CLASSY GLASS MEN BREAKS A SKEPTICAL JOURNALIST
With a Caveat
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
August 14, 2023
As a journalist by training, whenever that skillset is called upon, I’m usually a good skeptic. It’s a trait that is necessary in order to be able to separate truth from fiction; and to bring clear reportage to one’s readers. Sometime in the early 1990’s Georg Reidel turned me into a believer; with a skeptical caveat. About three decades later, his son, Maxmiilian, performed the same magic trick on me. Again, with a caveat,
It was in a dank radio studio, buried in the bowels of a San Francisco Bay high school in which the classy and erudite Georg Reidel made my wine glass seem like a dixie cup.
Annals of Public Relations
A TYPICAL MEDIA PITCH (Sorta)
By Alan Goldfarb
August 7, 323 AD
On behalf of my client – the Speyer Oenotria Company, (Very) Ltd. – you are invited to a very, very, very special tasting and dinner debauchery at the sumptuous palatial home of Biggus The Sixth, on the 8th of August, 320AD. The occasion? To taste the recently released Speyer – the youngest wine in the world.
(If one will be so kind as to Oogle ( https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-oldest-unopened-bottle-of-wine/ ), and follow the link to the 21st century, 1,700 hundred years of yore.)
Removed from its encasement (later it’ll be called a sarcophagus) this special wine (all of SOC(V)L’s (see first line) wines are special), you’ll be among the first in creation to taste it.
THE DAY I HAD LUNCH with JULIA & THE COUNT
And When I had the Greatest Wine I Ever Tasted
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
July 28, 2023
This post has nothing to do with media relations nor does it have to do much with a man I once sat next to at lunch. But it’s more about one of the most wonderful experiences of my career. The way I see it, it’s human relations.
The Count Marquis Alexandre de Lur Saluces died recently. Which put me in mind of the time I tasted the greatest wine I’ve ever tasted; and the day I met him; and had lunch with him and Julie Child, together – the three of us.
This happened – serendipitously really – in the year 2000. It was the occasion of the Masters of Food & Wine, in Carmel Highlands. The Masters – with some of the greatest vintners, wines, chefs and food gathering each year for a weeklong hedonistic debauchery -- was always the best annual wine & food event I’d ever had the pleasure of attending and writing about.
GOLDY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT
Are We Going Nuts While the World Burns?
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
July 17, 2023
One of my winery clients recently sent this email, responding to a New York Times Magazine article you too likely saw, about a most unusual and iconoclastic winemaker. This is what he said:
“I was reading with great appreciation until I got to the tale about hand destemming, via manicure scissors. That's when I knew this article was intended as satire. Or, at best, Ms. Harrison is another frickin' debutante. I don't care how much she is able to sell her wine for, there is no way that is economically viable. Of course, I suppose it is possible that her winery is simply a tax shelter for her wealthy parents, so maybe profitability isn't part of the equation, in which case now I'm really envious.”
IF I GOT THE CONSTELLATION-CURRY PR ACCOUNT
A Hoop Dream Campaign? Not So Fast
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
June 27, 2023
This is my official pitch to become the PR director for Constellation Brands: If I’m lucky enough – and grovel enough – I’m proposing to call the campaign, “The Six Degrees of Separation World Tour” and How I Handle the Curry/The Prisoner Alliance (Or Not).
To wit: I will sit the hologram of Bob Mondavi down in a room specially constructed on the border that straddles To Kalon and Tokolan, and have the Mondavigram smack dab next to the real-life live Wardell Stephen Curry. The latter of whom will be sitting next to his wife Ayesha and sister Sydel – the founders of the Domaine Curry brand. Andy Beckstoffer will be peeping in through an especially made knothole, that for legal purposes (ooh you can count on loads of legal purposes for this event), is situated decidedly on the Tokolan side. (I’ll leave it up to you dear reader to figure out how to spell the T-word; and which entity spells which, what way.)