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2018 American Wine Writer Survey:
Tom Wark
Tom Wark is the owner of Wark Communications, a wine industry public relations firm that has worked with wineries, wine media companies, wine technology and other industry entities since 1990. He is one of the founders of the Wine Bloggers Conference, as well as the American Wine Blog Awards. Since 2004, he has published FERMENTATION: The Daily Wine Blog. He can be reached at tom@warkcommunications.com
transformed to include wine social media communications, but here’s the dirty little secret: The vast majority of quality wine information that is shared on social media platforms originates with professional wine writers. This is a reminder of two things: the wine media matters as much as ever, and social media is a content distribution system, not a content generation system. T O D AY,
WINE
COM M U N IC AT ION
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What wine-related subject matter do you most commonly cover? (Choose up to three) ANSWER CHOICES
RESPONSE PERCENT
Profiles of wineries or wine personalities
68%
Reviews of wines
59%
Wine-related travel
45%
Food paired with wine
43%
The terroir and winemaking of wine regions
39%
How-to or educational information (varietals, regions, winemaking, grape growing)
32%
Wine related news
28%
Local wine-related events and news
26%
Wine business
23%
Business, viticulture, winemaking information for the wine trade
22%
Introductory wine education for consumers
22%
74 December 2018 WBM
It is the first fact that motivated me to undertake the 2018 American Wine Writer Survey, an investigation into who makes up the wine media, how they work and what they think. The survey was conducted mid-year 2018 and is the fourth such survey I’ve conducted, beginning in 1994 and followed up in 2004, 2010 and now 2018. Let me get to the heart of the matter right up front. Since that first survey was conducted in 1994, the wine media has changed drastically while at the same time remained remarkably similar. What’s changed and will continue to change is who is doing the writing and the format in which they are doing it. What has not changed is how the wine media carries out their work and what they write about. The subject matter covered by wine writers is a pretty stable thing: wine remains fermented grape juice. How is it made? Where is it made? Who is making it? What does it taste like? Where can you get it? These questions, according to the 2018 Wine Writer Survey, remain the focus of the wine writer’s work and are likely to continue to be the subject of the wine media’s pursuit for decades to come. The survey showed that the most common subject matter covered by wine writers were profiles of wineries or people, reviews of wine, wine travel, food and wine pairing, and wine regions. This is nearly identical to what respondents said in the 2004 wine writer survey. Yet as the 2018 American Wine Writer Survey showed, the people doing the writing are changing.