The Steve Heimoff Interview: Hippie to Oenophile
Steve Heimoff is as talented a wine writer as there is. Reading Heimoff is to read a presentation and interpretation of California wine that dignifies the best that the state has to offer. His role as West Coast Editor for Wine Enthusiast Magazine gives him the pulpit to sound off with his knowledge base on a wine region that accounts for 90% of American wine production.
He came out of the East Coast from Clark University in Worcester having studied philosophy, mainly existentialism, seemingly a great precursor for a career writing about wine. I drink therefore I am. That education and the era he came from most certainly prepared him for writing and when he realized that his passion was indeed going to be wine, it all came together.
Writing wine reviews and general wine musings is one thing but Heimoff surged ahead and upped the ante in 2005 with the release of A Wine Journey along the Russian River. It is almost essential reading for those in love with wine. In lesser hands, A Wine Journey along the Russian River could have merely been a travel guide for a river whose reputation as a wine growing region still continues to grow. Instead we got a book that was filled with a broader purpose. Wine makers, American viticultural areas and varietals are woven together by the River, which serves as the unifying them for the work. He gave us prose that wasn’t bound to a pre fixed set of wine writing rules and it read as though he was genuinely having fun doing it.
His writing today still manages to interest many and, in fact, still provokes. He is not without detractors. Heimoff brushes aside their criticisms of pretension and elitist old ways, holding steadfast to a set of standards and traditions he himself helped establish.
We thought this would be a good time to reach out and ask him about some of his opinions on wine writing and where he sees it going, particularly in the face of an industry wide economic downturn and a shifting preference for fresh tone and content, especially from the coveted millennial demographic.
Recent comments from you about wine bloggers and various other blogs in general have been seized upon as elitist by some. This comment, in paticular, seemed to really resonate. “I’m not really worried that genuine wine writing is going away, because the cream will always rise to the top. But we — the wine community — do have to be alert to naive bloggers, with potentially sizable readerships, being “useful idiots” for wineries and associations”. Can you or anyone really define “genuine wine writing”?
I suppose that anyone who writes anything about wine is being “genuine.” Maybe a better word would have been “professional” in the sense of someone who writes about wine for a living. But I agree that blogging is changing the ground rules in profound and unpredictable ways, and we’ll just have to see how it evolves. The definition of “success” is also proving to be elusive. I don’t think of myself as elitist, just a working guy who’s lucky to have a job he loves.
Do you ever worry that there may be a chasm between the established wine writing guard and the new wave of online bloggers? Why should there be tension?
No, I don’t worry about it. I think this thing about us vs. them or print vs. online has been greatly exaggerated. Ultimately we are all wine lovers and writers. There is some of the usual generational push and pull, but that’s to be expected. I agree there has been some tension, but I hope that everyone can be reasonable and calm, and that we can have a conversation that’s free from personal characterizations and rancor. Having said that, I do think a few of the old guard have been overly-critical of blogging and insufficiently respectful of bloggers — there’s no reason to name names. And I think some bloggers have been hyper-sensitive and too quick to react to perceived slights. But I believe this is just a phase, and we’ll all get through it and move on to more important things.
Wine Enthusiast Magazine is a wonderful publication. Are you confident that it will capture and carry the Millennial demographic long term?
Thanks for the compliment about Wine Enthusiast. I am confident W.E. will make it through this difficult economic period, which is impacting all print publications. And I hope that Millennials will find W.E. a worthwhile addition to their other sources of information about wine, including on the Web.
We looked at your Facebook pics. Are you an old hippie and were you into wine even that long ago? Wine wasn’t always the immediate first choice during that era for social relaxation was it?
I guess you could call me a hippie back then. No, I wasn’t into wine. I didn’t drink much, except in college, stuff like Bali Jai and Boone’s Farm at frat parties. It wasn’t until I came to California to go to graduate school that I discovered wine. After that, I quickly became passionate and fell deeply into a wine lifestyle in San Francisco.
Can you make a good argument for wanting to maintain the relevance of the 100 point scale system? Will it endure? Should it?
I think others have made the argument for the 100 point system’s relevance. Among the reasons people have cited are (1) consumers like it and (2) sellers like it because it helps them sell wine. I think evidence of the system’s relevance is the fact that so many critics continue to employ it. I think, also, that any system that includes icons (stars, puffs, etc.) is just another numeric system. And as I have written many times, at W.E. the 100 point system is really a 20 point system, in that we do not publish scores below 80.
Drinking wine has become more popular than ever but blogging about it has become almost a cottage industry. Why do you think that is?
I think wine has become more popular than ever because:
1. Baby Boomers embraced wine, followed by Gens X and Y.
2. Wine quality improved especially in California which supplies most of the U.S. market.
3. The 60 Minutes “French Paradox” segment helped, as have continuing studies and reports of wine’s health benefits.
4. Wine is increasingly portrayed in the media in a favorable light.
5. Wine fits in with a healthy lifestyle that includes a good diet and exercise.
6. Americans eat better (thank you Julia Child) and wine goes with good food.
7. Ultimately, wine reached a tipping point in the U.S. from which there is no going back.
As for blogging, it’s become popular because:
1. Whenever a cool new technology is invented, people will use it. (email, cell phones, iPods, etc.)
2. Blogging is a way to connect with people all over the world without leaving your home or office.
3. Blogging is really writing, and writing is fun. People who don’t like to write probably won’t like to blog.
4. Blogging engages the mind, especially when you factor it into twitter, FB etc. It becomes an ongoing intellectual conversation.
5. Blogging led to the media’s fascination with blogging, which creates a feedback loop that makes blogging even more interesting.
6. For traditional paper-based writers like me, blogging lets me express myself in another voice.
Are there any differences between young wine consumers today as opposed to when you first began to drink?
Oh, yes. Young wine consumers today are so much smarter about wine. Plus, they have much greater access to information in the way of the Internet. And now that all 50 U.S. states have a wine industry, people can discover wine practically in their backyard. But one thing that has never changed about wine lovers, no matter when they lived or how old they are, is passion.
You made some interesting comments in your blog last week about the impact of the recession on the California wine industry. Ultimately, what is going to be altered on the landscape there when it finally passes?
I don’t know. Your crystal ball is as good as mine. I’ve seen waves of pessimism come and go in the past. In the early 1990s we went through a bad economic period and there were predictions of massive winery bankruptcies. Didn’t happen. Now, the economy seems to be bottoming out (let’s hope), and we haven’t seen too many winery failures. At the same time, some very smart people I know are sincerely worried. They include small family winery owners and owners of huge wine companies. I can’t imagine that in 5 or 10 years, wine country will look any different than it does now. It’s important to stay optimistic about things and not worry too much.
