Of wine media & wine Substacks

What we read & what we like & where we're at.

This article was also published on Hudin.com.

It’s time for a new look at the current state of wine media, taking into account the large upswing in people creating their own, independent newsletters, which has resulted in very new version of, The List.

If you’ll recall, back in 2022, I wrote about the rise of independent wine media platforms which just that short time ago, was something rather novel. I know it very well as like several others before me, I’d taken the plunge back in September, 2019 thus making this the 6th anniversary for Hudin.com!

The reasons for various individuals launching their own sites were due to the crumbling state of wine media and the need for independence in a changing landscape. Spoiler alert, that specific sack of cookies continues to crumble and the landscape is more landslide than having reached any degree of stability.

There are some seemingly safe publications at the moment such as Decanter and Club Oenologique which always have the backing of lucrative awards behind them.

Others, aren’t faring as well and since the last update in 2024, we’ve said goodbye to three: The New Wine Review, Wine & Spirits, as well as JeremyOliver.com, although it seems like that will be relaunched under a different name. Chris Kissack was close to folding his long-lived Wine Doctor into The Wine Independent when he took over editorial duties, but then backed out shortly after. As for The Wine Independent we’ll see how that continues to fare as we only need so many publications covering Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Napa…

A drop of growth

This means that the only new publication in the list is The Wine Palate from Lisa Perrotti-Brown (formerly of Robert Parker and The Wine Independent). It’s a new angle, but it’s also yet another entry in what is a crowded field with a diminishing audience.

So, this means that the current 2025 iteration of The List sees 48 publications with a total price of 4,313€ and an average price of 90€. While the total cost has decreased from 2024’s 4,521€, that’s mainly due to losing the 275€ annual fee of The New Wine Review. There have been some price reductions with Club Oenologique being the largest along with Winemaker and Winemag.

Despite this, the overall prices have continued to rise and this despite the publications priced in USD becoming cheaper when converted to Euros due to a depressed dollar. Thus, prices have indeed gone up overall with the average rising from 82€ to 90€, nearly a 10% increase.

I recently read a forum where people were talking about the rise in prices for Jeb Dunnuck. As someone pointed out, he had never raised his prices and now everything (especially travel for wine regions) is more expensive. More importantly, if you have a dwindling audience (this is across the board, not just for Dunnuck), then you need to charge more to attempt to earn the same.

Undoubtedly, there will be more consolidation in the sector, especially with the rise of those Independent Independents who are using Substack.

Helloooo (again) newsletters

And this is the most important aspect in revising The List, the Substacks.

It’s impossible to know just exactly how much those dedicated to wine have grown in the last few years (I encountered two dozen I didn’t know before when compiling) but it’s become substantial and as of this moment, there are 38 in this list with one omission. ¹

In creating this, I set the criteria that any Substack on the list needed to be set up for pay subscribers. This knocks out excellent ones such as that of

Andy Neather

, but a line needed to be drawn as having a pay component and pay subscribers creates an obligation for the author to update frequently and to maintain high standards. A small technical note in that all prices are tabulated in Euros as there needed to be a singular currency. What was interesting was to see how many came out at 43€ as that’s currently about $50 USD, or more or less the default amount for Substack when signing up.

It was obvious when compiling this list as to why someone would want to start up a Substack as one of the tremendous dividing lines between the, let’s call them ‘legacy style’, and the Substacks is that the latter aren’t covering the classics. There are no Substacks devoted to Bordeaux or Burgundy. There was one focusing on Napa, but didn’t have a pay component.

Instead, people are taking chances, covering niche topics like

Noah Chichester

for Galicia or marketing wine with

Heather Daenitz

. Or then they have their own voice on a range of topics like

Henry Jeffreys

who has been a favorite of mine ever since he was writing in his blog in addition to legacy publications.

And then there’s the natural wine crowd which has taken to Substack like a proverbial insect to a proverbial substance. It’s worked out wonderfully for many of them given that natural wine writing is much more ‘lifestyle’ than it is ‘wine’ and thus those subscribing are more devotees than traditional wine drinkers. There’s one who the Substack system says has “thousands of subscribers” which, at 43€ a subscription means he’s making a solid living, so more power to him even if I agree with little that he writes.

I was however curious as to when, how, and why several writers who have long-written in legacy style publications made the change.

A technical advantage

A key item I noticed in terms of websites from the legacy group is that it’s exceedingly hard to subscribe to most of them. It’s amazing to note that you must actively search out where to pay, which isn’t optimal when that’s how you make a living. By comparison, Substack is right up there, in your face about both subscribing to the mailing list and eventually converting that into a paid subscriber. This ‘funnel’ aspect is all taken care of for the writer.

Meg Maker

summarized the advantages very well:

WordPress is expensive, time consuming, and brittle, or at least vulnerable if you don’t do all of the above, and I needed to simplify my life. Substack’s platform isn’t as feature-rich but I wasn’t using all of the features of WordPress, anyway. And Substack is far cheaper […] I managed the conversion in about ten days, moving the feature writing into Substack…

And Jeffreys summarized the advantages succinctly:

I can write what I want, I don’t need to look for hooks and angles and get paid on time. Also you can break stories instantly.

This was picked up by

Kathleen Willcox

as well:

I decided to start a Substack because both the wine and the publishing industry are in a state of incredible turmoil and change. I wanted a place where I could share both serious and silly stories that wouldn’t get published anywhere else. I wanted a place where I could talk to fellow creatives, members of the wine business and devoted wine lovers. […] The advantage is I can tell the story I want to tell, and share the piece when I’m ready to publish it.

The right moment

For myself, I moved my newsletter over to Substack in May of 2022 as it seemed like a fine platform to run it, but I’ve kept the pay subscriptions (which includes thousands of wine reviews and articles) on the main site as there was no way to integrate that on the platform. This is an inherent problem with a newsletter system which Maker noted as well, stating, that when moving, she was, “…leaving behind about 1,200 wine reviews…”

But when was the right moment for others to join?

Again Jeffreys:

My wife had been telling me to do it for years but I thought only specific interest wine sites like Jane Anson on Bordeaux would work. In the end I gave it a go out of curiosity and because I had a lot of ideas that wouldn’t work for conventional publications. I just thought why not. [I was] a little too late. If I’d started in 2022 I’d be in a very strong position but 2023 wasn’t bad.

Willcox had a similar feeling:

I think I was pretty late in the game, but I’m okay with that! I’m enjoying it immensely.

Heather Daenitz, who works in social media, felt differently:

I think just about right. I had vaguely known about Substack for a year or two before I started publishing but I didn’t quite see the potential or use-case for *me* until last year.

Going forward

It’s clear, given the sheer quantity of wine Substacks (

Randy Caparoso

has two!) that it’s been a welcome change for a great many people, but is it worth it and what will the future potentially hold? At the moment, it would cost over 2,300€ to subscribe to all of them, so obviously people are going to pick and choice and is the technology correct for this particular kind of platform?

In asking people about subscription numbers, it’s clear there are massive gaps with a group comprised of only single digits, ranging up to about 50 at most. Then there’s a jump to those in the low hundreds. Neither of these groups arrives to that natural wine writer’s ‘thousands’ and what’s more, it’s not a lot to live on. As Henry Jeffreys rightly said, “It’s just enough to pay the mortgage.”

When asked about the future and disadvantages he elaborated further:

You have to work very hard for not much money, at least initially, with no guarantee that there ever will be any coming in. […] At the moment, I think there’s too many people fighting over not enough readers so honestly I’d like to see fewer writers on there. I’m not sure anyone beyond people fulfilling a particular niche, like natural wine or industry news, are making a living. Having said that, if you spot a gap in the market, go for it.

Meg Maker had a similar view:

It’s difficult to untangle this question from the future of wine in digital media generally.
Asking readers to pay for self-published wine content isn’t new, but Substack leans into the commercialization potential for self-publishers, which does feel like a different approach for both writers and readers. I would like to think this will help us make back some of the time, money, and effort we put into our wine research and writing, but I’m not sure it’s going to be enough to call a living for any but a small handful of wildly successful writers.

But Kathleen Willcox was a bit more upbeat, framing things as just having gotten started:

I think there is a huge opportunity for small winemakers, big brands, unknown writers and experienced journalists—not to mention somms, drinks directors, retailers, importers, et al—to connect, share insights and tell cool stories. Wine should be about community, and we have the opportunity to create a symbiotic one that helps both members of the media AND the industry, while still speaking truth to power. Does that exist in the standard media these days?

A new type of wine news?

Much like how Coravin was pitched as the ‘solution’ to drinking only a glass at a time over a long period of time, it’s clear that anyone claiming Substack is the ‘solution’ to the ills of the wine world’s media (or any media for that matter) is a bit hefty of a claim.

To date there simply isn’t the subscriber base for most of the newsletters to support the writers. Does it give additional income with little technical effort? Definitely. But at the same time there are tradeoffs in what you can do with the platform and for those who haven’t registered their own domain, relying on the *.substack.com address, you’re very much embedded in the platform.

Additionally, it’s also clear that people are getting subscription fatigue. Then there’s the usage issue that ‘follow’ vs ‘subscribe’ is cutting into potential, long-term subscribers given that people don’t understand the difference and it’s clear that Substack is trying to position itself more as a social media platform as opposed to being focused only on writers.

It’s also quite difficult to find people and topics. A search for ‘wine’ will yield a wild array of results that probably won’t let you find what you’re looking for. Thankfully, in searching for people to add to The List, I received a lot of recommendations via the Notes portion of the platform. This in fact has been the most useful moment I’ve experienced with that portion of Substack, so that is definitely a plus.

Ultimately it seems that Substack is a stopgap while wine sorts itself out. Will there be something of a burn off period given all the headwinds against the wine and media worlds? Most probably which is why it’s important to revisit these again in say… a year?

1. This certain individual has proven himself to be repeatedly sexist and exceedingly nasty without ever amending his ways, only spending some time ‘in the weeds’, thus he has been excluded.