(Wine-Searcher) - A satirical blog entry on a wine website could have stiff consequences for the publisher.

Feeling safely protected by US libel law, Ron Washam has insulted people in the wine industry for years on his Hosemaster of Wine blog.

So when he published an article called "Riedel me this" on Tim Atkin's website earlier this week, he probably felt completely safe inventing quotes from wine-glass maker Georg Riedel like: "Sommeliers are the stupidest, most gullible people I work with", and "The wine business is a very sexist business. As it should be."

When he got a letter from Riedel's attorney demanding a retraction, threatening: "Absent your immediate compliance Riedel will consider all of its legal remedies against you", he felt safe enough to post it on his website with the confrontational headline: "Riedel Threatens the HoseMaster of Wine – Hand Blow Me."

However, Atkin lives, works and publishes in the United Kingdom, where the libel laws are very different, and much friendlier to plaintiffs. It's possible that a post that would have been harmless if published in California could cost quite a bit of money when published in London.

In 2009, wine importer Michael Broadbent was awarded "substantial damages" in an out-of-court settlement of a UK lawsuit against Random House, publisher of the book "The Billionaire's Vinegar."

"Because of the UK's notoriously plaintiff-friendly libel laws and conditional fee system, the company made a business decision to settle with Mr Broadbent in order to contain its legal costs and exposure in the UK," the book's author Benjamin Wallace said at the time. The book is no longer distributed in the UK.

In 2014, the UK changed its defamation laws in part to prevent "libel tourism," in which attorneys representing people who felt wronged by books published elsewhere sued the UK representatives. The new law addresses web publishing, specifically to make website operators no longer automatically responsible for posts and comments made by others on their site.

However, it's hard to see how this protection would apply to Atkin, as he touts Washam's regular columns for his site as a feature. Thursday morning, Atkin retweeted a comment from Washam about the post, thus potentially bringing more readers to it.

Washam often claims to write satire, and satire is specifically protected in US libel case law, after a lawsuit filed by Jerry Falwell against Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. However, there is no such satire defense in UK libel law.

It's possible that the legal defense of "honest opinion" will apply to this post. Even though Washam puts much of the post in invented quotes from Riedel, one can see an "honest opinion" argument for fake quotes such as: "It is small-minded and immature men who understand that the only way to impress other men is to buy expensive wines and pour them into ridiculous decanters and serve them in very particular wine glasses. Things we convince them of using pseudo-science and half-truths. I am simply the man who found that way to tap into their vanity and overblown egos."

The wine Twittersphere reacted Thursday with disdain for Riedel, but that might not be of comfort to Atkin, because one of the provisions in the new law is that businesses must demonstrate that they are likely to experience serious financial loss as a result of defamatory comments.