Accusations, complaints, apologies 6 July 2005

Below:

1. A letter from Neil Pendock, with regard to a piece by the Widow which appeared on this site for approximately five minutes on the morning of 5 July 2005, before being removed.

2. The original piece referred to.

3. A response to Neil Pendock from the editor of Grape.

FROM NEIL PENDOCK:

Early birds usually catch worms and any matutinal avian readers of this website this morning would have seen the Widow having a go at my humble self for accepting freebies in (amongst others) the shape of a case of imported wine.  When I told the Widow her facts were wrong and I had the deposit slip to prove it, the story mysteriously vanished from the site.

Could it be that the Widow has a guilty conscience about freebies when the host of the tasting where the Widow obtained her information, David Brice, vouchsafed the juicy worm that the Widow herself was a guest at a tasting for which other less exalted oenophiles, had to pay.  As David said ‘Tim James got the freebie, not you’.

The Widow signs off by asking for names to attach 'to the vague accusations' and I’m happy to nominate Tim James as a candidate.  With regard to the slanderous accusation that I accept free cases of wine from importers, of course I’ll expect a full and unreserved apology posted prominently on this website so that I don’t need to dig up the phone number of my friends at Sue, Grabbit and Runne, attorneys at law.

WHAT THE WIDOW WROTE:

I see that our most prolific wine journalist, Neil Pendock, has been having another sly go at fellow writers and judges in his latest Sunday Times Lifestyle columnette. Nothing specific or substantiated, you understand – just generalised aspersions. Not long ago he was nodding in agreement with Rustenberg’s Simon Barlow’s sour and largely inaccurate suggestion that local wine judges don’t have enough experience of foreign wines; he’s also been quite hot on suggesting in print that there are conflicts of interest amongst (again carefully unspecified) Platter Guide tasters.

Now as his starting point Neil quotes from a book with a silly title (Noble Rot) which, amongst other things, glorifies the ghastly American critic Robert Parker:  ‘Parker was a handsome boy … he rode bicycles. He played sports…. From the beginning Parker promised that he would never take freebies and that he would fight just as much against industrialized, homogenized wines as overpriced, tradition-bound bitter ones…’ According to Neil, this is ‘in strong contrast to SA wine pundits’. He doesn’t explain how – is it that he finds the locals not good-looking enough? Or insufficiently keen on bikes? Or horrifyingly supportive of industrialised or overpriced wines?

Or is the problem that they ‘take freebies’? Well, that’s a point, depending on whether you include wine samples and entertainment-shmoozing as freebies. And Neil, as the recipient from wine producers of more airline tickets, fine meals, hotel beds and the like than just about any other SA wine journalist, might be feeling a bit guilty about it all. I overheard just this last week an importer saying that he was sending another case of pricey imported wines for Neil to try – this presumably to help him advance what seems to be his current campaign to get local wine-drinkers to avoid Cape stuff and buy foreign. There was no obvious worry in this case that Neil would fling up his hands in horror and insist on an invoice.

But really, it does seem about time for us to have some names and clarity attached to these vague accusations, if they’re not to seem just the teeniest bit cheap and cowardly.

From Tim James, Editor of Grape:

Firstly, the Widow is anonymously written, with a degree of collaboration; no-one is 'the Widow' as such. As editor, I take ultimate responsibility for the column and, in this case, accept personal responsibility for the incorrect information on which the unfair accusation (actually more an insinuation) was based.

A chronology: The piece was posted early in the morning. Immediately afterwards, I emailed a copy to Neil Pendock (who is something of a pal as well as colleague), as I felt rather uneasy about the whole thing – he did not have to discover it. He pointed out to me, with admirable restraint, the factual error. I apologised to him and immediately removed the paragraph from the website. He said that was not good enough, and I offered to re-include it and publish a correction and apology. He said that was not good enough, but by this stage I had decided to pull the whole piece, as I told Neil – so he shouldn't really find its disappearance 'mysterious'.

While I'm delighted that Neil has friends, even if they're lawyers, he has no need to (even humorously) demand an apology with menaces. I had already offered one and am happy to give it here. I also know that Neil is a person – and journalist – of integrity and probity. Personally, I have no problem at all with winewriters getting modest 'freebies' that help them in their work, especially samples for tasting. As Neil points out, I get them myself. I'm pleased, though, that he hasn't been able to dig up more dirt against me than that I apparently accepted an invitation to a wine-tasting – I'm sure he's quite correct in accusing me of that.