Gulping at Christian Bristow-Eedes
15 August 2005
There we were on a
quiet Friday afternoon, the editor reading to me Wine mag’s email
newsletter Gulp!, hoping that Christian Eedes would again help us in our
mutual quest to become hip and cool (are those the right words?) with some
more names of obscure musical groups for us to lightly drop into our
conversations. (I personally tend to fancy Bartok and Bach, while I suspect
the ed of a secret fondness for Willie Nelson – none of whom seem to have
much street cred these days.) Another reason we value Xtian, by the way, is
that his presence in the wine world manages the hard task of making other
winewriters seem, by contrast, unassertive and modest.
Anyway, in this case
Xtian was going on about Cordoba Crescendo. ‘Few Cape wines demand patience
like this classically oriented example’, read the Editor, and stopped.
‘That’s quite good - I wish I’d thought of saying that when I wrote last
year’s Platter entry on Crescendo’, he sighed wistfully. So we turned to
Platter to see what actually had been said there. And lo and behold! there
stand those exact same words! Tim was most chuffed that something he’d
written was worthy of being, er, borrowed by the Deputy Editor of Wine
magazine!
The Grape Ed’s
something of a kindly innocent, of course, so I had to point out that it’s
not long since Darryl Bristow-Bovey was driven out of South African
journalism for plagiarism. And it’s not just words that have been nicked
here, it’s the thought too – and it’s a bit sad to see the considered result
of vertical tastings and careful annual considerations all trivialised into
a bit of vapid journalese: we get more than enough of that in wine writing
already.
But really we don’t
need to get too serious about it – an industry that doesn’t seem to raise
its hypocritical eyebrow at magazine advertorials shouldn’t have to swallow
hard at a bit of plagiaristic misappropriation, a much less pernicious
practice.
No
nicknames please
Talking of the
esteemed Wine mag – I noticed while browsing though it at the local
newsagents, that a writer of a published letter had made a point of
referring to the esteemed Michael Fridhjon as ‘Mike’. Now, as someone who
once did the same thing in this very column (in a similar spirit of
easygoing good-fellowship) I know this is a liberty that Mr F doesn’t take
lying down: I shall be eagerly hanging around CNA’s magazine racks at the
time of the next edition, expecting a rejoinder of some cuttingness. The
rather silly letter won its author a magnum of expensive bubbly, so I assume
it had Wine’s editorial team chuckling as much as I frequently
chuckle over their wine ratings.
I think it was on the
occasion of my own lapse into vulgar name-shortening that Michael responded
by calling me a ‘ verveless veuve’, a sting I am sure I shall forgive him
for soon, or on my deathbed – whichever comes second.
