Another Day in the Life of a Wine Journalist; or Shilling and journalism pt 2.

A wine rep’s job is to get their wines on menus and shelves, and once there, to do things to get the consumer to drink them. A quick way to succeed at the latter part is to get a wine writer to write about their wine. So I’m a ‘friend’ for all wine reps.

This is a relationship open to manipulation. I could offer space in the column in exchange for free bottles. (In fact I don’t, as our five figure wine budget attests. So much for ‘free wine.’) Or the publisher could be sensitive to advertisments and ask me to review particular wines.

My answer is to only write about wines I like. This is neither a unique nor universal policy, if you survey wine writing.

The reps have worked out that I’m willing to try their wines if they email me info, grab my ear in the store, or drop off a bottle. But the reps also know they don’t score anywhere near 100% by cultivating me. Many are sipped but few are chosen.

Here though, is a tale of an extraordinary wine rep, a woman who combines sensitivity - that little extra something - with effectiveness.

Two weeks ago I attended the Winnipeg Wine Festival as judge of restaurant wine lists. It was a great event, with about a hundred vintners present. I got to try about 60 new wines over two days, six of which I made note of, slightly more than usual.

One reason for the higher percentage was the presence of wine reps at the trade tasting. I got to ask them what they had that would interest me. One rep in particular, I trust more than most. I know she will tell me about only her wines. That’s her job. But I also know she won’t steer me to her coolers, jug wines, or any wines she finds slightly dubious. She introduces me to Pfaffenheim, a family of Alsace wines, that I tried the night before and approved of mightily, and suggests another French wine, Vinsobre, from Perrin & Fils,

A mildly outré label (sober wine?) is a recent trend from France. I’m enough of a curmudgeon to avoid them. The French make thousands of brilliant wines at the same price point, and it is to those I devote my time.

I therefore don’t worry too much about her second suggestion, and sample forth.

Twenty-ish wines later, just prior to close, my tongue is shot, and it’s time to go. (For the curious, I spit, as does every other pro, and my breathalyser read .07 on exit.) I am about to leave when I see a rep to whom I hadn't spoken. He says I must try his wine. I say I'm on my way out, and have nary a tastebud left. He insists, and pours me a drop.

At this point an Australian winemaker comes flying across the floor insisting I try his stuff. Others gather around the three of us, interested in the Aussie’s spiel. A crowd forms, a sort of hysterical closing time party.

Somehow, a ninja booth babe with a charming accent cuts me out of the herd and guides me to her table, telling me I NEED to try her wines. But I, I explain am fatigué, as is my tongue. She is trés sympathique, agreeing with me about the perils of tasting. We chat, and I make to go, but I am not allowed to escape my fate. She offers two bottles, “to taste when rested.” Alas I have not bag. Dommage! Perhaps monsieur will use hers? Mais non, I cannot. But non is pas d’acceptable, and I leave the show with them.

It was only when I got home I realized the wines clutched to my bosom were a bottle of of Vinsobre, and Perrin Reserve, a very nice Rhone wine.

You can run but you can’t hide from a good wine rep.

censorship and the common wine writer

Censorship and the Modern Press

Censorship is an ugly word. To use it, in a blog that writes about writing about wine, indicates a touch of hysteria; someone who perhaps takes themselves rather more seriously than they they ought. Nevertheless I stand here before you politically incorrect, socially inappropriate, my head bloodied but unbowed.

For I was again edited. Not for syntax or space. But because I wrote the following:
“I spent most of the weekend studying Revelations. I borrowed a bible from my MLA - he has some affiliation with a church - to make sure I had the most up to date translation. Revelations was pretty much as I recalled it, other than the Number of the Beast is now the area code for Alberta. But there was nary a mention of wine in cardboard cartons signaling the End Times. This was a relief, because I think the twelve Tetra Pak wines....”

And I ended the column saying
“...My recommendation would be to buy the container that best suits your budget. All these wines are cheap and cheerful. And they are as convenient as, well, hell.”

I thought this quite good. It’s theologically sound even. But alas the punters weren’t allowed to read it, for fear of hurting their tender sensibilities. (You have no idea how hurt MY sensibilities were drinking tetra wines.)

Tetra Pak wines have a place in the wine consumption universe. All of us get quite misty eyed about clay carafes in French Cafes, but I’m here to tell you the wine isn’t that great. In fact bulk wine today is probably better than the romanticized wine of yore. So I have no apologies for the topic, nor my support for it, though I must confess I use it for cooking wine.

And actually I carry no real bile for the editor that made the call to clip my lead. They are literally inundated with emails, letters, and phone calls, all of which, every single one, is from some person, hurt, deeply offended by what they read that morning. I think it sad, mind you that (to quote Byron) we live in an age when "Cant is stronger than Cunt." Blogs, email, and ubiquitous reporters with cameras and thrusting mikes, seeking to know what your feelings were when your religious impulse was so deeply offended....

Folks, lighten up. If you live a good life, you’ll get into heaven. You won’t be saving me between here and there. So give it a break. And next time you’re offended by what you read, take a deep breath, count to ten, and turn the page.

ps. for the non-canajans reading this, an MLA = state congress representative
pps. for the prissy reading this, my apologies for quoting such a nasty man as Byron, when there are perfectly wonderful poets like Joyce Kilmer out there, people who never let such vulgarisms drip from the nib of their pen.

Psst! Wanna buy a good bottle? Cheap!

Popped (pooped?) the latest column out, on wine fraud as it happens, to much applause. Which left me somewhat bemused.

The plot, for those needing to be brought up to speed, is as follows. Wine sells for big money. Even modestly priced wine, like a Chianti Reserva is worth $20-$30ish. This doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but think of it in terms of tanks of gas and you get the drift. Wine is still the most expensive beverage, even very modestly priced wine. (There are exceptions, Two Buck Chuck, Pacific Peak, or - shudder! - home made wine. I’ll address those another time.) If you’re raising a couple of kids on 30K, you ain’t drinking much Chianti Reserva.

On the other hand, if you’re single even with a modest income, $20, $50, even $100 might be something you’d do occasionally. This is the key insight behind Grey Goose Vodka. (Nobody, can taste the difference between Grey Goose and other brands. Sure, in a controlled tasting, side by side, you might be able to; but in a bar? With mix? Good luck. I have a standing offer. I choose any two other vodkas in the bar, the total price of which will not exceed the price of GG, and the taster must pick the Goose. Wrong pick, he pays for the vodka and for three of my drinks. Right choice I pick up the tab for 3 GG. I haven’t lost yet. I encourage you to try this bet yourself and report the results back to me. I suspect you will have many nights of free drinks in front of you.) But people are willing to indulge themselves in affordable luxury. Sure GG is expensive; but in the grand scheme of things, can you afford a $15 martini?

But to return to wine fraud, people have been counterfeiting wine for at least the last fifty years. In the ‘70s and ‘80s Italians sold Croatian wine as Chianti and Venetian. Champagne labels re-branded when they were low, and the French sold Italian wine as French. These days the crime is more likely to be criminal in nature. People actually counterfeiting bottles and labels of wine to sell as the original. In 2005 the Italians seized 6.6 million bottles of Falanghina, a prized Sicilian white that sells for about $15-$50.

Brunello ($50) is being regularly knocked off, as are mid-priced Californian, French and Australian products. I inspected a Japanese high-end Sake ($60) recently with not one, not two, not three, but six hologram labels to prevent counterfeiting. The market for the Sake was China. Nuff said.

Okay so far so good. Punters are always trying for a deal. And punters always lose. That’s why your government loves VLTs and local casinos.

My question is: why is this such a popular topic?

Is it because snobs such as myself and Sotheby’s of London (subpoenaed in NY Mar. 6 re: grand jury investigation into systematic wine fraud) can’t tell the difference between plonk and the Real Thing?

Is it because we all at heart chuckle at the rogues who take punters down a notch?

Or is it because it reassures readers who don’t get the lavender and spice from that bottle of chard-semillion, that they aren’t alone. Beats me.

Funny business, wine drinking.

Writing while drunk

I sit here, typing, alone, officially drunk (i.e with a blood alcohol count greater than 0.08) possibly in a dinner jacket, possibly in my underwear (some things are best left to the imagination). And I type. Why? Beats hell out of me. Nobody reads this blog because I am making no effort to link with anybody. No effort to add any content other than words, nothing to make it easy for anyone to stay. People who can actually read, who can think, synthesize, and understand, find reading in front of a screen a pain in the ass. So this is the kind of content typically reserved for letters and diaries. It is, in fact, a silent scream, a place where I get to vent my feelings about the universe.

Why do this?

Well because that is who I am. I have been writing since puberty, and usually to the sound of one hand clapping. This is how I make sense of the world. If I wanted to be read I'd be adding pictures of sundry starlets, writing about my [mythical] sex life with them; telling y'all about the drugs I've done and the places I've been. Who cares? You, faithful reader (allusion alert!), are quite capable of doing drugs and visiting places too.

But back to the matter at hand, which is writing about wine in particular and booze in general, I sit here, alone, waiting to do an airport run - to pick up the spousal unit - mildly intoxicated. On Vina Antigua as it happens, a very interesting blend of sangiovese and bonarda. The bonarda tones down the acidulous ectomorphisity of sangiovese. Don't get me wrong. I'm a reflexive drinker of Italian red,viewing the entire selection in all wine stores as comfort food. But there is a slight edge to chianti (varietal = sangiovese) that is not always welcome. The bonarda provides an interesting contrast/influence/moderator/catalyst.

In fact the most interesting wines I've drunk in the last couple of months come from Argentina. I had a Paso Doble (tango allusion alert!), an Argentinian take on ripasso in December, and several organic wines from Michel Torrino. And of course Torrontes from several wineries, the Malvasio grape of ancient Cretian legend. All good stuff.

But the point of this particular essay is drunkeness. You've read the above. Syntax in order, grafs flowing. Even the spelling is not bad, and spelling is my weakness, being a child of the 'natural language' theory of learning. (Dear god above! Why on earth are we allowing idiot bureaucrats to come up with untested theories of learning and education? More to the point, anyone who may read this may also well be a victim of such stupid romantic scams. Your lack of reading skills and universal knowledge, your complete ignorance of the history of our species, the precious knowledge we've wrung from our wretched existence, is completely due to some romantic drivel, about your ability to acquire knowledge, syntax and grammar from the ether. On the plus side, your access to scrip for speed - aka ritalin, benzedrine et al. - comes from those same sources. Enjoy.)

Putting the screed aside, can one craft sentences such as the above while drunk? What is 'drunk?' I know what intoxicated is. I've been completely ripped to the tits several times: on love, on laughter, on various dopes, and indeed on alcohol.

However I present to you the following thought: the idea that .08 = intoxicated is foolish. Several analysts of the effects of conversation have pointed out that talking on a phone is more dangerous than .08. Indeed, research points out that arguing with family, particularly children, while driving is more debilitating.

Everyone in favor of banning conversation in vehicles, please raise their hands. Voters to the left of me, clowns to the right. (pop culture alusion alert!)

making writing good

This is actually a blog about writing, about journalism, albeit a very peculiar form of journalism. If you’ve read the other entries, you know I write about booze, under the sobriquet Dr. Booze. (I know I know. The website needs updating. I’ll get there once I sort out licensing fees etc.)

Writing about booze has many benefits. For a start I can assume anybody who wants to read about it, has a an above average IQ.

Why? People who just want to get retarded need no help. They are just smart enough to realize this. You can find them at any kiddie bar, in any town, in the country of your choice. Their haunts of choice will have loud music, dim-ish lighting, and be full of folks under the age of 25 trying to work up the nerve to talk to the cute person across the room. They will therefore swallow some godawful dreck, like Jagermeister and pineapple juice to assist. Happily, I am now in the sere and yellow of life, a certifiable old fart, and can avoid such drinks, and such places.

But to return to the topic at hand, writing about booze, one of the great benefits of the job is the audience. Knowing this means I get to use words like ‘sobriquet’ in a sentence, which relieves the strain (I don’t have to work too much at dumbing down.)

The downside is: it is still a job. That means punching in, and writing a column, whether you’re in the mood or not. Anybody who thinks writing a weekly column is easy, has never done one. (All of you daily bloggers out there are probably howling with laughter at this.) Most people have about 5000 words in ‘em I reckon. Once they’ve got them out, that’s it baby. Another abandoned blog.

In newspaper terms, 5000 words is about 8 columns. So there you are beginning month three and starting to sweat...

I don’t have much trouble coming up with topics, because I actually do drink a lot. Enough that professional scolds think me an alcoholic. (Plbbbt! to them.)

One of my only rules is that I don’t have a drink until my partner in vine comes home. (Tasting, does not equal drinking. Usually when tasting I spit. And if I don’t I seldom am swallowing more than a whole glass of wine when I taste three bottles.) I learned early that when you work at home, you have to treat it like a job. Get up, put butt in chair, do sundry tasks of the small business/self-employed.

The next issue is writing the column. This isn’t too hard for me, I pick a topic, like say Port, and spew what I know. Then I wander to the liquor store and select a few I think worthy of note, and add tasting notes. Finally I do the edit.

This is where the writing comes in. Writing is pretty easy. Making the writing good, is Not Easy. Anybody who has read a few blogs will understand what I’m driving at. For all the good intentions and knowledge, very, very few blogs have the writing standards you will find in any daily newspaper. And most professional journalists, feature writers, fiction writers, just about all of us, would not hold the dailies up as a great standard of writing.

So what you must do is edit. It takes me about 6 hours over 3 days to produce 600 words. Only about an hour of that is actually writing. The other five are editing. And it is a very rare column I don’t reread a month later and find things to improve.

This blog is very lightly edited. I read it, spell check, re-read and post. I think it acceptable, but not great, writing.

Over to y’all.

journalism, shilling, and passion

My goal is to get people to move beyond their comfort zones.

For most people this is very hard. They fear appearing unsophisticated. The automatic defense is to accuse someone such as myself of being a snob. So I am very careful in my column not to slam drinks, knowing that if I tell you what you are currently consuming, your beverage of choice, is total absolute crap, you will dismiss everything I write thereafter as of no interest. And anyway, for every crappy drink, there is another more interesting variation. So I simply don’t review anything I view as crap.

This isn’t as simple as it seems. Here’s a true story from the modern world of journalism.

1. My mission in life is to get people to consider drinking something for reasons other than habit.

2. Cream Liqueurs (Bailey’s et al.) are a huge and growing liquor segment. Cream liqueurs deserve at least as much journalism time as Scotch or Cognac or Vodka, given the consumers’ preference for them.

3. I try to run a non-wine column roughly every six months because I think people should think outside the bag-in-a-box.

4. Christmas is time of year for buying gifts or just stocking liquors for guests. In other words, for the non- or casual consumer, a column could be of use.

Conclusion: write a column on cream liqueurs other than Bailey’s.

Problems:

a) Cream liqueurs taste of little other than sugar and fat.

b) Worse, after you have half an ounce, they coat your tongue so you can’t taste anything for at least half an hour afterwards.

c) I wouldn’t drink any of ‘em except on a bet.

Creative solution ( I thought):

Invite over a handful regular journo’s from the paper that publishes my column, folks who actually drink the damn things, after corralling as many bottles from the reps as possible. Watch response of drinkers carefully, write column of results. In short get together my own private focus group.

Outcome:

Reckoning that the drinkers of this junk would never have done a disciplined formal tasting I whipped up a simple report card of the booze on offer.

Party held. Drinks consumed. Comments made. Figuring that being journalists they would want the raw stats, I quickly verbally summed up the report cards (a huge mistake.) Everyone departs, a good time is had by all.

I get a response from the editor: the panelists have a large problem with the column submitted. Notably I gave all the liqueurs 4 stars, leaving off the one liqueur that I considered particularly rank, rather than say it is complete crap.

The panel of tasters reckon their finely tuned tongues have been misrepresented. (None of the participants were identified in the column by name, or even as journalists.) More, they object to the presence of a liquor rep at the tasting. I have committed a cardinal sin of leaving my journalistic ethics open to question! I am a catspaw, a mouthpiece for the liquor industry!

I rewrite the column to include their actual votes, feeling much put upon.

I thought when doing this, and think now that their actual votes had little value. Your (and my) ability to taste changes from day to day and from time to time. The event, the surroundings, all affect your ability to taste.

To actually break down the flavors in any drink or food takes concentration. It also takes a fair amount of practice. Some people are what are known as Super Tasters, with very sensitive tongues. They are about as common as Michael Jordan. (Idle aside: the couple I’ve met all like very bland food, which makes sense once you know how much sensation they derive from a vanilla biscuit.) The rest of us, have varying degrees of skill, which we augment with practice.

I know I don’t have the world’s best palate. What I have is: an ability to write; a good working knowledge of the business; and years of drinking a huge variety of wines and liquors. This last is not a trivial accomplishment. You need to actually drink a Pomerol with several different dinners at several different times to understand the essence, what makes a Pomerol. Tasting a few Merlots at wineries just doesn’t cut it, until you have that base knowledge.

And I know one other thing. I’m never buying a journo a free drink ever again. Condescending ungrateful bastards, all of us.

wine writing, the grotty truth

I doubt that anyone ever raises their child in the fond hope they shall end their years as a wine journalist. In fact, having been raised by a woman who was the daughter of a Wesleyan Methodist, I would think this was possibly one of her nightmares.

Actually, I doubt her imagination was baroque enough to come up with this rather finite permutation. Not that her imagination was small or limited. Quite the opposite. She was capable of gothic nightmares that would have had the Bronte sisters sucking on the end of a flintlock. It's just who the hell ever imagined a journalist category of wine writing? I mean really: who cares? It's just a beverage right?

Hmm. That's where it all goes wrong. Wine is many many things but just a beverage is not one of them. A quick list has to include:
- a marker of wealth and status
- a marker of taste and intelligence
- a marker of sophistication
- a marker of fashion.
And of course it also delineates a physical attribute. Can you, really, in fact, get those ephemeral tastes of lavendar, and chocolate, written so effusively by people such as myself?

Before you rush to answer this I suggest a simple test. Blindfolded, have some one feed you a glass of white, a glass of red, and a decent rose, all at identical temperatures, and then attempt to put the color - nothing else! - on the three glasses.

I await your results....