Here we go again
Wine competition season is in full-swing. In Europe, that is. Monde Selection has passed and now the results for Concours Mondial are streaming in ?+¦-+???+¦-ú?-¦?+¦-ú?+¦+¦ literally.
You can’t switch on your computer to search for the latest Cameron Diaz bikini shot without receiving some media release from a PR company breathlessly announcing their client’s achievement. If it isn’t a Gold at Concours, it is two Silvers at the Kabul Merlot Challenge.
Not that I’m not glad the SA wine industry is winning international awards. But the reams of releases announcing gongs and trophies won in far-flung places is getting too much. Especially as there seems to be no consistency in the timing. Two weeks after Monde Selection, I am still receiving announcements.
Speaking to a print journalist today, he told me he is going nuts with all these press releases floating in as he can’t press the delete button before the next one arrives.
Are the achievements of SA wines important? Yes. (As long as it is not Silver or Bronze.) So, yes, it is important to publish.
But then there must be a cohesive strategy. Could an organisation, possibly one involved with promoting the SA wine industry overseas (I’m not going to name names lest I get kakked on again) not collate all the results following such wine competitions and send us ONE media release listing how many Trophies, Medals and Scalps were won by the SA industry. Who won them. And compare this with achievements from other wine nations so we can get a bit of perspective.
Surely this would be printable copy, and even interesting. Better than another bloody smirking wine-writer saying how damn “delighted” he was.
In fact, myself and Dr Johan van Rooyen from the collapsed Wine Industry Council were hosting a media lunch a while back when this point was raised by a wine hack from the dailies. In the presence of an organisation responsible for generically promoting the SA wine industry internationally, the hack asked whether this organisation could not compile such competition information as one of its duties.
But perhaps it is only I and the journalists who do not publish such results,that,deem it to be a good idea.
Emile L Joubert
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