Last week I went to attend a professional wine tasting here in Catalunya. It's held inside the striking location of an abandoned church up on a hill with a view to the village below and its vineyards fanning out from where the houses end. While waiting in the long line to get in I noted…
A few days back, Jim Budd posted a round up of his favorite articles from the new satirical drinks site, Fake Booze. I’d definitely add even a few more in there as the humor valves have been opened quite wide since this site launched with a great deal of content that takes on all that is dumb, pompous, or needlessly stupid in the drinks works.
Looking at the Twitter account last week, I noticed that it was started back in May of 2020. Thinking I had a scoop, I reached out to them to see if they wanted to do an interview for their one-year anniversary. As it turns out, the site launched in September of 2020 so I’m a touch early, but decided to roll with it anyways as what better manner to celebrate the website’s anniversary than with a fake one?
Revisiting the disclosure issue in wine writing
The assault on journalism never stops. Just within the last week I’ve seen two grave ethical violations of purported “journalism” in wine, and these are but the latest examples…
One was an article about Georgian wine in a mainstream magazine in France by a person who sells Georgian wine in France. The other was for a wine region here in Catalunya for a national newspaper in Spain, written by someone working in PR and is featuring paid clients in the article.
Neither stated the commercial interest of the author and both were presented as actual pieces of journalism in both publications, which in my book is highly unethical and makes me question the credibility of the whole content of said articles.
Decanter
Find out what s inside the latest issue of Decanter magazine.
Celebrating Spain features:
Rioja’s single vineyard revolution: where things stand – Tim Atkin MW
Producer profile: Dominio de Pingus – David Williams
My top 20: Cariñena – Sarah Jane Evans MW
Regional profile: Somontano – Miquel Hudin
Other features: Rootstocks: little discussed, but critical to wine’s future – Alex Maltman