The summer of strikes has reached the world of booze, with thousands of drinks professionals downing tools to show how generally annoyed they are about Stuff.
The marketers are revolting
First out the traps were wine marketers who marched noisily through the streets of London, Paris and New York chanting pointlessly irritating and ineffectual slogans they had made up themselves.
‘Our members have seen their budgets slashed from ‘insignificant’ to ‘more or less non-existent’ over the last 12 months,’ said Mark Eting-Spend, ideator, brand consultant and general irritant.
‘It makes it incredibly hard for them to do their jobs. They’re having even less impact than they usually do.’
Eting-Spend told Fake Booze that his members had actually withdrawn their labour ten weeks ago, but had been forced to carry out the further demonstrations when nobody noticed.
USP not A-OK
The wine marketers were backed up by craft distillers who said that rising fuel prices had made their business model ‘completely unviable’.
‘The whole point about what we make is that it’s illogically expensive,’ said Tunza Cash, owner of Massive Mar Gin. ‘No-one has a clue why our unaged white spirit costs what it does and assumes it must be wonderful just because we put it in a bottle that can be repurposed as a lamp.’
But Ms Cash said that the fact that her energy bill had tripled in three months had ‘completely destroyed’ their USP and made strikes unavoidable.
‘Suddenly we are able to justify why a bottle of vodka with a few bits of bark in it might cost as much as a 16-year-old single malt,’ she said, ‘It completely undermines the relentless profiteering that has made craft gin the force it is today.’
Pens down
Even drinks writers, who are largely too apathetic to get over-excited about anything, have been showing their displeasure as the Cost of Living crisis bites.
‘Our members’ rates haven’t gone up for ten years,’ said Parker Roberts of the Group of Boozy Scribblers, Hacks and Industry Taste Explainers (GOBSHITE). ‘And the demise of lengthy lunches means many are having to buy their own food for the first time in years.’
The rise of tasting miniatures had also, he said, ‘played havoc’ with journalists’ ability to supplement low word-rates by making up tasting notes and selling unopened press samples on ebay.
‘But with these strikes drinks writers everywhere will stop generating thought-provoking and original content and repurpose old worn-out articles instead.
‘Just like they always have.’
