The Wid Awards for 2007
18 December  2007

It’s all up to me again, I see. Why can’t the editor realise that people like seeing lists of awards for achievements through the year? Even winecoza shoved aside a few of their advertisements to make room for the Amorim Newsmaker of the Year. Ah – perhaps that’s a hint as to why we can’t do it here on Grape – presumably the mega cork supplier gave winecoza some money (so what’s new?) and no-one's given any to us.

I think they gave the prize to Bruce Jack because he’d just sold his soul – sorry, his winery – to the big multinational Constellation and also got a no-doubt exorbitantly paid job from them. I suspect that they didn’t realise that Bruce is not at all a fan of cork and tends to screwcaps. But wasn’t it lucky that winecoza was able to refer in its award-presenting piece to a few of the many pieces it had carried during the year on how wonderful cork is compared with nasty old screwcaps?

So let me (who also has a soft spot for corks, even if not quite as soft a spot as Amorim has) start off my awards in that spirit:

TCA Award for Independent, Honest Coverage of Wine Closure Matters:
To Jeanine Wardman, editor of winecoza. (Prize: another freebie trip to Portugal from Amorim, like the one she went on earlier this year)

TCA Award for Independent, Honest Coverage of Health Issues Related to Screwcaps:
To Emile Joubert, wine PR consultant/wine journalist, for his courageous story in Rapport about how screwcaps might give you cancer, whatever the experts say. (Prize: another freebie trip to Portugal from Amorim, like the one he went on earlier this year.)

And there’s another award for Jeanine (well done, that girl!):

Editorial Climbdown of the Year:
To winecoza for their apologetic retraction, in the face of threats of being sued for libel, of Neil Pendock’s second-hand but still nonsensical story about how Decanter sells its editorial space. (No prize, unfortunately, but Amorim might offer something.)

Winetasting Organiser of the Year:
To Wine magazine, for (1) the Chenin Challenge in which the highest scoring wine was not the winner [see correction below]; (2) the Port Awards in which a winemaker acting as judge resolutely top-scored his own wines without his scores being discounted; (3) the Diners Club Award in which no-one seems to know exactly what happened; (4) achieving such symptoms of excellence in judging as giving Columella and de Trafford Shiraz two stars each and Cape Point Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc Reserve just one star (etc, etc, etc....).

(If you’ll permit me a little digression here: I was reminded, when doing research for my awards, of winemaker Ken Forrester’s statement that the Chenin Challenge results had destroyed any credibility that Wine magazine had. I can’t wait to find out whether he entered his wines in the next one. Not that our editor will be at the awards ceremony to see: while Neil Pendock did receive an invitation, despite his avowal that Managing Editor Froud had sworn Neil would never get invited to another Wine function, it seems that the poor Grape editor has borne the brunt of Mr Froud’s anger at having his Diners Club tasting methodology publicly questioned: for the first time in its history, poor Tim hasn't received an invitation to the forthcoming event – neither has dear Angela, so she tells me; perhaps Wine mag didn't like her observation that it had hijacked the Diners Club event. But maybe it’s just because neither of them are very important, after all. Nonetheless, I have a soft spot for editor Fiona McDonald and am sorry she’s recently resigned – although some people wonder if she’s jumping from a sinking ship, or just an unconfortable one; the odds are not very long against Deputy Xtian taking whatever control is left to the editor. That’d be fun, to see what he could achieve against all the odds – not to mention against Mr Froud.)

The ‘Honest Joe’ Award for Communicator of the Year:
To Mike Froud himself, Managing Editor of Wine magazine, for his immortal words ‘Correspondence from our side … is now closed’, while people were still questioning the bizarre confusions about the Diners Club tasting procedures.

Investigative Journalist of the Year:
To Neil Pendock, for general excellence in researching his material, with a special note on writing a feature in Wine magazine about the significance of estates, without apparently realising that they no longer exist as a category in the Wine of Origin system. A sub-award for the editorial staff who commissioned the article and published it with its array of errors, misspellings and the like.

There are two international awards:

The Diligent Foreign Journalist of the Year:
To the illustrious James Molesworth of the Wine Spectator for his discovery of the excellence of the Poor-Vaardeberg ward. It shows he really tried hard to find out exactly why it was called that.

The White Man’s Burden Award:
To Tim Atkin, for his selfless work in damning with faint praise South African wine in the face of the horrible incompetence of local wine critics, who pig-headedly refuse to travel around the world, for free and in luxury, acquiring experience like he does, and thus learning how superior Chilean and other red wines are. (Prize: no doubt as many golfing and wine holidays to the Cape as he wishes, with a chorus of fawning wine producers and Wosa staff included.)

That’s it, folks. Apart from the foreigners, seems like a clean sweep for Winecoza and Wine mag. What, I hear you all cry – nothing for Michael Fridjhon? Well, there’s just too much competition these days in the Conflicts of Interest category but maybe next year, Mike; or perhaps there’ll be something for you in the Entrepreneurs and Consultants Awards of some other website, anyway.

***

But how about some Really Good Guys awards? Perhaps one for the little professor who’s shown unprecedented chutzpah in leading the Wine Industry Council to challenge Distell (and the craven Wine and Spirit Board) over the question of cruchen blanc’s usurpation of the proud name of riesling, and over its big business fondness for using its massive muscle to buy its way onto restaurant winelists – or take them over entirely. I’ll raise a glass of madeira to him (and tip out a glass of Graça or something equally ghastly to the restaurants with less pride than greed).

And to Sophia Warner and the others in the Pebbles Project, who’re doing their damnedest to put some little bandages on the wine industry’s running sore of endemic alcoholism. If you think Christmas is for children (even little poor ones with ragged clothes and foetal alcohol syndrome) and you don’t know what gift to choose for a winelover who has everything – well, a donation to Pebbles might make you feel good too.

Oh well, my dear husband (I try not to remember him at this time of year, as I want to have a nice time) always used to say that I was just a sweet, sentimental old thing. That is, he didn’t actually say it, but I know it’s what he was thinking.

Merry Xmas, etc.

COMMENTS

From Elliot Calder:
Another vitriol. I'm inclined to tell you (read collectively by their association with you, Wid, and meaning all those on the Grape team) that this kind [of] sarcasm is pretty unbecoming. Or reconsidered, perhaps not. Given that once the 'team' at Grape had a print version of which you/they couldn't make a going concern. Another thing, as much as their apparent flaws are there for the world to see, the Wine mag folks stick to their knitting, focus on the issues and do not devote their time to besmirching industry colleagues. I'm not partisan either way, but I honestly believe you've stooped far below what you're capable of here.

Inform me, if you cannot do that, leave the juvenile tit-for-tat to the threads of inconsequential blogs.

Still in sore need of a decent summation of the issues that were 2007. Gulp! of 14 December comes as close to it as I've read. The old Latin proverb - eagles don't chase flies...

Dear Eagle Elliot – It's a bit hard to consider your sarcastic remark about Grape's commercial success without being just a touch sarcastic myself, so let's leave that. If you want knitting, go to Wine mag. If you want comment, report and no besmirching, go to some of the many other pages on the Grape website (my little page of thoughts appears once a month or so, alongside many dozens of other pieces, few if any of which show the slightest trace of unbecoming sarcasm). Or if you think the 'team' is just too inadequate to make a going concern for you, stick to reading Wine mag (ten minutes a month?). What did a high-minded person like you really expect to find on this page? And by the way, I quite agree with you about the high quality of Christian's weekly Gulp! If Wine mag under his coming editorship is allowed by the accountants and managers to, as a whole, attain that quality no-one would be happier than the Grape 'team' . – Wid

From Clive Sindelman:
I think Elliot doesn't like your attempts at satire wid. But no bother, someone has to try and prick the bubbles of the legions in the world of wine who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge, opinions and ethics too seriously. Do eagles fly with witches?

A correction:
I've been reminded that the Chenin Challenge results were not quite as odd as I've suggested here. Going back to the original Grape discussion I started getting as confused by the processes and results as I was at the time. But I think It was in the second round, which didn't count, that the winning wine scored lower than the other, but in the final round which used a ranking system the other one came through. Then, 'final scores for the last eight wines were done after the ranking'. I wouldn't swear that I understand the logic of the process but let's assume that all was in order, and that the judges, who included one of the makers of the wines in the final round, quite legitimately changed their minds about which was the best.

From Joaquim Sa:
Wow! Grape has changed strategy. It’s not anymore about bashing cork, now it’s about Amorim.

Amorim Cork is an advertiser in wine.co.za for more than 3 years and not a sponsor. We recognise the merits of being visible in a website specializing in wine topics and visited monthly by thousands of readers.

Amorim never paid any journalist or any sort of media to solicit articles. Any free workshops hosting international speakers, renowned academics, sponsorships of local wine competitions and social development projects, or advertising in the local media, form part of Amorim’s international marketing strategy to announce and promote the values inherent of the brand.

Invitations to key customers and journalists to visit our processing plants are also part of our PR activity to address the improvements particular to the products of our company, to observe and to render comments. We cherish the feedback from our clients and guests. There has been an improvement in cork manufacturing and a clear progression in overall quality, with the demand for high-quality cork never been higher than at present. It’s important to make that distinction.

It is an undisputed fact that there are several main areas where cork has the advantage against alternative closures. Some people are still condemning cork the material, rather than the practices in making it.

Lastly, Amorim Newsmaker of the year by wine.co.za – the nomination of Bruce Jack and Flagstone as winemaker and winery of the year was done without Amorim’s participation/involvement in the decision-making. We are pleased that Bruce Jack got that recognition, not only for being a customer of ours, but for his merit in promoting South Africa’s wine quality abroad.

As General D Moynihan once said: ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts’.

From the Editor (the Wid being a little the worse for wear on pre-Christmas madeira):
Thanks Joaquim, but you're responding to non-existent issues. If anything was being bashed it was journalists who are a bit too grateful to advertisers, not the advertisers. That is what we care about - the ethics of wine journalism, not any ethics that big business might have. We never said you had anything to do with choosing Bruce Jack - in fact it was suggested that it was a bit odd, given the large proportion of screwcaps in his range.

And the only reference made to corks was, in fact, a positive one: the Widow saying that she has a soft spot for them (something with which I would, incidentally, concur). How does that amount to 'bashing' corks or you? In fact, I don't think it's correct to say that Grape has had a strategy of bashing corks - though I admit that there is one passionate screwcap lover who has quite a bit of influence on the news coverage.... But even if there is a tendency on the website, it is at least not accompanied by heavy advertising from Stelvin, unlike winecoza's markedly pro-cork position being accompanied by heavy advertising from you - though of course that is very possibly mere coincidence.