Monday, May 22, 2017

Rant: Wineries, We Don't Care About Medals

Sure, all of those shiny medals and brightly colored ribbons hanging on your wine bottles look pretty but I don't care about them. And I'm not the only one. I think it's safe to say that most wine writers feel the same, that the fact your wine won a handful of silver, gold or even double gold medals is basically meaningless to us.

I attend numerous media/trade wine tastings, meeting many winery representatives, wine makers, winery owners, importers, distributors, PR reps and more. As I taste their wines, it's inevitable that a significant majority of these individuals will boast of the medals that their wines have won. That is when my eyes glaze over and my ears shut down. It's not something I'm going to write about and it's not something that matters to me in the least. It's a waste of your words.

Consumers might be interested in hearing you talk about your medals but most wine writers I've spoken to would rather not hear about them. We would rather judge the wine on its own merits, rather than caring about how well that wine did at some wine competition. In a similar respect, we don't want to hear about your wine scores either, as they too are basically useless to us.

We do want to hear about your story, about the people behind the winery. We do want the technical specifications, though some of us want more than others. We want to hear about what makes your wines unique. And we will taste your wines and decide on our own what we think about them. If any of us really wants to know about your medals and wine scores, then we will ask, but I doubt many will inquire about those.

Please also consider the fact that at many of these trade tastings, our tasting time is limited so we may not spend lots of time at any one table. As such, you need to be succinct, providing us the most valuable information in a short period of time. Don't waste that time bragging about your medals when that is the last thing we want to know. You can brag about your medals to the consumers.

Save your breath and please don't even mention your medals.

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