Several Short Sentences About Wine Writing

Wine writing is creative writing, with the attendant joys and sorrows

To write is to move meaning from writer to reader. Text is the way that happens. It is the only way that happens. The text is everything the writer has said and it is all the reader can know.

This primacy of text lies at the heart of a standard workshopping exercise. Writers pair up and read each other’s pieces, then answer three questions: What’s this about? What’s working? And what might change to make it more fully itself? A writer dilates as a reader’s testimony unspools. That’s what you think my story is about?¹

This technique is useful for writers of all genres, but it’s especially helpful for wine writers. Wine is factually dense, so it’s easy to get caught up in a piece’s details, forgetting it must also be about something. Something more than just the reportage, more than what we know. Something we believe.

Wine writing is nonfiction writing. Most lands at the journalistic end of the spectrum, but it should not feel artless. Wine writing is creative nonfiction. It drives truth toward daylight using the gestures and motifs of imaginative storytelling. The results vibrate with pleasure, heartbreak, tension, obstacle, disappointment, triumph, and deliciousness.

Below are several short sentences about wine writing² offered as nourishment for the creative process. Some are directive, some reflective. They’re things I’ve come to know over the years, or rather come to believe.

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Creative nonfiction has been called “true stories well told.” A true wine story contains verifiable facts about place and making. A true wine story also contains honest impressions about those facts. The first is journalistically true, the latter memoiristically true. Both are equally true.

A corollary: Be honest but not cruel. Per Dickenson, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”³ Good criticism aims to build, not demolish. Wine is just a beverage, but it’s also people’s livelihoods. When a wine, producer, region, or experience merits criticism, be constructive and circumspect. Ask yourself, Who needs to hear this, and why? Know how your critique will land and aim for that spot, but not one any larger.

At the same time, don’t pander. Don’t write to please producers, importers, hosts, restaurateurs, beverage buyers, or colleagues. Write to please your reader. Or rather, to serve your reader. Build readers’ trust by disclosing your sponsors, samples, seats at the table. Be transparent.

Every piece has a surface narrative. These are the details about the winemaker, region, where you went, what you saw. This is what the piece is about at the level of topic. Every piece also has something below the surface narrative. This is what the piece is about at the level of meaning. An active subnarrative shows that as a writer you are thinking, not merely recording sensations. In other words: Story, story, story. Find it.

A faithful source will tell you things they believe to be true. But these so-called facts are not necessarily true, so you must check. This is also why you shouldn’t ask a source for data (facts). You should ask a source for opinions (beliefs). So not, How many acres of Grenache ring the winery, but, What’s the hardest thing about growing Grenache around the winery?

Don’t feel beholden to the dominant narratives (for example, at present, The sky is falling). Don’t recapitulate clichés du jour. Reflect expansively on what you’ve seen, heard, tasted, read, learned, know, and feel. Then, synthesize these into something new for readers to ponder. This may take a while.

Pro tip: Turn a piece into a story using a narrative arc. This trick came before reading and writing and will probably last after it. The story started in one place and ended in another. There were obstacles, complications, bad things happening to good people, some mysteries, a revelation. Something changed along the way. What changed? Why does that matter?

Another trick: Switch on your reader, wake up their sensorium, using words with palate texture. Make them salivate, or at least imagine it. Use words like sip, clink, spit, lick, liquid, delectable, loquacious, picket, ticket, rattle. Slurp.

Be mindful of textual texture. Use a mix of stylistic tactics to animate your piece. Be mindful of pacing: Crisp evidence moves swiftly and also lends authority. Quotations snap readers to attention. Lyric passages invite them to sit back and relax. And while you don’t have to do all of their work for them, you can punctuate your piece with pithy observations. It’s your piece, after all.

Readers won’t get all of your metaphors and allusions. That’s okay. You wouldn’t get all of theirs, either. Just explain yourself. If you got cherry Twizzler, say so but say why: that rubbery texture, the fruit’s artificiality, your nostalgia for third grade.

It’s okay to write about things you don’t understand, but only if you don’t pretend you do. Confess your ignorance and invite readers to join you. Show them why you care and what you’re doing to learn. You’re human. You can ask questions.

Write from your heart, meaning from yourself: your culture, your values, your status, your identity, your beliefs, your language. Ignore other people’s biases and lexicons. Ignore their topics and takes. Ignore their successes and failures, viral and otherwise. Focus on you, on your own voice, your own ideas and beliefs. Develop them. And keep moving.

Before you write, ask yourself, What sound am I trying to make in the noise of the world? And, Is this the sound it most needs now?

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1. At the Wine Writers’ Symposium in Napa in 2024 I led a workshop for the Fellows using this technique. Read my introductory remarks from that session here. Read more about the “Three Questions” technique here.

2. Writer and writing educator Verlyn Klinkenborg’s slender book, Several Short Sentences About Writing, aims to dispel received wisdom about how to write well. His title inspired mine.

3. Dickenson, Emily. Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56824/tell-all-the-truth-but-tell-it-slant-1263 (collected 21 February 2026)

Image: Alley-oop ©2026 Meg Maker