Nine Insights Into the Evolution of The Wine Media in 2025
What's changed, what's expanded, what's new, and what's coming in the realm of the wie media.
The wine media landscape is today so dense with content of varying types it takes a constant effort to comprehend its breadth. But I still want to offer up an attempt at what I’ve observed in 2025.
The wine media has been a critical part (perhaps a fourth tier) of the industry in the U.S. since probably the 1980s. Its evolution has been significant since then, but one can follow that evolution primarily by observing the ongoing changes in publishing technology. The magazine and newspaper format was impacted by the emergence of printed newsletter technology and the fax. Then came the Internet and the democratizing of the publishing world, along with the death of newspapers’ classified ads financial foundation. Wine media was next impacted by the emergence of cheap and easy-to-use blogging platforms that let anyone compete with large media properties. Then came social media, which acted as an irresistible magnet pulling readers away from publishers while also becoming the primary source of readers for wine publications. Now, it is artificial intelligence that has yet to expose what will certainly be another evolution of the wine media world (though we have hints of what this new technology will bring about.
My own desire to highlight the best (human) wine writers working today and to bring wine consumers better and easier access to the expanding wine media led to my creation of THE SPILL—a free, daily email aggregating the best wine content on the web. It has seen consistent growth to 1,600 subscribers in three months, suggesting there is a genuine appetite for consumer wine content.
With that, nine observations on the wine media as 2025 comes to an end.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS COMPETING WITH HUMAN INTELLIGENCE IN THE WINE MEDIA
AI-written wine content is exploding. This is occurring most commonly in publications not dedicated to wine, but that occasionally include wine content in their publications. The output is, for the moment, identifiable and usually uninspiring with its bland, generic copy that summarizes broadly and communicates little in the way of personality. However, this will change as the technology improves and as those building the prompts discover that personality and insight can actually be derived from artificial intelligence. The downside is that in the future, we will see AI-generated wine content push out human wine writers as editors choose to forego the cost of paying a human being.
THE BLENDING OF TRADE AND CONSUMER WINE CONTENT
Over the past decade, the divide between consumer-focused wine content and trade-focused wine content has blurred. Today, we see numerous pieces of content, whether in the form of podcasts, videos, or text, that soften trade-oriented writing to make it more appealing to civilians. The Drinks Business, for example, does this dance with such alacrity that many of its articles can report trade news and appeal to consumers. It’s very impressive and very readable, particularly for more sophisticated wine consumers.