SF Chronicle Sacks Wine Section, Reorganizes Coverage

The San Francisco Chronicle is reorganizing its wine coverage, eliminating the wine-only section and rolling coverage into other areas of the newspaper.

“It’s a combination of advertising, print and giving people a different product,” said Executive Food and Wine Editor Michael Bauer. He noted that the Chron had conducted focus groups and found that the members “actually liked getting Food and Wine content in one place the same day rather than two. Many said it was less intimidating.”

“It’s not a question of closing down wine coverage,” Bauer told WII this morning. “We’ll still have all or most of the columns we had previously.  The new section will be called Food and Wine, will include the major Sunday restaurant review, and popular features and stories from wine, including our spirits coverage. Some features will find a new home. For example the tasting room reviews will move to Sunday Travel. We’ll still do food coverage in the Sunday magazine.

Bauer also tressed that “we’ll still have restaurant/wine content in on Thursday in both Datebook and 96 Hours.”