Our editorial position
The Cellar Journal is an independent wine publication. It was founded in August 2026 by Pedro Fadanelli and Pedro Bueno, and it is paid for by the people who read it.
That last sentence is the whole position. Everything below is a consequence of it.
01 · Who pays us
Readers. Only readers.
We carry no advertising. We do not sell wine, and we do not take a commission when you buy one. There is no sponsored content on this site, and there will not be — not labelled, not unlabelled.
This is not a moral claim. It is a structural one. A publication answers to whoever funds it, and we would rather answer to you.
02 · What we publish
Wine as culture, not wine as scorecard.
We are interested in the grower who waits, the region that changed, the bottle that carries a history inside it. Reporting, essays, field notes, and the occasional argument. Our promise to ourselves is short enough to remember: every article should deserve to exist. If a piece exists only because something must be published this week, it does not run.
We review wines, and we rate them on a five-point scale — 01 through 05. The scale is editorial. It belongs to our tasters and to no one else. We do not open it to readers and we do not average it with anyone.
03 · Who writes
Two kinds of people, one standard.
Contributing Editors are established voices we invite. Open Contributors come to us through the door marked Contribute, which is open to anyone. Both are edited. Nothing on this site is published without an editor reading it first and asking the difficult question.
Editorial responsibility sits with Pedro Fadanelli — sommelier (ISG Dip., ASI Dip.). Operations, technology, and the commercial side sit with Pedro Bueno. The line between the two is written into our partnership agreement: operations never interferes with an editorial verdict, and editorial never compromises commercial independence. Neither of us can overrule the other on the other's ground.
04 · Language
We write in English and publish in Portuguese, Spanish and various other languages. Wine is not an English-speaking subject, and the serious writing about it has been for too long. Translations are reviewed by a person before they run. When one has not been, we say so on the page.