Investigative Reporting and Wine

[Rebel Rose]

JohnL raised the issue in another thread that the wine trade publications might arguably be responsible for twisting tails and stirring up controversy. Personally, I think only Wine Business Monthly, which is pretty much distributed only to those in the wine business, does a good job of covering breaking news, and their journalistic standards are pretty conservative.

Consumer wine magazines always seem to be lagging behind the latest issues and news by several months, if not entire years. I think there's a lot of inertia in print wine coverage. Glacial, in fact.

Or at least there has been untill the advent of blogging, and in particular the running commentary about interstate shipping issues on sites like Tom Wark's Fermentation.

If we were to create our own investigative-reporting-only wine publication, what would we name it? And what would your dream assignment be? What issues or facts would you mercilessly track? Who would you talk to? What's your conspiracy theory?

Who knows, maybe we'll come up with an actual investigation to be performed and revealed by the secret eGullet Society!

[jsolomon]

If we were to create our own investigative-reporting-only wine publication, what would we name it?

Oenocrat

And what would your dream assignment be?

Unfortunately, it would be something that's been done before: correlating styles between countries. I can always find information on French wine, but it's hard to understand how other countries' offerings fit in.

What issues or facts would you mercilessly track?

Differences in blue laws, of course.

Who would you talk to?

Rebel Rose, of course!

What's your conspiracy theory?

France, California, and Australia are trying to muscle everyone out

Edited March 7, 2006 by jsolomon (log)

[Eric Quanstrom]

Rebel Rose,

Clearly you must not forget to mention Appellation America - Wine Portal to this group... as the site is dedicated to truthful reporting in each and every wine region, or "appellation" USA and Canada Wine Regions.

The fact that the site's Regional Correspondents (disclaimer nec.), aka the Best Wine Writers in the Business are out there on the front lines-- in their respective beats-- presents the opportunity to get relevant news out (almost) as soon as it happens. The site is not bound by the strictures of print and therefore has a much quicker turnaround time for edited content.

-EQ

[Rebel Rose]

aka the Best Wine Writers in the Business

Thank you, Eric! It seems I am being prodded into a little shameless self-promotion, so I am delighted to announce that I am now a regional correspondent for Appellation America, covering the Paso Robles beat. I am thrilled to be working alongside writers like Dan Berger, Alan Goldfarb, and Thom Elkjer, whom I have been reading and hearing about since my entry into the field of wine.

In the next few weeks I will be interviewing soil scientist Dr. Tom Rice, who is completing a book on the soils of Paso Robles, some of the younger winemakers in our area on current winemaking trends and the future of terroir, French producers who have started their own wineries in Paso Robles, local women winemakers, and winery owners from both sides of the developing rift over subappellations.

So in essence, I already have a dream assignment!!

(Don't let that stop you from imaging your own. You never know . . .)