the month
WINE
March 2012
THE MONTH
say what?
The White Wine Ou on why press releases are not for him Dear wine PR person, I know that times are hard, and that your clients are on your back for increased exposure, but upping the pressure on the goose that lays the golden eggs viz. the lesser spotted Cape wine writer (acknowledgment to Neil Pendock for this hilarious classification!), will achieve little other than ticking us off, so perhaps a couple of pointers on how to get the best out of us: I receive about eight to ten press releases a day, all of which I am expected to publish. Considering the column centimetres available to most wine hacks, I’m sure you’ll understand that it’s an impossibility. Accordingly, if you telephone me and ask a) “Did you get my press release?” and b) “When are you going to use it?” my response will likely be “Yes” and “I’m not.”
BOOK
By all means exclude me from your invitation list for client events (I get far more than I can possibly attend or write about), but if you do, don’t send me a press release subsequently which commences as follows: “The crème de la crème of food and wine writers recently
gathered at <expensive venue> and enjoyed the wines of <client> paired with the wonderful food of<potential client>.” I’m hardly likely to submit it to any of the publications for which I write, now am I? If I do accept an invitation, I do so on the understanding that I may or may not write about the experience entirely at my own discretion. I should add that on occasion you may well be grateful that I have chosen not to write about an experience at one of your clients! Do not badger me with “When are you going to write about <client>?” If I do write about it, you are not entitled to see the copy beforehand. When you send out a press release, please send it to just ONE person at each publication. Sending it to every person for whom you have an email address, couched in terms which make it appear that only one person received it, is misleading. If it is indeed worthy of publication (and note that this is definitely not always the case with press releases), it causes everybody to forward it for possible consideration at each publication, a waste of time and expensive Internet bandwidth.
When one of the many wine competitions happens, please don’t send me a press release about the achievements (bronze, silver and gold) of each and every one of each and every client’s wines. Bear in mind that I will have received the entire result of the competition beforehand, and therefore know who won what. If it’s a really big competition, with hundreds of medals awarded, it would require a special edition of every publication I write for in order to publish the blizzard of wordy, hyperbolic copy that I receive. Since pretty much all the publications that carry wine content are
dependent on advertising revenue, wouldn’t it make sense to persuade your client to take an advertisement periodically, rather than constantly trying to cadge free column centimetres, for which you bill your client anyway? If you doubt in any way the veracity of what I am suggesting, bear in mind the following: once the pending alcohol advertising ban is implemented, as it inevitably will be, you’ll be even more dependent on us wine hacks to get the word out about your clients and their products.
A Question of Sanity Ria Kruger reviews Room by Emma Donoghue
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his shortlisted candidate for the 2010 Man Booker prize is simultaneously profoundly affecting and endearingly uplifting, despite the grim subject matter. It is the story of the very limited life experience of five-year-old Jack, living with his Ma in a very small room where he was conceived and born and which he has never left. Unbeknown to him, they are locked-in prisoners of Old Nick who comes to the room every night to rape Ma after she has stowed Jack safely away in the wardrobe. The charm of this wonderful read lies with the narrator’s voice, little Jack, and
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his innocent and quirky perspective on their world called Room, in which all the furniture and objects feature as characters from Jack’s perspective, and the world he and Ma watch on TV he is led to believe is a fictitious world of pretence. Ma protects this progeny of her and her captor against the knowledge of their imprisonment by creating a routine as normal as she can realistically conceive in a room so small. Every morning they run around Track for exercise; they have regular meal times; Jack eats with Meltedy Spoon and she constantly keeps him occupied with invented games and stories - also to keep her own mind sane. The fact that she still breastfeeds him at age five would
normally raise eyebrows but in this instance the reader quickly realises that Ma probably did not want to deprive her son from this only comfort in their grim circumstances. The second half of the novel deals with their escape and the adjustment Jack has to go through in a world he believed was fictional while his mother fights her own battles due to her terrible ordeal. It is truly a triumphant story about a mother’s limitless love and fighting spirit to protect her child from a terrible truth. Emma Donoghue deserves all the praise she received for this novel as she nuanced the gut-wrenching plot in a masterly and very original voice.
March 2012