Jeff Siegel: The Ramble

In a bit of a farewell interview, one of America's most consistent and consequential wine writers/bloggers takes a ramble with me.

In 2007, during the height of the wine blogging craze when fools, friends, and fanatics of wine rushed to make their bid to become the next big voice in wine, Jeff Siegel launched a blog dedicated to “wine that most of us drink – cheap wine.” THE WINE CURMUDGEON was born. In February 2024 The Wine Curmudgeon will come to an end as Jeff stops publishing—after more than 4,700 posts and articles. Having watched the wine blog movement and being a student of the wine media for more than three decades, I can say that no one, no writer, no blogger, has been a more consistent and regular voice than Jeff Siegel.

When he announced that he would shut down The Wine Curmudgeon (Jeff had migrated his work to Substack in February 2021 as a paid publication that I subscribed to immediately) I was shocked. Jeff and his curmudgeonly voice have always been there for me and for the thousands of readers to appreciate his dedication to well-priced wines, his somewhat sarcastic commentary on the wine industry, and his genuine reporting on the news and issues of the day. In announcing that The Wine Curmudgeon would see its last post on January 15, 2024, Jeff noted that the primary reason was that his blog and its focus on affordable wines had become “Irrelevant”.

I wondered if this was a brave admission or just frustration and I wanted to know more. I’ve admired Jeff’s work for a very long time, read him regularly, and appreciated his freelance work for other publications that almost always delved into the business and politics of wine. And it was Jeff’s move to Substack that motivated me to make the jump. I had questions.

Below are those questions, and Jeff’s responses. It’s a long, rambling interview as most of these Rambles are. But stick with it. Jeff is someone who has watched and written about the wine industry and wine for a very long time. There’s a lot of insight below.
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This interview approach, “The Ramble”, begins with one question emailed to the subject. They respond in any way they choose, which in turn prompts my next response, and so on. It is a less formal way of conducting an interview, results in something a bit messier and rambling, but also produces something more interesting and authentic I think.
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TOM: Thank you for participating in this Ramble. You’ve had a lot to say for a very long time. And you’ve offered your thoughts on wine and the wine industry perhaps more consistently and prolifically than any other wine writer for almost two decades. You really caught my attention when on November 16 you announced in an issue of your Substack that you would shut down the Substack altogether and likely do very little writing of your own. You described your writing as appearing to you to be irrelevant and this was a primary reason for your decision to shut down The Wine Curmudgeon. Along those lines, you noted the following as contributing to this irrelevance: “the wine business has decided that it wants to immolate itself at the altar of $20 wine, and nothing I have done seems to have changed that one bit.” First, explain what you mean by this. It sounds like a very serious indictment of the wine industry in the United States.

JEFF: First, thanks for the very kind words. I've worked hard to do what you describe: to be prolific and consistent. And, I may I add, honest and transparent.

The immolation line is supposed to be a serious indictment of the wine business, and I've talked to many people who agree with me -- though they don't necessarily have the freedom to say so in public.

Years ago, Mike Veseth wrote a piece that said wine, if it continued on its current path, could become something like opera -- a niche product appreciated by a few but seen by the rest of us as something snotty and outdated. And I remember reading that and laughing. How could wine ever end up like that?.

Well, I was wrong. Wine is becoming like that. This is not to say that wine is going to disappear. It will still exist. But not the way we know it today, It will be smaller and less interesting and less fun, and lots of people are going to lose jobs and money and all the rest because of this short-sighted and avaricious approach.

In fact, the parallels between wine and opera or classical music or anything similar to those are spooky -- they're expensive, they appeal to a very limited -- and aging -- demographic, and too much of the rest of the world sees them as something for old farts. When's the last time you heard someone younger than 40 say they wanted to pay $100 to watch "La Traviata?" Or, for that matter, $40 for a bottle of wine. And do you know how many releases I get describing $40 wine as affordable?

So what does wine do to combat this problem? It makes itself more expensive, more snotty, and less likely to appeal to someone who isn't a member of its limited -- and aging --demographic. A friend of mine, who is one of the best wine numbers people in the country, used to make jokes about selling wine to the Baby Boomers until the last one was dead. Now, he seems to think wine is sort of serious about it. And why not? Those of us who think wine needs to expand its market past its base are mostly seen as troublemakers who don't understand the way wine works.

Because there seems to be the thought: "Well, there has always been wine. So there always will be." To which I say: Why? Whose rule is that? I'll bet the people who sold Yellow Pages advertising thought the same thing.

I spent my wine writing career -- which was successful and helped me earn a decent living -- writing about entry level wines and sharing the joy and fun that is wine. Now, what's the point of writing about entry level wines when there are no entry level wine drinkers?

TOM: It’s a depressing scenario. Still, push back, if you will, on this response: The vast majority of wine sold in the United States is under $20 per bottle. This is not to say that the vast majority of wines sold in the United States are under $20.00 per bottle. In fact the vast majority of bottles cost in excess of that $20.00 price point. But it seems to me that the market is supplying what the vast majority of people want: a simple, grape-based liquid that possesses a moderate level of alcohol. Now, if you develop a slightly heightened interest in this form of alcohol, there are thousands of interesting wines (generally at higher prices) that you can choose from. This strikes me as similar to the spirits or beer industries in which the vast majority of sales of those products are relatively inexpensive, while the vast majority of bottling. (or “canning”) are more expensive. 

JEFF: That's a very company line argument, Tom -- we give the people what they want and then they can move up the chain (or not). I will assume you enjoy playing Devil's Advocate. <insert clever emoji here> 

There are flaws in this argument that the industry has long ignored. First, there is no evidence that the so-called "gateway" wine exists. That is, there is no entry level wine people buy first, and then move on to the expensive stuff. In fact, what little evidence there is suggests just the opposite. If you bought white zinfandel, you mostly kept buying white zinfandel, even though that was touted as a gateway wine.

Second, what other industry fobs off the entry level customer s irrelevant?

Finally, all of this well and good if more people were buying wine. But they aren't. By almost every survey, sales in both volume and dollars are declining and will continue to do so.

How is that giving people what they want? You're giving them something they are turning away from.

TOM: I’ve heard this before in various ways: The wine industry hasn’t given consumers any reason to drink wine beyond the perceived prestige of the product, a prestige that is pushed by the industry in terms of marketing and higher price points. The whole effort makes wine less approachable to the average American and seems like an elitist drink and this isn’t working—particularly where higher pricing is concerned. 

If I understand your critique correctly, the industry hasn’t spent enough time and money giving consumers a wider array of wine choices at a lower price point that, instead of relying on the more complex and nuanced aspects of wine and its history (terroir, varietal, laying wine down, etc.) and instead of relying on aspirational messages built around images of rich, well off men or white table cloth restaurant wine service), these wines took themselves less seriously by meeting customers where they were and how they lived, spoke to how wine fit into the average person’s life, wasn’t so serious but all the while explored different flavors. Does this sound like the kind of approach that would have better served the customer and the wine industry?

JEFF: Spot on. I don't think I have anything to add to that. You've encapsulated wine's problems as well as anyone ever has. Any time the word "aspirational" is used, those of us who drink wine because we like it are screwed.

Wine should be fun. It isn't much anymore, and the industry -- producers, marketers, wholesalers, too many retailers, and the Winestrean Media -- is happy with that development. 

So nuts to them. I have my La Vieille rose, my Gascon, Spanish, and Sicilian whites, and my d'Abruzzo and Spanish reds. All cost less than $12, all are terrific and food friendly, and all are fun.

TOM: Jeff, one of the really interesting things about your announcement that after 16 years you’d be shutting down The Wine Curmudgeon is that your explanation for its demise had something to do with your lack of success in convincing the wine industry to mend its ways, take threats more seriously, question premiumization and, ultimately, give drinkers more quality choices at a lower price. That you thought you were unsuccessful in this tells me you approached your writing in part as an exercise in advocacy. 

Personally, I recognize this kind of approach to writing about wine. And I think I’ve been partially successful in helping the wine trade appreciate, for example, the harm done to producers and retailers and ultimately consumers by the three-tier system. Yet, I also know that whatever success I’ve had in spreading that message is dwarfed by the kind of change that has not happened. Talk to me a little about this idea of writing and communicating from the perspective of an advocate and just how much our admired lack of success in pursuing your goals through writing helped convince you to shut down The Wine Curmudgeon.

JEFF: Yes, absolutely advocacy. Most of the Winestream Media, as even many of its members admit, aren't there to educate and help consumers understand wine. They are there, as one of them said in a podcast on the blog, to drink good wine, hobnob with wine movers and shakers, and give scores.

So I wanted to be different. My newspaper background taught me how to write service and consumer journalism, and that's what I tried to do. And which I think I did well. My favorite quote from a reader: "No one is paying you for favorable press.” Which is the impression so many consumers have, even if it isn't necessarily true. Which, of course, the wine business ignores.

Now, I never expected to solve problems by myself. But I did think -- and call me naive, since I truly do believe in the power of the printed word, cyber and otherwise -- that as the Internet grew in popularity, that wine writing would be democratized and that people like myself would be part of a larger, "Isn't wine fun and let's talk about all of the great wine we drink" community. And it could cost $10 and no one would be embarrassed. In other words, most of the rest of the world.

Which, until 2013, sort of happened. The blog's growth until then was stratospheric, and then it wasn't. There are a lot of reasons for that, including the role Google plays in sending traffic around the Internet, which has more to do with what Google wants people to see than anything else. (Yes, I'm cynical about this.) 

But most of the reason my traffic fell off, as I suspect it did for others, is that the younger consumers surfing the Internet didn't look for wine the way their parents and grandparents did. They weren't interested in wine, so they didn't look for reviews and scores and so forth. Or even learn how the three-tier system makes wine more expensive, for the benefit of a handful of wholesalers.

And without younger people, there can't be community the way I hoped there would be. There are just a lot of older people, mostly men, writing about wine on-line and who are read by a smaller and smaller audience. And what's the point of that? If I want to write for myself, I'll write in my diary.

My failure was not that I tried and didn't succeed in changing the world. The failure is in the system, which will resist change until there is no system left.

TOM: You are right about the fall off in blog readership around 2012/2013. I always associated it with the rise of social media, which really has swallowed up nearly everything. 

But while selling wine to a younger generation is a concern of mine, I think my biggest fear is the rise of institutional Neo-prohbitionism. You’ve been writing about the issue of wine and Heald and neo-prohibitionism for as long as I can remember. In my view, the threat of government action against alcohol is greater now than it has ever been. Let’s play King-For-A-Day. If you were in charge of how the wine industry responds to this threat what would you tell the industry to do? How would you tell it to respond to the threat? For that matter, how would you describe the threat?

JEFF: Your point about social media and the fall in blog numbers is interesting. But I should note I never had much luck with social media, despite making tremendous efforts, And I finally gave it up.

I think the two problems you describe - young people and the Neos -- are ying and yang. If there are no younger wine drinkers, who is going to object when the CDC and its allies come looking for wine (as well as spirits and beer)? It's certainly not going to be the aging Baby Boomers.

I don't have the answer to your questions, Tom. For one thing, I'd make a lousy king for a day, since all I would do is make sure everyone knew about the Ramones. Besides, I'm not an expert in lobbying, health, or even marketing.

What I do know is that the solution will require everyone in the wine business -- producers, wholesalers, retailers, importers, and the rest-- to work together. Which is almost impossible, and may be wine's biggest problem. Witness the Trump wine tariff, where the industry was helpless in fighting something that was an existential threat. That's because no one likes anyone else, no one wants to work with anyone else, and no one has much in common with anyone else. Small producers and Big Wine, though they make the same product, live in completely different universes. And what does an independent retailer have in common with Total Wine and Costco? And there is the second tier, which sees itself as above the business and its problems.

So get these people to agree to talk about doing something, and you've scored a tremendous victory.

TOM: You’ve mentioned your blog Wine Curmudgeon and its extraordinary growth then its plateau. You were one of the early wine bloggers and you did have tremendous success. I‘m not sure folks appreciate the impact of easy-to-use and inexpensive blogging platforms and the revolution in wine writing that resulted. Talk a little bit about your experience as a member of the wine media in those early years of blogging. How did blogging change the realm of wine communications and media? Were there wine bloggers you think made a particular impact? And what about that cadre of consumers who indulged your writing and that of other wine bloggers? Do you have thoughts on how they were impacted? And of course, you need to tell us what you believe is the future of independent voices in wine writing be they on blogs, on Substack, or otherwise.

JEFF: Again, thanks for the kind words. It was a different time, and I hope saying that doesn't make me sound like an old white guy who walked uphill to school in the snow both ways.

I was just writing about my experience then, recounting those wild and woolly days for a retrospective post on the blog. There were so many people writing about wine on the Internet back then that one woman proposed setting up some sort of wine writing accreditation to keep the riffraff out. Which, of course, I was proud to be, and still consider myself to be. Cheap wine equals riffraff, yes? One of the plan's supporters wrote a comment somewhere that asked (and I'm paraphrasing): "How am I going to be rich and famous like Robert Parker if I have to compete with so many people who don't know anything?"

That made me laugh, but I should have been crying. Because that guy was more right than he knew. When all those people discovered there was no money in wine blogging, almost all of them vanished. And I mean no money -- I took ads, subscribed to ad networks, and did everything imaginable to make money. I even had a media kit for potential advertisers. At its peak, the blog had more than one-half-million visitors a year and tremendous high-end demographics, equal to the Wine Enthusiast -- and I never made more than $400 or $500 a year. 

There were a handful of exceptions, of course -- Joe Roberts, Alder Yarrow, and Jon Thorsen, among others. They figured out what the rest of us didn't. 

I can't say I blame the people who left, and I'm not complaining that I never made any money. For one thing, I've always been a lousy businessman. My freelancing (wine and otherwise) supported the blog, which I did as a platform for my writing, for marketing myself, and because I wanted to spread the gospel of quality, cheap wine. And it did all those things. Making a lot of money would have been nice, but I never expected to.

You ask: "How did blogging change the realm of wine communications and media?" I don't think it did. It had its day, ran its course, and save for the exceptions I mentioned, is probably something hardly anyone remembers. I always think of it as a band that was popular for a while and then disappeared, sort of like Rick Springfield. I went to a wine dinner in Dallas just before the pandemic, and not only was I the oldest one there, but I was the only wine writer. The rest were younger, mostly women, who wrote about food and lifestyle. One woman told me she preferred spirits to wine, since it was less expensive and lasted longer.

If you believe the surveys (and I do), then the only people who still read wine criticism are the aging Baby Boomers, who have always read it. Everyone else gets suggestions from their friends and family, if they care about wine. And most of them, say the surveys, apparently don't. So no, I don't think there's much of a future for what I do, which is why I'm not going to do it anymore.

Yes, I'm letting down my readers -- and I do still have quite a few. And yes, that does bother me. But at some point, even I need to make a smart financial decision.

The exceptions to all of this are the people who have figured out how to make money on the Internet from wine writing. I've mentioned some of them, and you apparently figured it out, too. And I've talked to several others who say they see a way to do it. Maybe it's Substack, though some smart people have told me they don't think the platform can ever get enough depth and breadth to benefit more than a handful of people.

So no, I'm not optimistic about a future with lots of bright, smart, independent voices writing about wine. And I'm not happy about that, either.

TOM: I think the most important legacy of the blogging era is the continued existence of cheap, easy-to-use platforms that allow any and ever voice to let loose. Yes, it means a lot of mediocrity comes to the fore, but it also means that some great and thoughtful voices, when they emerge, have a means to expose themselves and their ideas.

One of the things I like to do in these Rambles is throw out topics with no explanation or context and let my Rambling partners give their current thoughts on the subject. Feel free to be as short or verbose as you like with the following topics:

NATURAL WINE

JEFF: Natural wine? Not many at my price point, so I haven;t dealt with it much.

TOM: WINE POLITICS

JEFF: I don't think it's as much about party and Trumpism and all of that as it is about the three tiers against each other, California against everyone else, Big Wine vs. everyone else, Big Retail against everyone else, and so on and so forth.

 And let's not forget everyone against cheap, quality wine, because that's just not cool enough.

TOM: THE CURRENT STATE AND FUTURE OF THE WINE MEDIA?

JEFF: What wine media? This is meant to be funny, but -- as noted here before -- most wine drinkers don't read the wine media, and those that do are getting older and drinking less wine.

TOM: One of the things you’ve done throughout your career, Jeff, is regularly reach out to various experts in the wine industry to supplement your reporting. It’s one of the things I’ve admired. You have that reporter’s sense that you bring to commentary. But as you know, all sources are not created equal. Think about the folks who have provided you with really valuable commentary and input over the years. Since you are leaving the blogging/reporting space, who are the folks you leave behind that consumers and members of the trade need to be paying attention to when they speak? Who are the really smart people in wine?

JEFF: Thank you for that. I wish there was more reporting in wine writing and less pontificating. Things happen for a reason, but too many in the wine writing business just assume they happen -- or that they don't happen because they don't think they should happen. Witness the slump in wine demand and the Neos. The wine media should have seen each as the existential threats they are, and should have jumped on each. But they didn't, and wine is the worse for it these days.

I wrote a freelance piece that did actual reporting to describe the precarious economic position that many small- and medium-sized California wineries find themselves in after the pandemic -- less demand for wine, climate change, difficulty getting insurance (when they can even find it), and higher labor costs (when they can find workers). But it never ran. The story was "vetted" by several "experts" who said it couldn't possibly be true, because things like that don't happen in California.

Who should people talk to? I don't know that I can offer specific names. Besides, why get them in trouble by saying who they are? One thing I've found over the years -- it's not always good to be associated with someone who doesn't parrot the company line. I can offer a rule of thumb, though, that I learned years ago. Find someone who knows more than you do about the subject, and ask smart questions. Don't assume you know everything and then look for sources to reinforce what you think you know. And when you interview them, shut up and let them talk. They're the experts; you're not.

TOM: What always bothered me—and it has been like this for as long as I’ve been in the business—is that the vast majority of mainstream media reporting on wine is sensationalist: “Experts can’t identify Red from White wine blind.” Or: “Wine sells for $100,000 at auction”. This isn’t news and it’s not serious reporting. There are some good “reporters” covering wine. But not many of them. Part of the problem is that structurally the wine business is not like others with its three-tier systems and franchise laws and other systems are genuinely foreign and hard to understand. This is a deterrence to most reporters and writers.

So, before we end this little Rambe, I have to ask the question I’ve always wondered about. You clearly love wine. You know wine and you understand its intricacies. You could have probably made just as long a career writing about all sorts of wine be it $15 or $150. What is it that led you to write about inexpensive wine? Why did you decide to commit to this angle? And was there a time in The past 16 years when you considered focusing at least as much on wines well beyond the lower priced wines? 

JEFF: The reason wine reporting is so bad in the mainstream media is that wine is not only complicated, but it's not considered to be important. It's just something that some snobby people -- and the French -- drink. So anyone who is going to report about wine for most mainstream news organizations is a general assignment reporter. And don't overlook that a lot of assigning editors don't care about wine, and so think it's even less important (and I had to deal with my share of those).

The irony -- and even the wine trade media don't always appreciate this -- is that the wine business is hugely important economically. This is not just in California, where it's one of the biggest economic drivers in the state, but around the country. It's just not an agri-business, but a wholesaling and retailing business, with lots of multi-billion dollar companies. Where's the business reporting to make sense of this for consumers? Just once I'd like to see someone in the media, wine or otherwise, explain how the three-tier system reduces choice and raises prices, so that wine drinkers would finally understand that they're getting screwed so a handful of rich companies can get even richer -- and mostly privately-held companies, so not even stockholders can benefit.

Tom, anyone can write about expensive wine. How difficult is it to taste a $50 wine and wax poetic? What's the fun in that? And who is going to read you? They've already got how many other publications and websites that do that? I am, at heart, a newspaper reporter who sees my job as educating and informing, whether it's about the school board or city hall or the cops. And, in wine, the huge, gaping hole has always been the wine that most people can afford to buy. No one writes about it. Now, even if I didn't love cheap wine because so much of it so well made and its price allows us to drink it more than a couple of times a month, how could anyone who wants an audience pass that up?

TOM: The winery DTC Shipping channel is worth over $4 billion by itself and the entire market is worth somewhere around $70 - $80 billion. Of course, the other aspect of wine that leads to insubstantial reporting is alcohol: people think alcohol and they think drunks, It leads to bad puns, which usually leads to bad reporting.

Your point about there being a gaping hole in wine writing where the inexpensive but most commonly consumed wines fall is well taken. And now, the only vehicle for reporting on and reviewing lower priced wines I going away when you put The Wine Curmudgeon to bed after all these years. It’s a shame.

So, what are your plans? Will you continue to write? Will you do more hard reporting on wine for other media? Retire? What kind of curmudgeon are you going to become?

JEFF: I appreciate, again, your kind words. But the blog did what I hoped it would do, it did it for a long time, and it ran its course. There just isn't any demand for the wine writing I do -- which speaks to wine's woes, not mine.

I am still going to work. I have always freelanced, in addition to writing the blog, and that won't end. I'm going to try do to more non-wine writing, something that I enjoy but haven't been able to do much of in many years. At one time, I wrote a lot about American hard-boiled detective fiction and was even a (very) minor authority on the novelist Raymond Chandler.

At the very least, I won't have to write any more tasting notes (or only an occasional one). Which, actually, was the worst part of consumer wine writing.

TOM: Well, here’s hoping you continue to do freelancing that focuses on good, hard, wine news. Thank you for participating in this Ramble, Jeff. I’ve always counted you as one of the wine writing world’s most interesting and consistently informed voices. And I know others have as well. You’ll be missed.