Wait a second…

…you mean to tell me that Canadian wine personality Natalie MacLean’s probable plagiarism (or at the very least, insufficient, obfuscated attribution of others’ work), possible pay-to-play wine reviews / favorable brand mentions, on-line comment “sock-puppeting” (and iTunes app review sock-puppeting, while we’re at it) allegations, along with spam-botting (can I use that as a verb?), multiple accusations of comment censorship and what seems like outright lying isn’t defensible with a simple “oh, whoops, my bad! :-)” letter to her readers?!??

Really??

[ Editor's note: Despite the author's better judgement telling him that he ought to just forget all about this, he's still pissed-off about it, and so has decided to help the cause in a small way by drawing a little bit of extra attention to this scandal and not letting it die on the vine. Look, he's not saying that the average wine-loving person should care what he thinks about these things, but it's his blog so he'll whine, wine, and whittle away the time with this opinion on a scandal here if he wants. Thanks to those of you who will indulge him the time to dip into the wine media's scarred underbelly. ]

Ah, and I forgot about the whole let’s-call-the-entire-wine-media-thing-into-question-because-we-all-look-like-a-bunch-of-douche-bags-for-bestowing-awards-on-these-people debate that gets stirred up every time that something like this transpires (which is way too often right now, by the way).

Oh, well – our bad, right?!?

The primary thing that’s got me riled up about this scandal is that, as the Hosemaster of Wine recently put it, MacLean “dared use dull and virtually interchangeable wine reviews from wine experts on her blog without attribution” (ouch!)….

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Looks like I’m far from the only one with a penchant for interviewing rock stars about their vinous habits: the Winter 2011 issue of Guitar Aficionado has been dubbed “The Wine Issue” with interviews with wine-making and wine-collecting rockers – and it prominently features a (pretty cool) guitar-shaped decanter on the cover (see inset pic).

According to the GA website:

“In Guitar Aficionado’s Winter 2011 issue, we bring you the rockers, vintners, and oenophiles that celebrate the grape. Rush’s esteemed guitar and bass duo, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, discuss their decades-long love affair with the world’s finest wines; the Police’s Andy Summers talks wine and guitars; celebrated vintner and guitarist Paul Gargiulo says there’s a little music in every bottle that leaves his idyllic estate; and Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Daytona drive’s Scott Pruett tell tales of their winemaking ventures.

The issue also features articles on the wine tourism opportunities in Chile, as well as wine-and-music pairings by celebrity restaurateur / vintner Joe Bastianich (whose line-up of wines are generally pretty darn good, by the way).

Might just have to go get myself a copy of that, even if it does celebrate an instrument with at least one too many strings on it…

By the way, if you’re looking for rock star wine-related interviews, we got some right here:

• Maynard James Keenan (of TOOL, A Perfect Circle, and Puscifer)
• Geoff Tate (of Queensryche)
• Les Claypool (of Primus and Fearless Flying Frog Brigade; a written interview and also a backstage vid)
• Grammy-winning soulful crooner Boz Scaggs

Cheers!

Last month, uber-hard-rock band RUSH participated in what has become a semi-regular event for them: a charity auction on eBay called “Grapes Under Pressure” (a pun on one of RUSH’s album titles) to benefit Grapes For Humanity Canada (RUSH front man Geddy Lee is on the board of directors). I know, I can’t get past the hard/prog rock / wine thing the last few days, right?

Anyway, according to Geddy Lee, the most recent auction raised over $50K (not sure if that’s Canadian or U.S. dollars…):

I would like to take a moment to thank all those fans and friends who participated in the GRAPES UNDER PRESSURE eBay auction to benefit GRAPES FOR HUMANITY CANADA. With your help we managed to raise over $50,000 dollars! When combined with monies raised in our other G.U.P. events we will be able to significantly improve the lives of disadvantaged and injured people around the globe and more immediately will aid THE HALO TRUST in establishing a pilot project in Savannakhet Province, Laos, to address the urgent problem of casualties caused by cluster bombs. Alex, Neil, myself and the entire G.U.P. Team,  thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
~Geddy

Geddy’s wine-related endeavors have been covered on these virtual pages before, but this recent news got me thinking about how and why the world’s greatest beverage can – and often does – serve as a catalyst to bring out the best in us (well, there’s that, but it also got me listening to Distant Early Warning, like, a dozen times)…

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For the next act in my continuing saga as judge in the Georges Duboeuf Wine Book of the Year Awards, I wanted to detail the awards finalists that didn’t make the cut for my top three candidates for this year’s award (the three is not an arbitrary number, by the way – as judges, we were asked to pick our top three selections for the award from the seven finalists chosen by the event’s organizers).

And, we’re going to give away a copy of one of those books – Charlie Olken’s excellent New Connoisseurs’ Guidebook to California Wine and Wineries – to one lucky commenter!

Most of you know the drill: you comment, and in one week a winner is randomly selected from the comments.

Personally, I find myself swayed at least a little bit when it comes to awards like this, in terms of my wine book purchasing decisions.  I suppose that a part of me figures, Hey, if some people took the time to judge this thing against its peers and say it was good, it’s probably pretty darn good - but all-in-all, when it come to wine book buying, I probably put more weight into jacket testimonials (especially when they’re written by people that I know and respect).  So the question I’ve got to get our comentarios del blog de ​​discusión started is this:

Do awards factor into your wine book-buying decisions? Or are they like most wine competition medals (i.e., kinda meaningless)?

My thoughts on all of the non-top-three-listed finalists’ books are below after the jump. I need to preface this by saying that these books are all worthy additions to the English-language wine book lexicon; they just didn’t make my top three for the Georges Duboeuf award based on the judging criteria.  That competition was stiffer than the graphite neck on those headless Steinberger basses that Geddy Lee used in the `80s, so not making the cut shouldn’t be treated as a slight; in fact, simply being included in the list of finalists for this year’s award is a nod to the quality level of all of these books.  Now that I think about it, I might be getting in trouble by listing these finalists, but technically no one involved in the awards has said that I can’t list them… so what the hell, here we go!

Next week: my take on the top three and my #1 pick for the award…

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