I hope you had a good Christmas and new year break tolerating your extended family admirably? There was plenty of food and wine consumed over the festive period and I am now nursing a rather large belly for it.
At the out-laws’ house, I was rifling through the book selection over Christmas, and came across Grumpy Old Wit by Rosemarie Jarski. I’m sure it’s not meant to appeal to the under 30s but I loved it.
However, in the food and drink section, I came across a rather sad but true assessment of wine presenters by British satirist Victor Lewis-Smith.
He said: ‘I recently disovered the appropriate work for the modern brand of telly wine bores. You know, the ones who insist on telling us that “I can smell wet nappies in there and burned toast and newly mown grass and creosote and Sunday newspapers.” What better name for such a pretentious group of plonk experts than plonkers?’
Harsh but fair. Are we really this boring and out of touch with the common man? Er, yes. I guess the old cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush is a load of bollocks to most normal people. And tasting notes on twitter…please can you save me from them? There is one individual who shall remain nameless that tastes wine regularly for a New Zealand retailer and I have had to unfollow them for their boastful, boring tasting notes. Who wants to read them? Certainly not the consumer. And this is the problem…social media has opened great opportunities for the wine world but it has also uncovered yet more of Lewis-Smith’s plonkers.
