SEEKING HONESTY & INTEGRITY IN WINE WRITING
But Look Out for The Sportswriters
By ALAN GOLDFARB
August 28 2023
The headline, one you never see in wine publications or in general consumer publications which write about wine, was shocking in its intent. But I have to admit – I appreciated it because of its boldness.
James Harden's Wine is a Vintner’s Nightmare
The Beard’s cabernet was as much of a letdown as his playoff performances
I appreciate the boldness of if because the vast preponderance of wine writing – save from less than a handful of journalists who write about the subject with integrity, creativity, or original thought – is a wine marketer’s dream. Although I’m in the business of media relations marketing (PR), but as a longtime wine journalist myself, I very much appreciate and welcome critical thinking.
THE SCHMOOZER-In-CHIEF
Tim McDonald: PR Consultant to the Wine Stars
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
Aug. 22, 2023
Whenever I would snoop around a wine event in the Valley, looking for my next story, there would be Tim McDonald, schmoozing the writers, looking to ingratiate himself – and by extension – his clients. Mind you, this affable, good-looking guy with a tightly trimmed white beard and black-rimmed glasses, was not talkin’ up the scribes in any disingenuous way. Oh no. That’s not how this PR flack operates. He always chats to you like he knows you, likes you, and he means it.
But I often wonder, how he does it? How does he get invited to all these things when none of his clients are even pouring wine there on that day? Easy. Anybody affiliated with a winery in the Napa Valley knows Tim McDonald. He’s been around these parts. He’s been working in wine going on 44 years or two-thirds of his 68 years; and he’s been in media relations since 1994.
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.