add to newsvine
| add to furl
| add to reddit
|
Posted in, Good Grape Daily: Pomace & Lees.
Permalink |
Comments (3)
| Print | Email This
