Matt Kramer (wine writer)

Matt Kramer is an American wine critic since 1976. He is a columnist for The Oregonian, was a columnist for The New York Sun before its demise in 2008, and previously for Los Angeles Times, and since 1985 is a regular contributor to Wine Spectator. He has been described as "perhaps the most un-American of all America's wine writers", by Mike Steinberger as "one of the more insightful and entertaining wine writers around", and by Hugh Johnson as "an intellectual guerrilla among wine writers".

Among his publications are the books Making Sense of Wine (1989),Making Sense of Burgundy (1990),Making Sense of California Wine, (1992),Making Sense of Italian Wine (2006) and Matt Kramer on Wine.

Kramer describes in Making Sense of Wine how he began his career as a wine writer in 1976, then a food writer of a weekly paper, in a meeting with his publisher. As the advertising department had altered the food page contents to include a "wine of the week" column, to the advertisers' approval, Kramer was told that he would write this new column. Kramer resisted, saying, "But I don't know anything about wine", but the publisher replied, "That's all right. Neither does anyone else".

Considered an advocate of the concept of terroir, Kramer is credited with defining the term as a wine’s "somewhereness", a frequently quoted definition.

Kramer has, like Allen Meadows, expressed concern on what they consider over-reliance among California Pinot noir growers on using limited variation series of Burgundy clones from Dijon in their practice, citing this as one reason that so many California pinot noirs have similar taste and lack complexity, and have urged growers to aim for a more varied mix of clones.

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