Wine Weenies Attack!
One of my greatest anxieties in writing my book was that I’d be a magnet for what I think of as the Gotcha-Squad of Wine Weenies. Who are wine weenies? They’re those baseball-stat-nerd-like people intent on making wine as confusing and elite as possible, because it makes them feel good. They started coming out of the woodwork today in response to my Star Tribune article.
So I feel I should just get this out on the table: Look Wine Weenies, you and I are not going to be friends. You want to be right, and I want to help the people you went to high school with have less stress in their lives when they bring wine to your house. The battle is on!
The particular salvo launched my way tonight was about Wikipedia (tech nerd + wine nerd = aaaahhh! Or the mirror…) and whether you can learn about wine from it. I say no. In my interview with Bill Ward I mentioned that you could read about Champagne on Wikipedia and come away knowing less than you did before you showed up there. I wish I had said that a little more clearly, I should have said not ‘knowing less’ but ‘unhelped and fearful’ — do wine people even know what a series of Wine encyclopaedia entries look like to regular people? They look intimidating, confusing, and like unreadable jargon.
People new to wine need to know a few basic things about Champagne: What it is, why it’s like that, and whether they like the taste of it in their mouth.
So, what is Champagne? It’s sparkling wine that’s made of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier grapes grown in a cold part of France where the grapes never get very ripe and sweet. Because they never got ripe and sweet, local winemakers developed a way of adding actual sugar and more yeast to the wines in the bottle, which evened out the alcohol and had the added benefit of creating phenomenal flavors. There are a few different types of French Champagne you’ll typically run in to: Grower Champagne (made by a single estate, this will hopefully be unique and express something about the place they’re grown), vintage Champagne (made in a very good year, these tend to be the most expensive), non-vintage Champagne (made by blending off years together, this tends to be what you’ll mostly see). You’ll sometimes see Champagne called blanc de blancs, this is made only with white grapes, Chardonnay, it will be a little toastier than most, and blanc de noirs, made only with the other two, it will be a little more flowery than most. Try one of each of these styles over the next year and you will know what you like!
That, in case you were wondering, is 195 words about Champagne. That’s all you need to know until you put some in your mouth and taste it. On the main Wikipedia page the word Chardonnay doesn’t appear until, by my count and as of today, word 2,744! Word 2,744? Are you kidding me? Are you aware that people have jobs, and kids, and lives? Dishwashers to load? Health care benefit help-lines to battle?
Trying to learn about wine on Wikipedia is like asking a friend if they could give you a ride to the grocery store, and in reply that person hands you the manual to their Saab and drives away.
I didn’t attack. I simply said you can’t learn about wine quickly and well on Wikipedia. Then nameless internet commenters swooped in via the Strib to claim I was full of it. Then I made my case for why this was so. Then someone made a whole new Wikipedia page to make their argument true. I’m utterly happy to let Wikipedia be Wikipedia and for me to be me. But I’m not going to be bullied into saying that Wikipedia is a great resource for people to learn about wine because it isn’t.
You have to have cookies enabled, and click on the “comments” on Bill Ward’s story. I can’t even get them on this computer (I have Firefox & No Script and haven’t a clue how to disable them, I’ve tried) but the second one starts: “Dara is so wrong on learning about wine on the Internet I giver her comment a 58 point score.”
Oh, and I said Google or Wikipedia. Not untruthful.
Why do you think they have to set aside 20% of the harvest in a Vintage year for NV Champagne? Because that means bad years are good years? You have facts but you don’t have any understanding. It’s simply to ensure better quality in the NV Champagne and preserve the brand of Champagne overall. That’s why Champagne is so good, because they manage the brand collectively. Off years are non-vintage years. They don’t declare a vintage because it was a bad year.
And I’ve been working as a journalist as Google and Wikipedia and your whole anonymous internet culture have disembowled the 4th estate; I have friends whose whole books are downloadable off the Internet without them, their publisher, or anyone seeing a red cent, and if you think that doesn’t happen you’re the one who should do some research. And I said Google or Wikipedia. And rewriting the sentences as you enter them without changing the content makes it legal, but still lame.
Oh, and if you think I get a lot of publicity out of the comments on the second page of a blog no one knows about, dream on.
Well, we’ll just have to differ there: I think Wikipedia is an excellent resource for learning about ‘anything’, including wine. Not only are the articles themeselves good (in general) but they are all referenced, so you can follow the links and learn about what interests you most.
And OK, I take back the bit about publicity! I guess you’re right: there’s not much publicity in comments in a secondary page of one wine blog amoung thousands!