If you’ve been following any wine industry news this past week you’ve likely noticed that one of Canada’s most famed wine critics, Natalie MacLean, has been under heavy fire. The allegations from Palate Press last week rocked the wine business as they, initially, called her out for repurposing other critics reviews without attribution and, later, they accused her of hosting a pay-to-play scheme; wineries are required to sign up for her website and provide content information in order to be a part of her site.
Everyone loves a good drama and, with that, a good scandal. As with any other well-known wine critic, it was only a matter of time before she was put in the spotlight for “dirty dealings.” While I can’t say I’m a member of Ms. MacLean’s site, and therefore cannot vouch for the information she has on her site, she has done a good job of making sure she is well-known within the business. I think, at this time, it’s important to remember a couple things that have been skewed as negatives, but might actually be positives for those wineries looking to get involved with her.
For one, it was pointed out that in order for MacLean to review a winery’s wines, she required that they purchase a less than $25 subscription to her website. Additionally, wineries were asked to provide information about their wineries on her site and the wines they have submitted. From a journalistic standpoint, perhaps this looks immoral, but from a marketing standpoint, this is excellent news. Sites such as Snooth, Cellar Tracker, Wine.com and more all allow marketers, wineries and regions alike, to complete profiles and write articles for themselves. The marketing bodies are not paid by these sites, but this allows wineries and regions “control the message,” and assure that all of the information written is correct. If we are looking at her site as an informational resource, this is one of the more important things…Â accuracy! Many publications even allow advertorials without any notation of stating so.
Secondly, it is said that MacLean compared the fee for her reviews to those of wine-scoring competitions. While she is, again, a journalist, she is also a business woman who needs to stay in business. To me, this makes sense. Further, it should be noted that while a lot of others believe that it is “free” for some of the major publications to review wines, let us not forget the cost of advertising that influences how kindly a winery’s or regions wines are look upon.
My point is simply that while it may look terrible for MacLean at this moment, she hasn’t done much wrong. Yes, lifting reviews without proper notation is fraudulent and this should be remedied, but the other accusations seem a bit out of left field.
Decanter recently published an article featuring MacLean’s defense. She states she is working toward properly notating the reviews, many of which were lifted from other subscription-based sites, which is the right thing to do. Further, she claims that her subscription fee of $2/month has nothing to do with her reviews of wine, which is likely true to some extent. But hey, while we may all love the business, we cannot survive on love alone.