Wine Writers' Reviews - Up For Sale?

An organisation of The Wine Writers of New Zealand (http://www.winewriters.org.nz/) was recently established amid a flurry of great debate in both traditional press and social media circles over the last few weeks, and the debate is still raging on. The establishment of such a group alone is not particularly controversial except for one critical point - The organisation does not allow it's members to accept direct payments from wineries for reviewing it's wines.

In the founding members' eyes, accepting any form of payment from wineries for the review of wines immediately turns you in to a money-hungry corporate monkey who will gleefully embellish a wine review for your said fee. In their words "We believe the practice of supplying wine reviews for direct payment removes that independence, is highly undesirable, and has the potential to harm the reputation of all wine writers in New Zealand......Direct payments from wine producers to writers for published reviews remove the independence that is crucial to a critic's integrity, and upon which their reputation rests.  They also create a potential for bias, whether actual or perceived."

There are three areas with the above approach that I think are potentially flawed and worthy of further debate:

1) The size of the payments is important. Wine reviewers (that have been excluded) typically accept a very small administration fee for reviewing wines that they publish in their articles or websites. Bob Campbell MW used to do this until he joined the WWNZ organisation. Sam Kim, on his excellent website Wine Orbit, will happily bleed you of an extortionate NZD$34 to review your wine. Raymond Chan will up the ante so he can retire a bit earlier with a whopping NZD$37.95 for his review services. -> Are we now to believe that all of Bob Campbell's previous reviews have been sullied by payments he received ( I believe for a similar fee), and that Raymond & Sam are imminently corruptable for the price of a Gold-Class Movie Ticket??

2) WWNZ do not seem to have openly shunned other forms of payment/incentive/reward for their work. Wineries put on all sorts of trade events on a daily basis ranging from simple tastings, to lavish dinners, to sponsored weekends away. These all represent some form of benefit to the wine reviewer, and if we are to apply the WWNZ rule, allows for perceived bias of their wine reviews - PERHAPS MUCH MORE SO THAN A STANDARDISED, PUBLISHED & NOMINAL FEE OF +/-$35. Craggy Range recently held a tasting in Fiji of some of their wines for wine journalists from around the world and it would be hard not to view this type of event as significant reward for a wine writers' work. It is also worth pointing out that many of the WWNZ's members articles will be published in Newspapers in New Zealand which are funded by advertisers, some of which may be wineries, some of which may or may not be happy about spending money in a publication which gives them poor reviews -> Where do you draw the line for 'perceived' bias?

3) Was this 'No Fee/No Membership' rule really necessary in the establishment of a Wine Writers' Organisation for New Zealand? I have not once heard any whispers, murmurs or outright rumour of impropriety from wine writers for a review based on remuneration. New Zealand's wine writing has always been very professional, transparent and honest - Indeed a wine writers' long-term reputation and entire career depends on it. But more importantly the reputation, quality, and ongoing promotion of New Zealand wines domestically and internationally depends on it. Wine Reviewers perform an invaluable job for wineries, providing them with independent review services on which to benchmark the quality of their wines agains their peers - A service which could effectively become extinct should all writers decide to join this newly formed group (though I doubt very much this will be the case).

We applaud the move to create a Wine Writers' organisation in New Zealand. It is perhaps some while overdue - Australia has had an equivalent organisation since 1978, the Wine Communicators of Australia. (WCA) However, we do question why the group would be set up with this one critical rule which excludes so many talented wine writers in NZ and immediately casts a not-so-subtle shadow over their integrity. Instead of furthering the collective interest of wine journalism in New Zealand across all media, it seems to have immediately created a "them and us" culture which has split the wine writing community smack bang down the middle ("You're either with us or against us", George W. Bush styles).

Surely a more productive approach for the wine industry as a whole would be to establish the Wine Writers Organisation and then put this whole issue (of paid reviews) up for long-term debate and analysis by a much wider membership base? The WCA do an amazing job in Australia in furthering the interests, education and profile of wine writers in Australia (their recent sponsored tour with Rick Bakas a good case in point), and I would like to think that NZ's equivalent could do the same i.e. take a pro-active approach to furthering the industry. Unfortunately this seems very unlikely with the immediate exclusion of a large number of the wine writing community in New Zealand based on five founding members' initial opinions on what is or isn't right.

Richard Smith