'Confessions' of a wine business insider

W. Blake Gray

Getting an insider's point of view on virtually any topic can be illuminating. In the case of W. Blake Gray, I found that to be the case.

Gray is chairman of the Electoral College of the Vintners Hall of Fame. He once was wine writer/editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, and has been published in several other major publications. In a "confession" written for the online wine magazine Palate Press, he lists "10 Things I Learned in the Wine Business."

He explains that in addition to writing about wine, he "also spent a little over a year working in the wine industry, as a vice president for a startup that bought unsold wine cheaply and sold it to wine shops in the Northeast."

Among the 10 things he talks about in detail:

• Publications like this love unusual varieties. Consumers do not.
• Most people don’t care about wine-food pairing.
• Nobody cares about gold medals.
• Wine writers like to explore lesser-known regions. Consumers do not.

You can read Gray's entire "confession" by clicking here.

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