Can Wine Writers Write about the Wine Business?

by Andrew Chalk

At a past Wine Writer's Symposium the excellent Cyril Penn led a session on (paraphrasing) "Should Wine Writers Write Wine Industry Articles". I was almost the only person in the room who said 'no'. Wine writers got into the game for the romance of the wineyard, the aroma of new French oak, etc. I asked, only partly rhetorically, who could tackle the question "Who Paid The Tariffs?" (referring to the Airbus-Boeing initiated wine tariffs pre-COVID).

Now, a top wine writer illustrates my point. If you want to open a slucegate of error let a wine writer write about the wine business:

Eric Asimov, New York Times, paywall

What Can Be Done to Save the Ailing Wine Industry?

'Our critic has thoughts. Wine must emphasize its environmentalism and affordability.'

If he had looked at the industry experience he would have found answers like this (recovered via chatGPT):

Q: "which wine industry spokesman said consumers not interested in environmentaism when buying wine."?

chatGPT: I couldn’t find a clear attribution of the quote/perception exactly that “consumers are not interested in environmentalism when buying wine,” but I did locate something very close.

In an article titled “Why Consumers Aren’t Paying More for Sustainable Wine” (International Wine Challenge, Oct 2025) Tom Ashworth of Yapp Bros is quoted:

“People who care about it, care a lot about it. 85% are not interested, they buy for other reasons.”

IWC

So it seems most likely that Tom Ashworth is the industry spokesman who made that kind of claim — that a large proportion of customers aren’t interested in sustainability/environmental credentials when buying wine.

Hopefully the NYT paywall will supress the dissemination of the erroneous advice.