I was looking through the television listings recently, trying to find something to watch for 15 minutes, when I found a program about wine called UnCorked. I was taking a break from writing about wine, but I couldn't resist.
The segment I tuned into was on burgundy, and I watched and listened with horror for 10 minutes before turning it off. In that time, I swear I picked up a number of factually wrong statements, heard the French language butchered and saw major on-screen titles with French words misspelled.
The experience was so traumatic I've suppressed many of the details, but I do recall hearing the confident assertion that only chardonnay and pinot noir grow in Burgundy. So what was that lovely pinot gris I had last February in Beaune, Burgundy's main wine town? And the aligoté (another grape variety)? Both are from Burgundy and properly classified.
It's true that chardonnay and pinot noir are far and away the most common grapes in Burgundy, and that the best-known burgundies are made from them. But Burgundy wine law recognizes at least nine other varieties.
Most are used in small quantities as blending varieties, just as petit verdot is in Bordeaux reds. But no one pretends petit verdot doesn't exist.
Now, I'm not suggesting there's a conspiracy to hide the truth about Burgundy's grape varieties, although this was the umpteenth time I'd heard this statement.
What struck me forcefully is that the show is symptomatic of too much of the wine information that's gushing from the media in Yellow Tail-like torrents.
It's usually based on the assumption that the best way to satisfy the thirst for knowledge about wine is to dumb it down. Maybe it's even worse than that: "dumbing down" implies that the "experts" purveying the information actually know better but are simplifying it for their audience; I'm starting to suspect they just don't know any better.
Of course, no one says they're "dumbing down" wine. They say they're "demystifying" it. How many times have you heard or read that this book, this course, this expert, will "take the mystery out of wine."
Well, there is no mystery to wine.
You can immerse yourself as deeply as you want in wine (figuratively speaking, unless you're at a wine spa), take courses on it, and take degrees in it. There's a massive amount of information on grape varieties, methods of cultivation, winemaking, wine regions and wine law.
It takes interest, dedication and time to gain even a good level of this knowledge.
And what good writers, broadcasters and instructors should do with wine is what they do with other subjects: present it in a way that their readers and audience can understand and at a level that's appropriate. But I'm dismayed at what appears to be a growing number of charlatans in the field and at the misinformation that's being passed off as information.
That television program was not even as bad as some things I've heard and read. Wine is a subject that a lot of people are insecure about and, unfortunately, it's a prime subject for so-called "experts" to flourish in.