As much fun as it would be to give her the third degree, it could ruin the interview? She might close up and you will have a boring show.
You will have a better interview if you just talk about what she wants to talk about. Let her run, don’t hobble her. Let her have her head, give her the reins, cover some new ground, it will be a much more fun interview?
I have lots of questions but I thing would tend to make here close up rather than talk.
Ask her if it is possible that she has unrealistic nostalgic sentiments for pre-industrial life, before chemistry, tractors, etc.? Ask her about how when we look back at the demographics and extremely short life expectency, the teeth worn out at age 27 by grit and dirt in food, at diseases, starvation, etc., are we really looking back at something that was better, or are we coloring something we really can’t and don’t see, through our own invented nostalgia?
Expanding on that search a bit, the closest thing that I c an find is “I am more and more convinced that all chardonnay vines should be ripped out of California and replaced with trebbiano” from a rather light-hearted post here: http://www.alicefeiring.com/feiringsquad/cat_wine_cop.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
In our rush to disagree with someone, let’s not make up quotes. And, if they are quotes, let’s link (or cite if from a book).
Being provocative gets attention for your points that being more even keeled might not. If you want your points to be noticed at all, it’s not a bad strategy since there’s so much out there. Once you’ve been noticed, though, I think your points need to stand on evidence or logic (depending on whether they’re facts or opinions).
Where she loses me is when she does things like what I noted above and calls those who disagree with her xenophobes and seems to demonize people for holding certain opinions rather than granting them the courtesy of assuming they’re equally interested in the subject but hold opposing views.
If you want to take an opinionated stand, cool. I respect that much more than people who take no stand. But don’t demonize people who disagree with you. Refute their points if they’re matters of fact or, if they’re opinions, talk about why you think those opinions are wrong, dangerous, etc. But tossing everyone into some class like xenophobes and thus demonizing the people and not their opinions immediately moves her from ‘interesting and opinionated’ to a very different bucket.
This is, frankly, where most of the natural wine crowd loses me - they tend to be rather moralistic and couch their points in almost good/evil terms.
Along the lines of the copper sulfate, I’d like to know her opinion on hybridized grapes (Seyval Blanc, Norton, etc). In many climates you can eliminate spraying altogether by growing the right hybrid grape, but many people just won’t go there because the negative image hybrids often have (true or not). Just curious…
I misquoted her–she spelled it Pino, not Pinot, for one. If I had known I was going to be accused of making up a quote, I would have linked to this and gotten it right word for word. As it is, the paraphrase captured it correctly in spirit, IMO.
Greg - thanks for the link. The misspelling is obviously why it doesn’t show in a google search. That said, if you’re going to quote someone like that, especially when it’s such a polarizing quote, I think its just easier to link. Also… (and this is grad school showing) a paraphrase isn’t a quote.
Alice thinks all CA Pinot should be ripped out
and
Alice said “All CA Pinot should be ripped out”
are very different things. Given how prominent this board is becoming in search results for these topics, I can see a misquote getting traction as if it were real so I think we should try to be accurate. A link also provides context and lets people see the thinking around the quote.
Again, I do not appreciate the accusation of fabrication. I should have said paraphrase, not quote, but otherwise what I wrote was true. I do not make up quotes to fuel an argument.
But thanks for finding this other quote about ripping out Chardonnay. Another good blanket statement that is mostly true, but greatly exaggerated to offend.
Suppose someone said, “I am more and more convinced all the Carignane in Languedoc should be ripped out?” There are oceans of insipid wine being made there (and everywhere), but if you kill all Languedoc Carignane then the few producers in underrated terroirs making old vine wines “naturally” would also lose. Would she ever say this about Languedoc? I doubt it, being a French plonk region as opposed to a CA plonk region, but one can never be certain.
Well, this being an internet discussion board, I kind of figured the rigor in terms of citations is not as high as would be for a peer reviewed journal article. Would you prefer Chicago or MLA style?
And yes, I understand there’s a difference between paraphrase and quote. But I thought I had the quote right. Next time I will verify quote and include a footnote.[1]
It’s neither. But it’s VERY easy for things said one place to circulate around and pretty soon it becomes gospel that “Alice said ‘X’” especially when WB is actively indexed in search engines. Is this journalism? No. But I’m a bit tired of the ‘this is just a discussion board’ excuse for not taking 5 minutes and grabbing a link, especially when the person being cited is fairly prominent.
Honestly, there’s so much crap in the way of madeup facts that providing the link does nothing but enhance your point.
I understand a lot of people will fabricate quotes just to win an argument. It’s fair to ask where someone found a quote. But instead of asking me, we have google artists hitting search and assuming because they did not find the quote that nothing of the sort has been said.
This is getting pedantic. You’d like to see every reference cited with proper use of quotes or paraphrasing. Not going to happen. The only reason I’m being held to a higher standard in what amounts to a conversational atmosphere is because you and Keith did not like that such a quote could be attributed to Alice Feiring. What I wrote was not correct technically as a quote, but its message was not distorted by my error. And lost in the argument over citations, quotes and paraphrases is that I’m not attacking her at all, just pointing out her tendency to overstate something for impact.
It isn’t really an accurate paraphrase either. She never said “all” Cali pinot should be pulled out. Quite frankly, the quotation is ambiguous — she could have meant the Cali pinot she tried that day should be pulled out, or perhaps, Cali pinot in general should be pulled out. Anyway, she was also being glib and tongue-in-cheek…I don’t think she was making a categorical statement.
A direct quotation would have shown she wasn’t really making a blanket statement on Cali pinot.
She did nothing to piss me off, Andrew. I read her book and the tone of it, to my mind, was that it was a self-indulgent,
preachy/whiney tome that did very little to educate me. To claim that she saved the World of Wine from Parkerization
is the utterings of a meglomaniac and has little perception of the real wine world, to my mind.
And many of her newspaper/magazine articles continue along with that same self-indulgent tone. And her appearance as
a panel moderator at the SantaFe Wine&Chile Fiesta a yr or two ago only reinforced those perceptions. That tone of her writing…her saving the wine
world from Parker and industrial-manufactured wines is part of Alice’s shtick to market AliceF***ing. Some people think it’s a great approach,
I don’t think much of it myself. Obviously, when reading Alice’s stuff, YMMV.
OTOH, I thought the article she had in the recent SFCHron was well-written and useful. I did learn some from it.
And I did a post here complimenting her on it. I’d like to see more writing from her along those lines. She has a message worth
delivering. I just don’t care much for her tone of delivery; depicting herself as a knight in shining armor to save us from Parker only goes
so far in my book.
Tom
I always make it a point to read your tasting notes, and especially the bloody pulpits. I enjoy your historical comments the most, and I always learn little something. Your tone is laid-back, conversational, pragmatic, and matter-of-fact. You seem eager share your treasure chest of information and experiences, and I (as are many others) am thankful that you take the time to pay it forward.
Based this board persona, I was quite alarmed to see you “go off” on Alice in a previous post. It was kind of amusing as well (as seen above), and it wasn’t surprising that it was Jancis. I remember thinking then: Tom seems so mild-mannered, so what could Alice have done to Tom…perhaps cut him off in traffic…ate his last piece of birthday cake…insulted his wife…something. Thanks for the explanation. I look forward to your next set of notes.
One serious question: does Alice (edit) realize or understand that she seems to alienate or anger the very people who will likely share her tastes and ideas, er her audience!
Andrew,
I assume you mean Alice, not Jancis. I’ve got no problem w/ Jancis…by and large respect highly her writing.
As for your question: My impression is that Alice is pretty clueless when it comes understanding how she comes off to her audience. I gather she dismisses anybody
who doesn’t agree w/ her message as xenophobes and Parker-lemmings. I, by and large, share her tastes and ideas. Many of the wines she likes are ones that
I like as well. It’s just when I read much (not all) of her stuff, I just shake my head in puzzlement and think “Alice, why don’t you get down off this anti-Parker soapbox and
say what you really need to say”. The few times I’ve gone to her blog, where she really lets it all hang out and lets Alice be Alice at her polemic worst; it just makes me want to flee to some other corner of CyberSpace where I can learn something and not get whined at. I think she views herself as DonQuioxte or Joan of Arc or something, and can’t get beyond that self-image.
She moderated a panel at SantaFe W&C Fiesta last year or the year before; a panel on Natural Wines, including the erstwhile RandallGrahm. By and large, she stayed in the
background and let the winemakers do the talking. But she made some comments that were factually wrong and it just increased my reluctance to view her as any
sort of wine authority or anybody who had anything of importance to say. And in the tasting part of the seminar, she served a mystery wine…the Yellowtail Shiraz. I suspect her
expectation that it would obviously show itself to be a Parkerized/industrial-grade wine and everybody w/ rise up and tar&feather the first Ozzie they could find. Didn’t happen. It was
a huge wine loaded w/ Shiraz fruit and most people seemed to actually like the wine, especially compared w/ some of the leaner/more esoteric other wines in the tasting. She seemed
a bit non-plussed when the audience didn’t get the message that was so obvious to her.
So…I’ve got some friends in the biz, winemakers and retailers, who think she’s the cat’s meow. There are people who read her stuff and absolutely hang onto every word she
utters. I just have a problem w/ her tone of delivery…not her message itself.
And thanks for the compliments on the TN’s, Andrew. But…“mild-mannered”??? Everytime I rip off my shirt and you can see that big S emblazoned on my chest…
“mild-mannered”???
Tom
Would you prefer Chicago or MLA style?![[rofl.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/a/a7452fcd8e675af869f8da01174474a545b03944.gif "rofl"){kind=small}
![[snort.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/b/bdc3944606213c4dca6c1169cf0a166c8bc4f8c9.gif "snort.gif"){kind=small}