“As with any well-mixed margarita. Madeira should be sweet, fruity. acidic, salty and bitter all at once.”

That’s just wrong, Sercial and Malmsey have has much to do with each other as Fino and Cream Sherry. This is just another example of the misinformation commonly published in the wine columns of our nation’s newspapers. Why is it that major newspapers don’t bother to apply the same journalistic standards they apply to the rest of the newspaper to wine columns? As I travel throughout the USA I can’t help but be astounded by the amount of wine misinformation that is allowed to pass as journalism in America’s newspapers.

The writer above also recently told readers that there were no wines labeled “pinot gris” produced in Alsace. That too is just wrong.

Editors may not know a thing about wine, but they are not experts in every topic covered by their newspapers and still they demand that someone who knows should check the facts. Of course, in the other areas of the newspaper, the editor can depend on, for example, the sports editor to know something about sports, but in the food section you can assume the editor knows little or nothing about wine. Can you imagine hiring a sports editor that knows nothing about baseball or a business editor that never heard of the New York Stock Exchange?

Outside a few shining examples, like the New York Times, few newspapers care much for the accuracy of their wine columns, seeing them only as vehicles to increase advertising.

So much for journalism.