Meg Maker, Author at Circle of Wine Writers

From the Chair: Considering criticism

Posted on June 22, 2025June 24, 2025 by Meg Maker

This month Meg Maker examines whether a wine communicator can ever really be objectively critical. I enjoy reading criticism of books, art, cinema, and architecture. As a writer who does some wine criticism, I find it instructive to see how critics from other domains approach the exercise. I was particularly struck by a recent New Yorker piece, an essay by Julian Lucas reflecting on the critic ...

From the Chair: Are we trying too hard to explain wine?

Posted on May 15, 2025May 15, 2025 by Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker questions the role of the reader in wine writing, and in doing so, reflects on the purpose of the writing itself. I recently published a long memoiristic essay about a press trip I’d taken in Northern Italy. A fellow wine journalist posted a comment asking, “Who’s the reader?” It’s a valid question. Whenever we sit down to write an article, we should consider our reader, a...

From the Chair: How should wine writers respond to a global trade war?

Posted on April 26, 2025April 27, 2025 by Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker reached out to members and others for insights about how wine and spirits communicators should address the current moment. What is the role and future of wine writing given this moment of global economic uncertainty? At the extreme, the flow of wine will slow, prices will rise, wine consumption will drop, and wine consumer demographics will shift. Wine communication will sh...

Nebbiolo, Dialect, and Dinner: Notes from Alba

Posted on March 26, 2025 by Meg Maker

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From the Chair: In praise of editors

Posted on March 26, 2025March 26, 2025 by Meg Maker

In this month’s column, Circle Chair Meg Maker reflects on why a skilled editor is one of a writer’s most valuable collaborators — especially in today’s fast-moving world of digital media. “Every smart person wants to be corrected, not admired.” —Marvin Minsky I’ve recently completed two large wine media projects. The first was a series of naturalistic portraits of women who...

From the Chair: To become a taste expert, move from specific to holistic

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker takes notes from a recent research paper and explores why narrative and imagery might make more of an impact in wine tasting than facts and figures. Wine enthusiasts who want to become better tasters should abandon their keyboards and pick up their crayons. That’s the conclusion of researchers Kathryn Latour and John Deighton in their 2018 Harvard Business School Working Pa...

From the Chair: Texture is the new flavour

Posted on January 26, 2025January 31, 2025 by Meg Maker

Meg Maker explores the second sense in wine — texture. For a few days last week, a rhinovirus gripped my system. My normally prismatic sensorium went dark. Flavours were reduced to the basics: salty, sweet, bitter, sour, savory. My morning tea was hot, astringent, wet but curiously drying. A segment of orange was cold and juicy, sweet and sour. Cheese seemed sticky, fatty, salty. Bread was spong...

From the Chair: Critical thinking skills

Posted on December 23, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Meg Maker defends the right to drink and enjoy cheap fizz, even as an esteemed wine writer, in her column this month. I’ve just returned from London, where I used the excuse of the Circle’s annual Festive Party to justify a week of ogling art, meandering markets, visiting old haunts, and eating and drinking across a wet and windy city. My spouse and I had the good fortune to have a friend’s fla...

From the Chair: Cheap and expensive wine words

Posted on November 30, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Are we all subconscious marketers? Meg Maker poses the question in her column this month. Making fun of wine tasting notes is not a new sport; recall Thurber’s 1937 cartoon about the “naïve domestic Burgundy.” But academic research about wine tasting notes is much newer, and it’s being done not only by linguists but also by mathematicians, economists, statisticians, and AI modelers. Such quant...

From the Chair: Why keep writing about about wine?

Posted on October 29, 2024February 5, 2025 by Meg Maker

Circle Chair Meg Maker ponders on what it means to be a 'wine writer' today, in an increasingly challenging professional environment. The Circle is a guild of professionals who’ve earned the moniker ‘wine writer.’ That writing may appear in the form of article, blog, or book, or may be in service of podcast, broadcast, social post, lecture, or curriculum. (And yes, we do have photographers; they ...