Wine writing scandal of the week...

Tom_Wheltle · December 18, 2012, 3:47am

The Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio is likely the worst value Pinot Grigio in any store!

Regarding Dr. Vine, it’s amazing how many people are doomed by their last name. When I was consulting at Coors a couple of decades ago, a Mr. Malter was in fact the guy responsible for malting the grain, and you all know what a Mr. Brewer did for his paycheck!

Of course, my ophthalmologist is Dr. Glasser!

Humberto_Dorta · December 18, 2012, 4:22am

Try Mandeep Singh my buddy, who is a urologist. Game set and match

dteng · December 18, 2012, 5:26am

Is she related to Mishy??

Mark_C · December 18, 2012, 12:56pm

…and Harry Beaver, the OB-GYN

Paul_H_Galli · December 18, 2012, 4:15pm

Went to her site where there is a video in which she pairs Wines with Books…

She is kinda cute so, [ken.gif]

TTT

Tran_Bronstein · December 18, 2012, 4:24pm

Geez, you wine consumers demanding some actual integrity from your wine reviewers. Who do you guys think you are anyways? What planet do you live on, let me know because it must be nice to visit a place where wine critics both have integrity and make a good living. Was anyone really surprised to be reading about this? I don’t give her or any other wine critic my money and if anyone else does or did… she deserves to get rich off of their lack of due dilligence and care and assuming her professional status meant she was ethical.

Show me an honest wine reviewer who gives their opinion out for free and I’ll show you either a poor wine critic or a Wine Berserker and/or CellarTracker member who needs to make a living at a real job in order to support their wine habits and give away reviews for free.

The wine world is very incestuous and closed off which is how wine critics manage to get away with schemes like this. The internet has helped open things up so I always get the majority of my opinions from this board and CellarTracker. Hopefully, it will eventually help eradicate scandals altogether as more and more of them are brought to light.

Paul_Jaouen · December 19, 2012, 7:58pm

Natalie responds:

ToddFrench · December 19, 2012, 8:11pm

But, she added that ‘for all reviews previously quoted, please know that I am working to revise the way I format third party reviews to cite full names and publication details’.

Yeah…I guess she just forgot to add the attribution.

Rick_Gregory · December 19, 2012, 8:50pm

She was defensive over the copyright infringement claim. ‘I have had a thorough discussion with a legal expert on copyright and know that what I am doing now and what I will be doing in the future is not only legal, but right,’ she said.

But, she added that ‘for all reviews previously quoted, please know that I am working to revise the way I format third party reviews to cite full names and publication details’.

She needs to find a better lawyer. Copying entire works isn’t legal regardless of attribution.

ToddFrench · December 19, 2012, 9:08pm

Her lawyer said it was! You can even ask her dad!

Roberto_Rogness · December 20, 2012, 4:44am

Palate Press again with the smoking gun, an e-mail thread between her and a winery about pay for play:

http://palatepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MacLean-email-2-flattened.pdf

Roberto_Rogness · December 20, 2012, 4:47am

Lots of followup commentary here:

http://palatepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/MacLean-email-2-flattened.pdf

Nick_Ryan · December 20, 2012, 4:51am

No lawyer would be so incompetent as to advise her that copying other critics’ notes and scores wholesale and republishing them for profit is defensible under fair use. Right? Isn’t legal advice that bad grounds for disbarment? Sort of like a doctor amputating the wrong limb while high on Vicodin?

Bill_Klapp_deactivated · December 20, 2012, 7:16am

C. Grimm:

A few brief comments - I am not Natalie’s apologist, but I got to know her over a couple of James Beard Award dinners - one where she won the M.F.K. Fisher Award (I believe, the year she wrote the wonderful essay “Lady Sings the Booze,” - basically about getting hammered on classic drinks at some of NYC’s stodgy old bars). Another terrific essay she wrote was (hoping I don’t botch the title) “Pulling the Shots” about working as a barista. I believe she won James Beard Awards for both of those. So she is certainly not irrelevant in the food writing world - if you think she is, you might not be reading people who are relevant. (But one of her mistakes, IMHO, is trying to keep a foot in both camps - one as writer, and one as critic/review consolidator - she should stick to the former and not the latter. I get that her website is self-branding, but it doesn’t play to her strengths as a writer.) Anyone who hasn’t heard or her or read her before now is missing some fun stuff. Anyhoo…

The copyright infringement is impossible to defend, so I won’t even try.

“World’s Best Wine Writer” - well she won some award and uses it to promote herself. What’s new there? Writers will use a good quote or award for their whole career. She cites what she won right on her home page.

The pay to play (more “subscribe to play”) is difficult to defend, but… (Do I think my company would be more likely to have books reviewed in the NYTBR if we took out more ads? Yes. Do I lose sleep over this? No.) This is surely an unstated policy in many places. Especially small publications in a variety of areas - think regional magazines with restautant directories which (egad!) only include advertisers. I don’t think the behavior is virtuous, but have no doubt that it is common. (And it is $25/year.) FWIW, Natalie is from Ottawa and I have always assumed her constituency is largely Canadian - I’m not surprised if an American audience isn’t familiar with her (though some of her narrative writing has been in the mainstream food magazines).

The blurb thing - well, I think she was hamfisted with this, if she was sending the request to people she didn’t know - but the reactions here to this are kind of funny to me, because this is how blurbs get written. I hope nobody is disappointed. Not all blurbs. But a whole lot (if not most) of them. When you ask someone for a blurb, half the time they reply “send me something.”

I’m disappointed in Natalie’s actions - though I am sorry that it is complete (self-created) distraction from the work of someone who really can write. I get that it is hard to make a living writing, and she seems to have been trying to build a brand with the other stuff - though she would likely have been better off cultivating a solid writing niche.

Chris, I respect your opinions expressed above, and unlike you, I am not a follower of that woman, Ms. MacLean. However, I have just waded through the comments on the Palate Press website, and given the damning and conclusive evidence presented against her, I would question whether she even wrote any of her award-winning pieces. The woman is a hustler and a complete fraud, guilty of pay-for-play, copyright infringement, sock puppetry and all manner of self-absorbed and rude behavior. (A poster there even threw in public drunkenness for good measure.) The only thing that seems sure to be hers is her perfect hair, and she pays somebody to create that for her. I suppose that we should all be happy that she doesn’t try to charge her stylist for the privilege of doing her hair. Narcissism, thy name is Nat!

paul_hanna · December 20, 2012, 8:02am

Bill Klapp:

Chris, I respect your opinions expressed above, and unlike you, I am not a follower of that woman, Ms. MacLean. However, I have just waded through the comments on the Palate Press website, and given the damning and conclusive evidence presented against her, I would question whether she even wrote any of her award-winning pieces. The woman is a hustler and a complete fraud, guilty of pay-for-play, copyright infringement, sock puppetry and all manner of self-absorbed and rude behavior. (A poster there even threw in public drunkenness for good measure.) The only thing that seems sure to be hers is her perfect hair, and she pays somebody to create that for her. I suppose that we should all be happy that she doesn’t try to charge her stylist for the privilege of doing her hair. Narcissism, thy name is Nat!

Lol, great post…

Bill_Klapp_deactivated · December 20, 2012, 11:56am

I am not sure that Roberto’s link to the comments section of Palate Press works, but everybody should go over there and read every last comment. It is an education in the crap being pulled by the third-rate Pied Pipers that we call wine critics. Maybe analyzing the MacLean train wreck will cause a few more wine drinkers to start thinking for themselves instead of being the dead letter boxes for the many critics who are “mailing it in”. If “Nat” has the subscriber one left after this debacle (including family members), somebody needs to put that poor person out of their misery…perhaps by buying him or her a case of Molson!

Peter_Tryba · December 20, 2012, 1:47pm

I say this with all seriousness.
I have never heard of this person before today.

Ken_V · December 20, 2012, 2:03pm

You gave the same link to the same pdf.

Here is the link to the article, with a link to the pdf at the bottom and comments below that:

http://palatepress.com/2012/12/wine/pay-for-play-wine-writing/

Ken_V · December 20, 2012, 2:08pm

Now that I have read them, I am shocked at Alder Yarrow’s comments in particular.

Paul_Jaouen · December 20, 2012, 3:51pm

Yeah…that got me too.