David S. Eley

With the written word quality is all that counts: there is no possible reason that a blogger’s 400 words cannot be equal in quality to a 5000 word essay. Short stories helped the careers of Hemingway & F. Scott Fitzgerald; A.A. Gill mesmerizes with erudite and succinct flurries of adjectives bound within his own grammatical dexterity… and Jay McInerney lends literary gravitas to words on wine… while the majority of wine blog postings all too frequently obfuscate meaning, diminish prose writing to Chav level and make wine seem as complex as Coca Cola.There will always be different levels, and to paraphrase an age-old cliche, as with any skill, those who can’t write all too frequently blog… we must suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous bloggery to locate occasional gems, though all too frequently, extreme self regard, emperor’s clothing and advertorial disingenuity block our path. It is hard to craft fine journalism or elegant prose with repetitive back label phrasing, but it is possible to write well of the people, places and sensations which surround the great subject of wine. Alas, there is such a dearth of quality in wine journalism and a keenness to both self-promote and push the product, that any intellectual aspiration is sucked clean up the chimney-piece. If talented people wrote about fine wine as they do about food, gastronomy or travel, this worthy subject might metamorphose from the ugly duckling domain of those whose day jobs subsidize their ramblings, into the elegant swan of an Elizabeth David or Richard Olney… these are the people who transported us to another world when reading of ‘mere’ cookery. Anecdotal wine writing of quality seems to have stopped at Hugh Johnson, we now live in an age of picture books peppered with jargon but no imagination or creativity. When I see my regular dose of Winepectator spam arrive in the mailbox each day – proffering a ’4.99 Merlot to accompany my lamb kebabs’, I sense the ‘everyday’ world of wine is hereby defined; I feel diminished and my heart sinks. The rich and endlessly fascinating subject of fine wine deserves better.

Spear

@David Eley – the problem is exactly that – most bloggers write their 400 words with a very different audience and an alternate attention span in mind. The quality of the writing, putting aside better and worse for now, would necessarily be different to proper literary writing.

Neil, I would go so far as to say blogging is killing traditional writing in general – not just about wine. An unfortunate consequence of the Google generation.

David S. Eley

Dear Mr Spear, I take your point: alas, grammar is grammar and I am not just referring to the literary merit of any online posting, but on a more basic level, the inadequacy of those who purport to be ‘wine professionals’ – if they cannot spell or research their facts correctly, it is a pretty sorry state of affairs. Puts me in mind of the ‘plays what Ernie Wise wrote’ (sic)- though Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise provided entertainment at a much higher level than the train spotterish drivel offered on some wine blogs. While there continue to be young and ambitious new wine producers, there will always be vinous tick-birds whose online organs feed off their ‘victim’s’ goodwill… this limited and dubious media exposure has questionable merit; certainly in terms of any commerce gained by those whose need is great. They do say, any publicity is good publicity… but reading execrable tasting notes and commentary is the vinous equivalent of viewing B movie Sci-Fi, or better still, watching paint dry. As to your comment ‘a different audience with an alternate attention span’, I quite agree, when I read the frequently sycophantic comments of blog disciples, I can only imagine they require very little cerebral stimulation to ignite their seemingly limitless passion for wine-related piffle.

Finally, with reference to your comment to Neil, you are absolutely spot-on, the immediate gratification of online exchanges has killed letter writing and those who still indulge are considered dinosaurs. The spontaneity and speed of the email removes time for consideration, doubt or second-thoughts… furthermore, it has seemingly killed off the last vestiges of courtesy in correspondence.