Wine magazine, advertising platform or tourist guide?
We’ve subscribed to the Wine Companion website for a while, and we buy James Halliday’s indispensable tome every year. Just recently, the WC magazine began turning up in our letterbox. I marvelled at such generosity until I took a look inside the mag and saw all the ads. You have to work hard to find the articles in between them, and then it’s hard to tell real articles from ‘features.’
The current mag has a ‘celebration feature’ on sparkling wine that is 25 pages long. It starts with details on the Champagne region, and continues with a feature page on each of 13 houses, followed by more pages featuring some of our local makers of sparkling wine. It’s all very congenial, très douce et charmant if you know what I mean, but it looks a lot like a cocktail party where everyone is terribly nice to everyone else because it’s such a perfect day out on the terrace, and the sun is so golden and the breeze is like silk on your skin and …
OK, I’m a purist, I admit it.
Maybe it’s growing up in Germany that did it. I like things to be clear. I like to know when an ad is an ad, and when a story is a story. I loathe advertorials, infomercials, features and promotions disguised as stories. This magazine looks like the tourist guides to the wine country they hand out in Adelaide hotels, where the sun never stops shining and every picture is perfect.
Even a restaurant review of Petaluma’s Bridgewater Mill reads like an ad. Not a single nit to pick here, not even a dropped napkin. Perfection all the way. There are a couple of real stories by Jeni Port and Campbell Mattinson, with photos of real working wine people, then we’re treated to another of those articles James is so fond of sharing with us: Hardy’s 160th anniversary dinner, ‘a once-in-a-lifetime dinner.’
I wonder if I’m the only one who gets annoyed by long articles on wine dinners that feature wines we’re never likely to see, let alone taste: 1939 Reynella Burgundy, 1947 Old Castle Riesling, 1954 McWilliams Richard Hermitage … Am I envious? No, just bored. (Sorry James, love your work otherwise).
Dancing on Hardy’s Grave
There are interesting history lessons buried in these wines, but this is not the time or place for those insights. Nor is there any mention of the various takeovers by corporate raiders who disembowelled one of our great old wine companies and sucked the marrow out of its bones.
Hardy’s new owner is Champ Equity, which renamed its wine business Accolade. PR Manager Anita Poddar shared the company’s vision with TheShout last year – are you ready? ’To enrich everyday moments around the world … We want our wines and drinks to shape everyday moments into memorable experiences as well as providing fitting tributes for special occasions.’
Wait, there’s more: ‘Our mission is to put consumers at the heart of our global wine business, creating distinctive brands and trusted wines. … Our vision is about more people enjoying our wines, it’s about growth in key markets and consumer-led innovation.’
More Valium, anyone?
Sorry, couldn’t help myself there.
Stop it, you’re spoiling the 160 year anniversary celebrations.
But Hardy’s doesn’t exist anymore – it’s been dead and buried for years.
Shush! Not a cross word. It’s a birthday dinner, so let’s be happy.
Quite right, there’s no room here for blood and guts on the floor. The gorgeous vineyards that fill the pages of this magazine don’t look like they’d leave a speck of dirt on your shoes. This is a spotless magazine for the beautiful people, a glossy advertising platform that celebrates the wonderful world of wine. It’s a different world from the one we inhabit, that’s all.
Kim
P.S. I suspect that James has little to do with the mag.