Proud UC Davis Grads Made to Cow-er
By Alan Goldfarb
July 20, 2022
Along about now, alums of UC Davis – the Harvard of the wine industry – are having a cow. The reference, admittedly way too easy as you’ll see, goes to the geniuses at the school, who have decided that it would be far better to call themselves the Davis Cows. Aggies – officially the UC Davis Agricultures –was far too provincial and lacked pizzazz; Now it’s Go Fightin’ Cows, repel them, repel them, make them relinquish the oval. That’ll scare the grape juice out of ‘em.
Gimme a Balanced Wine & A Real Story
And I’ll Give You a Good PR Run for Your Money
By Alan Goldfarb
July 13, 2022
A family member asked me recently regarding my clients, “What if you don’t like their wine?” Meaning: What do you do if you don’t like the wine; and do you even take the winery as a client? The answer is nuanced.
My first instinct is not to take the client; and I have eschewed wineries as clients if I absolutely did not like their wines. How can I possibly justify – to the client; and very importantly, to the media (which are my target audience) – that I don’t like the wine; and then get behind them? I don’t deal in hyperbole. I can’t be dishonest. And I won’t ever spin a yarn about a wine that doesn’t deserve to be spun. In other words: Everything PR-types are perceived to trade in. I’m not one of those. I need to love the wine and I want to like my clients
HOW CLARKSBURG CHENIN MUST TELL A ‘DIFFERENT’ STORY
By Alan Goldfarb
July 5, 2022
“Clarksburg (which I like a lot) is the undoubted ground zero (AVA) for Chenin Blanc in California, if not the U.S. if not North America. It has been that way for some time but nobody pays attention (other than a group of winemakers and wineries).”
That was former colleague and longtime Suisun grower Roger King -- who could have added, as it pertains to who pays attention to such “disparate” varietals such as Chenin -- the media.
Annals of PR: The Glass Menagerie
By Alan Goldfarb
June 17, 2022
For the life of me, I’ve long tried to find out the derivation of the word “flack” as it pertains to PR – as a pejorative to denigrate or malign publicists. According to some dictionaries the word could mean, "a crass ambulance-chaser who flacks himself in TV ads" or as one TV network called Trump mouthpiece Sean Spicer, “The playfully pugilistic flack”. I wanted to begin this post as taking a self-deprecating playful swipe at publicists, who don’t follow through on promises as they engage the media. But the more I delved into the publicity agency that recently contacted me, inviting me to what was billed as a media opportunity, the more I became pissed off. Because in the aftermath, the proposed “opportunity” signified nothing; and made me understand why flacks have garnered such self-inflicted bad reputations.
ANNALS OF PR: The Ideal Client
By Alan Goldfarb
June 6, 2022
Her winery story was the best, the most real, utmost compelling I’d ever heard. Her wines were, in my estimation, the best I’d ever represented. She was the most responsive client I’d ever had. And she paid me the least of any client I’d had.
She was – to date – the most ideal client on whose behalf I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. She made my job pleasurable, easy, and deliciously challenging. In other words: She was a flack’s dream.