By Andy Neather
📅 15 November 2023
Few subjects are as thorny for wine writers as their dependence on the industry – for samples, travel and more. We hear whispers of conflicts of interest at wine publications: many producers assume they have to “pay to play” if they want coverage. So perhaps it was just a matter of time before vignerons could pay to have their wine reviewed. Who Pays The Wine Critic
This was the service offered for the first time last month by Editions Féret, publisher since the nineteenth century of classic reference work Bordeaux et ses Vins and now digitally re-launched by owner Stéphane Zittoun. Producers can pay €160 per custom tasting note from one of a small group of journalists and experts.
A press release boasts that “for producers, it is the opportunity to have the wine of their choice, of the vintage they wish, tasted by the journalist they have chosen, when they want.” The seven critics recruited to date include the UK’s Chris Kissack, publisher of Winedoctor, and Richard Hemming MW of 67 Pall Mall in Singapore.
The move has provoked social media ire. Nick Jackson MW tweeted, “The slow death, by suicide, of independent wine criticism is one of the most unexpected and dispiriting legacies of the post-Parker era.”
Others are more equivocal. US food and wine critic Jon Bonné tweeted that it might represent proper recompense for critics: “as someone who’s long struggled to put a dollar figure on [these] skills, it fascinates me that this figure is now out there in the world”.
Kissack himself is more forthright. For a start, he tells me, “I can write what I wish about the wines, and score them as I see fit. There is no pressure to score high from Editions Féret.” He also contrasts the transparency of the Féret process with present practices: “I see up-and-coming influencers as well as well-established big-name wine communicators travelling the world’s wine regions, dining in prestigious restaurants, drinking expensive wines… with no hint that any of this was paid for by someone else.”
It is a question not just of how wine criticism is paid for, but what it is for.
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