Although we have sold our RV and now spend all year in San Diego, I devoted the better part of eight years to traveling the United States visiting emerging wine regions, talking to winemakers, and tasting their offerings. Some of the best wines I have tasted were from places such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, Lubbock, Texas, Kansas City, Missouri, and Traverse City, Michigan. Winemaking is exploding across the U.S., much of it is very good, and it is rapidly getting better.
So I am really disappointed to read that Wine Enthusiast will no longer review wines from most of the U.S. As Dave MacIntyre at the Washington Post (behind a paywall) reports:
So it felt like the rug was pulled out from under local wine when Wine Enthusiast announced in July that it would no longer review wines from states other than California, Oregon, Washington, New York and Virginia. Other countries were also excluded: Wines from Eastern Europe, North Africa, Switzerland and elsewhere will no longer be reviewed. To add insult to injury for local wine lovers, the magazine said it would begin reviewing hard seltzers.
This is just short sighted and a slap in the face of regions that desperately need media exposure. And the explanation makes no sense.
Wine Enthusiast’s spokeswoman, Bonnary Lek, told me via email that the “business decision” to limit reviews to those five states was to focus on “wines that are available in the market to our readers.”
Ah. People who read the reviews in Wine Enthusiast are probably able to find their way to the Internet and are savvy enough to order wine there. They likely aren’t getting their premium wine from the local supermarket.
Furthermore as Andrew Stover, portfolio manager for Siema Wines of Springfield, Va., who stocks wine from around the U.S. writes:
“I used to have many retailers asking for scored wines. Now I rarely get asked,” he said. Younger consumers are more concerned with stories about the winemakers or how the grapes were grown, he added. “They look at scores and think, ‘OK Boomer.’”
The wine market is changing; it is no longer primarily about luxury. We read countless stories about how the wine business needs to attract younger people. As Bryan Ulbrich, winemaker at Left Foot Charley in Traverse City, Mich., reports:
“The initial news was like another bully knocking our books all over the hallway. But I have been on the road working the market, and I have yet to find a single buyer who bases their purchasing decisions on Wine Enthusiast reviews. The young and energetic sommeliers and buyers are eager to try wines from fringe regions and share them with their customers,” he added.
I doubt that the decision by Wine Enthusiast will be a serious impediment to these emerging regions. But it’s just another example of the wine industry being out of touch.
Exploring the Philosophy of Food and Wine 
Couldn’t agree more. this article is spot on. I got started in the wine business in 1981. Did not re up my subscription to WE after their latest business decision. Only used their reviews as a guide anyway. This was just the final straw after the irritation of some of their other decisions.
I only read WE when I find online pieces in various feeds to my phone or PC. So I am not totally up to date on them. BUT. The words used by most publications to describe wine are so absurd. Wines don’t have human or animal traits. They have flavors, acids, textures, and aromas. They are not precocious, backward, sleepy, aggressive, etc. Those adjectives are for lazy writers who don’t know wine chemistry too well. For a long while I didn’t read Spectator for this reason, But recently Spectator has run articles I find useful, such as: the Chardonnay pioneers, Andy Erickson in depth, Clarence Dillon in depth, Gaylon Lawrence, Rousseau of Burgundy. Publishing is a tough business when so much on-line free writing is here. But WE, is retreating, not advancing. And who on this side of the dark side of the moon needs reviews of hard seltzer??? How about reviews of aroma candles to accompany your spritz?