Date: 14-Oct-2005 14:28
Author: Steve Plotnicki Email
Subject: Much of the Media
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There is a cultre in the mainstream media to write about food and wine from a sensationist perspective. When someone goes to a restaurant and spends an exhorbitant amount of money on wine, and somehow the media get wind of it, they report it as ostentatious behavior. They will never describe it as the act of knowledgable connoiseurs or hobbyists who derive so much peasure from drinking wine that they are happy to spend the money to do it.

The reason for this stems from the fact that most of the people who read these articles in newspapers and non-culinary driven magazines read it for entertainment purposes, and aren't really passionate connoiseurs or hobbyists. So the sensationalism of how much money people spend, or how much people are overpaying for first growths, becomes the focus of the article in order to entertain them. This much was admitted to a friend of mine by the restaurant reviewer of a major metropolitan newspaper who claimed that 80% of the people who read the reviews will never go to any of the restaurants and read them for sheer entertainment pleasure.

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