So let’s say you’ve learned your way around a few pinots or cabernets. If you’re really good, perhaps you’ve even added an upstart new chardonnay to your repertoire. But what do you know about “blouges”, the hot new things setting the wine world on fire? And while we’re asking, can you recommend something from one of those hot new vineyards in Croatia?
The wine world is a vast and fast-moving place, ever innovating, ever pouring out surprises. It’s also a place where prices usually go in only one direction. So for the millions of folks who love vino but also need to watch their wallets, sometimes a little guidance is in order. This is where Alder Yarrow comes in. Yarrow is founder and editor of Vinography, the popular wine blog he launched in 2004. Vinography is a feast of information for all readers, not just oenophiles, making itself useful with plenty of well-informed wine and sake reviews, wine news, book reviews, restaurant reviews, editorials and opinion pieces, and wine event coverage. Perhaps most importantly, contributors to the site exercise journalistic independence and offer views that are unbeholden to the wine industry.
Seated at the kitchen table inside the Piedmont home he shares with his wife Ruth and their daughter Sparrow, Yarrow explained that his trajectory into the wine business was mostly by accident, but a happy one. As a college exchange student studying at Oxford years ago he turned away from the university meal plan and began cooking his own meals, primarily because British cuisine didn’t agree with him. “One day as I was cooking a meal I said to myself, ‘shouldn’t a glass of wine go with this?’” That was the sip that launched a thousand reviews. Soon Yarrow’s friends were asking him for wine recommendations.
Yarrow has always rejected the label “wine expert,” but he unquestionably brings to “Vinography” a highly informed but informal tone to the pieces going up on the blog, as well as a balanced and independent journalistic scrutiny to his observations of the triumphs and face-plants of the wine world. Where he differs from the traditional wine blog is his critical flair as a writer, which he uses to bring more people into the wine tent, not exclude them. In 2013 “Vinography” was nominated for a James Beard Award. In 2015 Yarrow’s book “The Essence of Wine” was named one of the best wine books of 2015 by the New York Times. Vinography.com now receives about 100,000 hits per month.
Perhaps the most surprising fact about Yarrow’s journey into the wine world is that it all began as a side hustle. For two decades his day job was working as a design leader for consulting firms, launching his own agency in 2005 and selling it in 2018. Today, when not writing for the blog, Yarrow keeps a close watch on everything from what’s going on at local Piedmont area wine shops such as Vino and Wine on Piedmont to the overall health of the wine biz: too much product, consumption in decline. The outlook may be a little cloudy, but the wine world couldn’t ask for a better blogger.
