Why I won't be writing on wine-making

Columnists have a duty to opine only about things they know and understand

This is a new column by Martine St-victor, a communications strategist and media commentator based in Montreal. Her column will appear on Thursdays.

New York Times obituaries are legendary. The best ones are written like novels, in which the just-departed is a superhero. But these celebrations of life are not so much about the accomplishments that made the cape-wearer famous, as about how she or he lived. Almost anybody can have a vineyard, but how many have lived like Lulu Peyraud of Domaine Tempier, a wine estate in Provence? Peyraud died last month, and while reading her obit in the Times, I figured the best thing to do would be to save it and to look at it often, like an architect marvelling at the blueprint of a building he or she can't wait to see go up. I found Peyraud's life extraordinary because of the way she lived it, and not because of the wine she made, regardless of how good it is and how much I love to drink it.

I have the loveliest of relationships with wine. Still, in this column, I will never opine on how a winery should be managed, on how a wine should be made or what appellation it should be given. That I dream of living in Provence, that I have seen wine, bought wine and really, really, really love wine are all beside the point. I have a blind spot when it comes to matters beyond drinking it, and owning up to that is part of the responsibility of this column.

I will write about what I observe and have lived, and sometimes, about what I hope for. I will not dismiss facts.

I will write about what I observe and have lived, and sometimes, about what I hope for. I will not dismiss facts, simply because they may clash with beliefs I've been clutching for too long, nor write based on magical thinking, or about things I believe will become true if

I say them with enough conviction. If I can't prove the veracity of something or if I haven't experienced it, I won't write about it, even with passion.

In a world of fast and instant communication — one I fancy in some of its aspects — I prefer to approach my columns the way Ken Burns makes films: slowly. I promise to take the time to observe and review the legitimacy and relevance of my perspective on every single topic I think of writing about, instead of providing a knee-jerk comment on the polémique-du-jour. I don't take lightly the impact these words, and those to come, could have. Like yours, they matter, and because of the platform I have been offered, they have the potential to resonate beyond a click, a swipe or a turned page.

Today, opinion in many of its forms often seems more influential than news. That can partly be explained by the space it occupies in the media ecosystem, particularly in times of controversy.

Still, it would be unfortunate to confuse the two. And while some columnists are career journalists, others, like me, are not. My understanding, however, is that we all have the duty to opine only about things we know and understand. That is the responsibility that comes with the gig.

In recent weeks, Montrealer Dany Laferrière's first novel has been used many times as a reference in an exhausting media-sustained societal debate, or rather, what passes for one these days. For all of our sakes, I wish it had been his L'art presque perdu de ne rien faire we would have turned to instead. The lost art of doing nothing, to better observe and notice everything. To stand still long enough to realize and recognize that part of the world we knew, has changed. One in which beliefs we held as truths — convenient and comfortable for some — were anything but for others.