Journalists are struggling to overcome their disappointment that old bottles of Grange are actually quite good.
No angle here
The shock revelation came after a glitzy event hosted by Penfolds, which showed a vintage from each of the last five decades.
‘I went along expecting to do some serious investigative journalism, and blow this whole ‘are expensive old wines any good’ debate wide open,’ said drinks writer Boo Zhack, ‘but annoyingly they were all great.’
The lack of any form of story, she said had ‘put a real dampener on the evening, that was only partially alleviated by an expenses-paid night’s accommodation in a five-star Victorian chateau.’
No angle here either
She wasn’t the only hack who felt the evening was a huge journalistic let-down.
Wynn Write-Air told Fake Booze that he’d attended the glamorous banquet in the hope of gaining some candid revelations from the Brand Manager presenting the wines.
‘I thought he might let slip that he preferred Henschke or that one of the old Grange vintages was an absolute dog or something,’ he told Fake Booze. ‘But to my surprise he thought they were all really good.’
Big let-down
Write-Air said he was ‘doubly annoyed’ because he had given up an evening drinking pints of Stella and eating pork scratchings in his local to be there.
‘I felt like a right mug,’ he said. ‘With no story to cover I got nothing out of the evening at all.
‘Apart from an eight course dinner and free access to top class wine, that is.’
Worrying trend
According to Col M Inches, head of the Drinkswriter’s Union, the Grange incident is just part of a worrying trend, with journalists increasingly being invited to immaculately organised events with top-notch hospitality.
‘It turns out that old wines from top estates are generally pretty good,’ said Inches. ‘Which is terrible news if you’ve bagged an invite on the basis that you’ll write something on the back of it.’
With no stories to break and nothing to complain about, his members, he said, are often left ‘angry, frustrated and with a bad case of indigestion.’
Nothing to see here
Over the last 12 months, hacks have resorted to writing articles claiming that vintage port ‘changes from year to year and can age a long time’; that XO Cognac ‘works well with cigars and has a long finish’ and that Ardbeg ‘tastes like an ashtray however old it is’.
‘Let’s just say that none of these are going to have editors holding the front page,’ Inches told Fake Booze.
‘If these kind of events become the norm our members could starve to death.
‘At least, they would if they weren’t being royally fed for free.’
Click here to see why drinks writers agree that all drinks writing is crap
