“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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10 August 2017

WOMEN IN WINE AWARDS

They're doing it again: some women, I mean: the 'Australian Women In Wine Awards'. 

Which must presume that women are somehow different to all other winemakers, or surely the organisation wouldn't exist. 

In a time when we're all struggling to learn to see each other as equals worth marrying, I can't possibly work out how a human with a vagina, or whatever it is that now delineates your actual woman, makes wine any differently to a person with a penis. Or, foolishly assuming acceptance of these traditionally-regarded extremes, any point between. 

Or out further. I don't care.

Maybe to properly equal everything out, we should have an Arseholes in Wine Award.  

Whether already rigged with dick, cunt, both, or neither, nearly everybody has an arsehole. And every poor bugger I've met without one sure knows plenty of them.

Bacchus knows, the wine business overflows with testosterone-soused idiots. I'm tired of  'em, regardless of their chromosomes. Many are people who I imagine have vaginas. I don't really care. Too many are male jerks or whatever the permissable word for what was that gender now is. 

Jerks will do for now. 

Confession: I tire of male-ridden wine functions. I'm a hardcore philogynist, in or out of wine.  

But just as too many Ocker wine blokes jerk themselves to unserviceable, so I encounter lasses who flick the bean so fucking hard they can no longer hear or read anything unless it's about themselves. 

Anyway, before they make the big winners announcement, I want to recommend Annika Berlingieri for practical winemaking and exceptional gastronomic intelligence, above, and Brande Nicole Roderick, below, for target marketing. Or her agent. And the photographer.



      

9 comments:

Old Chook said...

Do you remember the Chicken and Chablis clubs Phillip?

Philip White said...

Indeed. The patronising men-only Beefsteak and Burgundy clubs reluctantly tolerated "the womenfolk" forming their own C&C clubs to avoid drawing attention to their exclusive old boy shows with their sexist carry-on. How droll. I much preferred being guest speaker at the Chicken and Chablis shows. I wonder if any still exist?

In those bleak days one very famous NSW winemaker with a penis (I presumed a very small one) made the terrible mistake of taking me to lunch at at Cobbs, an infamous topless restaurant in Adelaide, to present his wines to me. He seemed peeved that so many of the waiters called me 'Whitey' - we all drank in The Exeter. They were alarmed to see me visiting the place they worked to pay for their university studies, but remained utterly professional whilst pouring our tasting samples.

Perhaps foolishly, I thought we had got past that mentality in 2017.

Unknown said...

brilliant..one of the best pieces of truth I've read in a long time...in this environment of fake everything...authentic writing.
Bravo

Sal said...

I have just collapsed, shrieked hysterically and wept simultaneously ... Do I win anything?

Philip White said...

You're the best text editor in the business, Sally. You were the only person I'd trust with my copy for A Year In The Life Of Grange. And look at what happened! We won all the book Oscars from New York to Beijing! [None in Australia, of course. I wonder whether Australian winos can actually read].

amateur ampelographerrrrrr said...

Is that Durif, White?

pat said...

White that reminds of a guitar solo you played upstairs in Miss Gadys Sym Chooms cracker factory with Brakesband on the only Les Paul Recorder i've ever seen in 1973 I was standing crammed down the side wall with Young Modern and The Angels and BLF Darby was lying on the floor asleep with his headon the sandbags in the kickdruma huge smile of his dial there were 159 of us in a room built for ten thanks man still alive! String B

Anonymous said...

Merci Merci Philip! Never a truer word written, as a winemaking female I am embarrassed and insulted by the Women in Wine Awards.
Why am I not seen as a winemaker, what has my gender anything to do with it, these awards are making us appear to be less able than the men, that we need special treatment. STOP them now they are nothing but an insult to those of us who feel equal or better than our male colleagues. Grow up for Gods sake, stop behaving in such an inferior manner. Power to those who take it!!

Anonymous said...

I of course see some irony at play here in these words, but Philip, you don't speak for me. The reason Women in Wine is important is because it is a galvanising reaction to one of the most sexist, male-centric industries in the country. Once again you use your position in the centre of things - as an older, white man - to speak out against what threatens your privilege. Once a fan of your writing, you've now slipped in my esteem to wallow below the industry's lowest hack.