Not Delia

“Buy this wine – I’ve never tasted it, but it’s great!”

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Not Delia
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How can you write a book recommending wines you’ve never even tried? It seems a bit bizarre to me, but that’s allegedly what Matt Skinner, Jamie Oliver’s head of wine, has done.

In his defence he’s saying that the publication deadlines for the book mean that he doesn’t have a chance to taste the wines he recommends. Yeah, right. Who cares anyway as long as he’s raking in the cash for his book?

Get a blog, mate, and publish up to the minute news! Oh, I forgot, bloggers get a pittance – if anything – for their efforts. It would be much easier and more lucrative to write recommendations for wines I’ve never tasted. Gi’s a job!

You can read the whole story on the Decanter magazine’s website:
Decanter magazine: “Matt Skinner: Yes, I’ve recommended untasted wines”

Comments

3 responses to ““Buy this wine – I’ve never tasted it, but it’s great!””

  1. Buddyboy

    This is no surprise to me. I dislike “wine snobbery”, making more than wine than is the case. This goes even one step further by making something of a wine you haven’t even tasted. In the linked article the author tries to justify his ruse by saying the wines are consistent from year to year, but if he were honest he would have said that in his original assessment.

    Personally I make almost all my own wine. I buy kits from Costco here in Canada and make it for about £0.60 a bottle. The flavour is superb, the finished bottle is indistinguishable from a commercial product thanks to labels and caps included in the kit, and the price is right. What more would you want. I do have some commercial bottles which were given to us by house guests. They gather dust in my wine cellar because I frankly prefer the wine that I make. To me, buying commercial wine is like buying canned food – very nice, usually, but not as good as what you make at home.

    Thanks for the interesting tid bit, ND.

  2. Not Delia

    Hi Buddyboy

    I’ve never seen any wine kits in our neck of the woods. Perhaps we ought to look harder. I like the idea of good wine for about 60p a bottle!

    Dave and I used to make our own home brew beer (from kits).

  3. Buddyboy

    When we lived in the UK (pre-1975) I used to make wine from kits then. It was drinkable. Many, many years later I got back into wine making from kits and was stunned how much the process had improved. The concentrate is now of superb quality, the process really simple and the support from the manufacturer re questions, answers and additional components, excellent. It is no exaggeration to say the final product is as good as or better than commercial, off the shelf wine.

    Good kits are available all over the place here but Costco sells a variety of kits for less than half the cost and of equal quality. If you can source kits locally, ND, I suggest you give it a try. If you love cooking which, of course, you do, you will love wine making. It’s akin to putting the juice in a bucket, sprinkling on some magic powder and in four weeks, presto, good quality wine. There’s a little more to it than that, but you get the idea. Hubby would love it too.

    Our friends love the wine so much that now we all make wine the same way. Having a dozen people over and really getting into the spirit for an evening costs about £5, give or take. Try that with off the shelf prices. What’s not to like?

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