This week’s odd wine news: Wine mentions in the media, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the mentions are newsworthy
• But what if it had been Glen Ellen? The Morning News newspaper in Dallas, reporting a deadly drunk driving accident, noted that an “open bottle of Sutter Home cabernet sauvignon was found at the crash site.” I have been pondering that sentence since I read it, drawing on my years of newspaper knowledge and experience, to figure out why the reporter identified the wine. Typically, the line would have read “an open bottle of wine was found at the crash site.” That’s because it doesn’t make much difference to what happened – that a drunk driver killed someone – by listing the name and type of wine. The driver could have gotten drunk on any kind of wine. It also makes the sentence longer, which is something to avoid. The only thing I can think of is that the cops had the wine listed in the accident report, the reporter cut and pasted, and the copy desk didn’t notice.
• Shame on you, Mom and Dad: The newest lever in the neo-Prohibitonist campaign to limit even responsible drinking? Our children are ashamed of us. Or, as the British study claimed, “Moderate drinking by parents can have a negative impact on children, causing anxiety and disrupting bedtime routines.” Who knew a couple of glasses of wine with dinner were wreaking such havoc on our kids? There is one important question the story doesn’t address, though: What happens if you read your child a bedtime story while you’re tipsy? Does that count?
• Bring it on, 7-Eleven: Yes, I know, no one drinks cheap wine, but that hasn’t stopped the country’s most prominent convenience store chain from launching a second wine brand to go with its Yosemite Road. It’s called Trojan Horse, will sell for $7, and will include chardonnay and pinot grigio. The story, in a trade magazine, was apparently more cutting and pasting and is actually pretty funny in that sad, poorly written PR way I have been railing against for years. The wines “were custom developed with grapes from different California valleys,” which makes very little sense but does have impressive jargon. My favorite, though, is the title of the 7-Eleven official identified as the vice president of vault. Is this a typo, and should it be vice president of value? Or does the company actually have a vice president of vault?