Editorial Policies and Ethics
This website is independently owned and operated by Headwaters Content LLC. At the present moment (summer 2021) all editorial decisions are finalized by its owner and Editor-in-Chief (Kevin Day).
This publication, like many on the internet, started off as a personal blog (in 2014), and throughout that time span, the editorial policies have been clarified more and more. Since we have only minimally removed old content from the site, you may encounter articles and stories that did not fully conform to the outline policies below.
Our goal as a publication is to eventually be 100% self-funded. That means a scenario where subscriptions and sales for ticketed events are sufficient enough to fund (a) all of our travels, (b) all of the wines we review, (c) all of our contributors, (d) all of the photography and illustrations to jazz up the site, (e) web hosting and web maintenance costs, and (f) a decent living wage for Opening a Bottle's sole employee and his family, who have to endure his boundless enthusiasm at the dinner table when he has a particularly great glass of wine. (Try being 11 in this household ... dinner must be soooo boring). Anyhow, the ambitious but attainable goal of being self-funded is well on its way.
However, until we get there, we need a little help, which is where the following policies come into play.
How We Select Wines for This Publication
Our primary goal is to make wine a little less opaque for our readers and subscribers, but also to spotlight specific wines of unique character that exhibit a distinct sense of origin. In other words: wines that clearly convey a sense of place.
This has led us to cover mostly appellation-based European wines — especially from Italy, France and Spain — but our curiosity will lead us anywhere. In truth, European wines need the most explaining, especially to our primary audience: American wine drinkers. We prefer a depth over breadth approach, and given our small staff and resources, that means we have prioritized these places. Do not take that in any way as a slight against the many wines produced outside these countries. We are niche and we embrace it.
We have a soft spot for traditionally made wines; for multigenerational family winegrowers and the risks they have to take; for improbable vineyards on steep slopes or active volcanos or isolated islands; for old vines that look like trees; for innovative new techniques in the winery as well as rediscovered ancient ones; for biodiversity and the use of organic and biodynamic practices to foster healthy vines; for wines that can live a long life in a cellar (or, most relevantly, can still be telling stories days after they've been opened).
These traits, and why they matter, are celebrated through the use of icons across the site. If a wine doesn't fit at least one of these attributes, we are likely not interested in seeking out the wine for coverage.
Samples Policy
Like many wine publications, we frequently accept samples from distributors, importers, consortia and other folks in the wine industry. We also reject a ton of offers because they don't fit the ethos of the wines we feature here.
Coverage is never guaranteed, even if we consider a story angle in advance. The wine still needs to deliver in the glass to justify the time we take to write about these wines.
If there are flaws or specific feedback on where the wine missed the mark, we will communicate those to the provider upon request. Many samples make it to our Instagram pages for a short-and-sweet review that's read by our organic following. Some of these never get a full feature story or review on Opening a Bottle.
Also: we do not accept unsolicited samples.
Please contact our Editor-in-Chief if you have wines that you would like to present and we can discuss whether they might fit with the site's editorial focus.
As noted, we have specific attributes that we prize most in a wine, so if you are looking to send samples of your wine to us, please note what our editorial focus is by reviewing this page. If your wine meets any of these criteria for a story, contact us.
Increasingly, samples are sent after we have proactively approached an importer with interest in a specific winery and their wines. We respect importers for the risks they take to bring these wines to America, but we also don't bullshit them — if their wines miss the mark, we owe it to them to offer a sound and reasoned explanation why. They are often grateful for feedback.
Note: Readers are informed at the bottom of all relevant feature stories if any of the featured wines were provided as samples, and by whom. If such a note does not exist, the wine was purchased for editorial purposes.
Press Trips
Occasionally, our writers are invited on press trips, in which an importer, PR agency or regional organization will host a group of wine writers and beverage professionals to explore an area’s wineries and vineyards.
To some, this is a poison pill. For us, press trips (a) make travel to Europe and many wine regions economically attainable, (b) provide a thoroughly educational experience and (c) allow us to expand our photo asset library for future coverage. We join trips that make sense for Opening a Bottle's editorial mission of discovering compelling, family-run winemakers from intriguing regions. We can only attend 3 to 4 trips a year. This gives us the luxury of being very choosy about where we go, which benefits the editorial and photography focus of this site. We don't go on every trip that's offered to us, but we do try our best to help connect PR people with other wine writers who are a better fit.
Attendance on a press trip does not guarantee coverage on Opening a Bottle. Our priority — and the priority of our contributors — is to Opening a Bottle's readers and subscribers, not to promoting anyone or any place, no matter how generous they are. We maintain all editorial authority regardless, and the full rights to imagery reside with the individual who took them.
If you are interested in inviting our Editor-in-Chief on a press trip, contact us.
Note: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all travel has been suspended at this time, but we are open to discussions of future press trips that may be planned at a safer date. Readers are informed at the bottom of all relevant feature stories if any of my travel costs were funded by outside sources, and by whom. If no such note exists, we funded the travel ourselves.
Contributors
At this time, we are not accepting pitches from new contributors. Given our size and resources, writing for Opening a Bottle is currently by invite only based on wine knowledge and writing skill. However, we want to get to know as many writers as possible, particularly those with different experiences, background and perspective than us. The world of wine is vast and beautiful, and we eventually want to publish as many perspectives as possible.
We require that writers have no current financial entanglements with any of the brands and regions that they write about, including "brand ambassador" positions.
Advertising Policy
None of the posts on this site are paid for or fashioned as advertorial. Subscriptions and virtual tastings make up 100% of the revenue to fund this publication. We used to have an affiliate partner relationship with Wine.com, and we are retroactively removing these links. It was never very fruitful for us, so it is being phased out. You may see a few of these links as stragglers from this process. They are clearly marked with Wine.com's logo.
Ethical Expectations of Wineries and Consortia
Environmental Impact
We favor wines made without, or with minimal, use of chemicals in the vineyard and winery. We are not absolutists (e.g. sulphur is not "poison"), but given the wine industry's impact on the environment and the labor force who makes these wines happen, every effort should be made to minimize harm.
We do not consider this a "natural wine" publication, because that phrase often encompasses fault-riddled wines that hold no interest for us. But we do embrace the predominant ethos of the movement that the grapes should come from a vital vineyard that prioritizes biodiversity, that working conditions should be safe for laborers, that the staff is justly treated and compensated, and that, yes, wine production and consumption should have a minimized carbon footprint.
This last point is problematic for all of us: we love wines from halfway around the world. There is no carbon-neutral way to enjoy them without moving there, walking to the winery, and drinking the wine straight from the cask. But there are ways for us — the consumer — to minimize the harm of this process, and it starts with the wines we select. We are increasingly making this a priority of our selection process, and it includes everything from vineyard practices to the weight of the final bottle.
Social Justice
We are also aware that — as Americans covering a product made in other nations — it is all too easy for us to carry our cultural expectations and biases to the tasting table. That said, basic norms of decency, empathy and fairness are universal. We do not have the means (just yet) for "reporters on the ground" to conduct investigative journalism and chase leads on how wineries operate. We are a small wine education and review website.
But that said, we are listening, and we have blacklisted numerous wineries (particularly in Italy) for practices we find abhorrent. Examples: a Friulian winery whose owner likened a black Italian politician to a monkey; a Franciacorta producer whose marketing mocked the BLM protests; and a producer in Puglia who is under investigation for worker exploitation. We are working on a page for subscribers that outlines who these wineries are, why we won't cover them, and links to resources where you can learn more and make your own judgment.
The tendency to name and shame is ugly, and we don't make this move lightly. We want to know about these instances, so we do our best to stay on top of the news from other sources. There is zero reason to support such people and their business.
We Accept Input, Feedback and Tips
All of these principles are difficult to verify with our tiny team (one U.S.-based Editor-in-Chief, a small team of freelance contributors), but we will do our best. And know this: our door is open to input and feedback. If you have an anonymous tip about shady environmental or social practices from any winery or consortium, please contact us and we will look into it.
