A Thanksgiving Message of Wine and the Usefulness of Celebrity

Joel Stein's "Corrupt Wine Writer" Substack is just what the Industry ordered

I have not warmed to Joel Stein’s brand of wine commentary since I took him to task 16 years ago over his column in the LA Times where he denigrated wine drinkers who describe what wines taste like to them. I may have been a bit harsh:

“I’ll tell you what I smell: An insecure jackass who can’t stand the idea that others are more capable than he and interested enough in a topic to actually deploy the English language to dig deeper into their area of interest.”

Let me say here what I didn’t say way back then: Mr. Stein is a very good writer and a witty one at that. He just isn’t too insightful or interesting when he writes about wine. However, this did not stop me from subscribing to his recently created Substack Newsletter, “The Corrupt Wine Writer”.

Stein’s new wine Substack is something of a spinoff of his wildly popular other Substack, “The End of My Career”, a weekly series of missives mainly about the culture that attracts thousands of readers/subscribers. There he has occasionally written about wine topics ranging from how to order off restaurant wine lists (where he explains that “Wines taste different depending on the food”) to how to match foods with wines (in which he explains, “While learning grape varieties and regions can be fun – in the sense that staying home on Saturday nights to watch documentaries about Theodore Roosevelt is fun – it is unnecessary”).

That said, the wine world needs Joel Steins and Substack newsletters like “The Corrupt Wine Writer.”

The idea of a well-known writer (Stein is a prolific writer who has seen his articles published in Time, the LA Times, Entertainment Weekly, and numerous other publications and is a published book author) who can denigrate all manner of people and things and places aiming at wine and the wine world is something I can get behind.

An average wine drinker who is willing to take advice from a famous person they trust, regardless of how much they denigrate wine, is the most likely person to become an above-average wine drinker—someone willing to move on from suffering Stein’s mocking disdain for wine and embrace the larger world of wine and the support of the artisans and interesting wines their heightened interested inevitably uncovers.

The thing about celebrities willing to preach to their fans about all manner of ideas, products, philosophies, and politics (and wine) is that they are comically consistent in their shallowness. Stein is this, but he can also be funny. Inevitably, some portion of the fans who read or listen to their celebrity crush are likely to move on, leave the object of their fandom behind, and investigate further. And this, again, is why celebrities authoritatively offering shallow tidbits about wine is a very good thing.

In his first attempt at being a corrupt wine writer, Stein opines what wines to serve with Thanksgiving dinner. Among his rules, we get this:

“But there’s one thing you shouldn’t do. Which is spend more than $20 on a bottle.I know, it’s a special occasion. These are people you love and maybe see once a year. You want to go big. But these are people who good wine is wasted on. They are not your wine friends. This is your family. It’s amazing that after all these years of disappointment, you have not yet learned that your family doesn’t appreciate anything you’re into. Even if a lot of them are into wine, Thanksgiving is not a meal of contemplation. You aren’t going to sit there sniffing and appreciating subtle notes. This is an American holiday. It’s speed and excess and talking with your mouth open.”

Who can argue with this? Why would you open a special bottle for your family and your friends who traveled to your home to share the ultimate communal meal that celebrates the little things that give life meaning? Better to pull out the bland, inexpensive stuff to quickly pour into our gaping, food-stuffed holes. Save the really good stuff for when you are alone or with friends who can describe wines with obscure references just like you.

Stein may not be just the right kind of celebrity that wine needs to juice its sales. He doesn’t sing in front of thousands of people and keeps a football player on his arm. He hasn’t recently retired from a long, celebrated career playing basketball. And he’s not a has-been movie star who was in that one film with the funny guy and did the ejaculate-in-the-hair joke. And Joel isn’t Jay either.

But, I suspect a good portion of the 15,000 subscribers to his original substack will migrate and subscribe to The Corrupt Wine Writer, where some portion of those will discover wine is a world worth exploring and will, with any luck, get sucked down into the rabbit hole as we did.

As for Thanksgiving and wine, I don’t have any suggestions or recommendations for you and I can’t tell you what we will be serving to our guests at our home in Salem. That’s Kathy’s realm. She picks the wines. She’s better at that sort of thing. If it were me, I’d just pick the cheap stuff and call it a day rather than wasting the interesting, different, celebrated, or expensive stuff on these people in my home.