Critical accalaim

A free trip to Germany is hardly likely to get wine writiers extolling the virtues of liebfraumilch

MY LIFE as a restaurant critic is an enviable one.  I visit restaurants anonymously, pay my way, then write what I hope is a fair and honest review.  Chefs and restaurateurs seldom know I’ve visited until a photographer calls them, and sometimes they won’t even know until a review appears in print.

What I relish most about the job is not the eating out, nice though that can be.  The best thing is being able to write exactly what I thought of the place without having to worry about upsetting advertisers, publishers or the restaurateurs.

Years of experience have taught me that, as a critic, it’s best to avoid meetings with chefs, restaurateurs or restaurant PR people because doing so makes my job much harder.  It’s difficult to be honest about a restaurant’s shortcomings when you know how much effort the owners have made, or you wish to maintain a happy working relationship with the people involved.

Not all restaurant critics operate in such an independent way.  I’m in the minority, but that’s because I write for publishers who are prepared to pay the meal expenses.  Drinks writing, and more specifically wine writing, requires entirely different rules of engagement.

Few wine journalists or their employers have pockets deep enough to cover the expenses incurred on longhaul overseas trips.  And even assuming the journalist can pay their own way to Chile, South Africa or Australia, once they get there they will need to visit several wineries a day, speak to winemakers, attend tastings and so on.

Wine writers have to work closely with wine producers; writing about wine is virtually impossible without reliance on their hospitality.  Does this mean that wine journalism is inherently compromised? Of course not.

Even Robert Parker meets winemakers and attends tastings and other events laid on just for is benefit, but I doubt if this affects his judgement of the wines to any great degree.  The same is true for most of the really good wine writers in the UK – a free trip to Germany is hardly likely to have them extolling the virtues of Liebfraumilch.

Yet this doesn’t mean that there are no grey areas where the difference between editorial and advertorial become blurred, and where the journalist can be left feeling compromised and the resulting article is less critical than it should be.

Sometimes the conflict of interests between a good working relationship and the detachment required for honest reporting is subtle, but leaves both host and journalist feeling uneasy about the nature of their professional relationship.

There are many occasions when the boundaries are not as clear-cut for me as they are when writing a restaurant review.  I was recently commissioned to write a food and drink feature about New Zealand for a supermarket magazine. I was thrilled. 

It was the chance of a lifetime, to be flown to New Zealand and given a guided tour by some of he country’s best food and wine producers.  It isn’t hard to be enthusiastic about New Zealand and its produce, especially the wines which are among the best in the world.

Yet as the days went on and I was handed from one kiwi-fruit grower to the next green-lipped mussel farmer, I felt a growing sense of unease. I was taking up a lot of the time and resources of these charming and hospitable people, and for what?

A feature in which I had to capture everything I had learned during 10 days of intensive research into a paltry 1,500 words.  I felt their expectation, and what I would be able to deliver, were not the same thing.

At one point, a host asked "What is it you are looking for, exactly?" "New Zealand," was my initial and rather lame reply.  Although my interest in their enthusiasm for the technical aspects was genuine – my parents were horticulturalists, and I hold a degree in ecological science – the readers of the supermarket magazine were not going to care about methoxypyrazines or anabatic/katabatic winds.

In a mass-market magazine, you need to catch the readers’ attention in any way you can, entertain them, and hope they read enough of the article to gain an informed impression of New Zealand’s food and wine.

So does this mean that my hosts, who must have spent many thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours looking after me, were wasting their time and money educating and hosting me? I hope not.

Although the readers of the supermarket magazine will not be reading about lamb marketing initiatives or the screw-cap debate, they will, I hope, get a strong sense of the premium quality of New Zealand produce, the innovation in both the food and drink industries, and what an incredible nation New Zealand is.

If this is corruption, then send me to the Antipodes on a one-way ticket.

Guy Dimond is food and drinks editor for Time Out