Worth Reading: the Catching-Up Collection

I’ve taken a break from the blog, but not from reading about wine. Here are some great recent reads, in case you haven’t seen them.

The second bottle is obviously fake, if only because the label is backwards. (From nymag.com)

The Rudy Kurniawan wine-fraud saga has had two write-ups, by Ben Wallace in New York magazine and Mike Steinberger in Vanity Fair. Both are fascinating reading (and Steinberger’s piece has been optioned for movie rights) for a morality story about all that is wrong with wine and wine appreciation. Many high-profile wine writers are mentioned – Jay McInerny, Allen Meadows and of course Robert Parker all came under Kurniawan’s spell as he charmed his way into the vinoscenti’s inner circles. The moral of the story – well, there are probably many morals, but boiled down to its core, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. But that of course doesn’t stop Blake Gray from indulging in some schadenfreude and hailing Kurniawan as a hero.

Joe Roberts pleads with the wine industry to build him a bigger basement. No, not really, but he offers some “tough luv” for unscrupulous wine bloggers who seem to think a free blog on WordPress or Blogspot entitles them to demand copious amounts of free samples. Just as the Rudy Kurniawan saga shows high-end wine writers at their worst, Roberts calls out the bottom feeders and urges them not to be … well, “douchebags.” 

Maybe I should stop here. This is getting depressing as these articles really do not reflect well on my second profession of wine writing. (Except for the fine reporting on the Kurniawan affair by Steinberger and Wallace.)