The Necessary Lament

Karen MacNeil says out loud what many of us are thinking about wine and wine writing

Rants are easy. I outta know. I’m the king of rants.

But a genuine lament? Well, that’s something altogether different. To get away with and produce a genuine lament you have to have something at stake. It has to be personal. A lament is heartfelt. And this is why you don’t see too many genuine laments.

But we did a few days ago:

Nothing Left To Say: The End of Wine Writing?

I truly adore Karen MacNeil. She’s sweet. Earnest. Smart. Generous. And I think everyone reading this knows her or who she is. But to appreciate this sad and thoughtful essay she pushed in her newsletter, WineSpeed, you have to remember something about her. Nearly her entire working career has been in wine. She has lived in Napa wine country forever. Her friends are in wine. She married a winemaker. She wrote America’s best-selling wine book. She helped launch the careers of others who made a career in wine. But, above all, for most, she is a wine writer.

So, when Karen MacNeil decides to brood publicly over whether or not the wine writing project is over, it’s best to listen.

If, by now, you’ve read Karen’s essay, you know that the bulk of it is a recitation of the sad headwinds that are impacting wine at the moment, but also another long, sad list of the different ways wine writing has changed over the past two decades or so: