Malcolm Gluck is a British author, broadcaster and wine columnist.
Initially an advertising copywriter for Collett Dickenson Pearce, Doyle Dane Bernbach, a founder employee of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and later creative director for Lintas, Gluck was for sixteen years the wine correspondent of The Guardian with the column "Superplonk". In addition to contributing articles for other publications, including Harpers Magazine he was a wine critic of The Oldie until 2011, [1] and the author of 36 books about wine. Among his titles are Superplonk, Streetplonk, Brave New World and The Great Wine Swindle. He also featured in the BBC programme Gluck, Gluck, Gluck.
Gluck has been described as a "self-styled champion of the ordinary wine drinker, fighting against the perceived snobbery and stuffiness of the wine world". [2]
In November 2008 a survey by the wine industry consultancy firm Wine Intelligence was made public, having polled the views of more than 1,500 regular UK wine drinkers, results show that Gluck was the fifth most recognised wine critic in the UK. [3]
Appearing in the Channel 4 episode of Dispatches titled "What's in your wine?" in 2008, Gluck stated, "Many, many wines are no better than a sort of alcoholic cola. You get artificial yeasts, enzymes, sugar, extracts, tannins, all sorts of things added", a statement widely received with outrage in the wine industry. [4]
Gluck's other controversial statements include, " Terroir is rubbish. It is complete utter balderdash from the first syllable of its pretentious and mendacious utterance to its last". [5] In reference to his opposition to cork stoppers, Gluck has stated, "Sticking a cork made from tree bark in a wine made in 1999 is like producing a modern motor car with a starting handle". [6]
In the book The Great Wine Swindle, Gluck contends that the wine industry is "populated by liars, scroungers and cheats, administered by charlatans and snake-oil salesman and run on a system of misrepresentation and ritualised fraud".
Gluck has also been involved in a public disagreement with author Salman Rushdie over who is the quicker book-signer. [7] [8] [9]
In January 2009, Gluck made a series of contentions on the nature of beer drinkers in the "Word of Mouth" pages of The Guardian, in an article asserting the rising numbers of wine drinkers in Britain, stating that "beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies," and, "are also terrible lovers, awful husbands, and untidy flatmates". [10] The statements drew prompt responses from beer writers Roger Protz and Melissa Cole, [11] [12] with Gluck challenged by Cole to appear at a beer and food pairing event. [13]
Gluck hosted deafblind charity Sense's first ever blind wine auction in October 2006, guiding guests through a wide variety of wine as they tasted the drinks in total darkness. The event was held at Dans Le Noir, a London restaurant where customers eat in the dark, which is one of Sense's corporate partners.
Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grains—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The fermentation of the starch sugars in the wort produces ethanol and carbonation in the beer. Beer is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks in the world, the most widely consumed, and the third most popular drink after water and tea. Most modern beer is brewed with hops, which add bitterness and other flavours and act as a natural preservative and stabilising agent. Other flavouring agents, such as gruit, herbs, or fruits, may be included or used instead of hops. In commercial brewing, natural carbonation is often replaced with forced carbonation.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
A bottle is a narrow-necked container made of an impermeable material in various shapes and sizes that stores and transports liquids. Its mouth, at the bottling line, can be sealed with an internal stopper, an external bottle cap, a closure, or induction sealing.
The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel from the Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the satanic verses was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.
The Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 resulted from the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris, when Emperor Napoleon III requested a classification system for France's best Bordeaux wines that were to be on display for visitors from around the world. Brokers from the wine industry ranked the wines according to a château's reputation and trading price, which at that time was directly related to quality.
Steven Spurrier was a British wine expert and merchant who was described as a champion of French wine. Spurrier organised the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, which unexpectedly elevated the status of California wine and promoted the expansion of wine production in the New World. He was the founder of the Academie du Vin and Christie's Wine Course, in addition to authoring and co-authoring several wine books.
Alexis Lichine was a Russian wine writer and entrepreneur. He played a key role in promoting varietal labelling of wine, was a masterful salesman of wine, had interests in two Bordeaux wineries, owning Château Prieuré-Lichine in Margaux and a share of Château Lascombes in the Médoc. He was married to actress Arlene Dahl from 1964 to 1969.
The garagistes refers to a group of winemakers in the Bordeaux region, producing "vins de garage", "garage wine". A group emerged in the mid-1990s in reaction to the traditional style of red Bordeaux wine, which is highly tannic and requires long ageing in the bottle to become drinkable. The garagistes developed a style more consistent with perceived international wine tastes.
Alternative wine closures are substitute closures used in the wine industry for sealing wine bottles in place of traditional cork closures. The emergence of these alternatives has grown in response to quality control efforts by winemakers to protect against "cork taint" caused by the presence of the chemical trichloroanisole (TCA).
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
In mid-June 2007, Salman Rushdie, the British-Indian novelist and author of the novel The Satanic Verses, was created a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II. Soon after the news of the knighthood was released protests against the honour were held in Malaysia and in Pakistan where effigies of the writer were publicly burnt. On 19 June 2007, governments in both Pakistan and Iran summoned their British ambassadors to officially protest against the award. While many groups and individuals have renewed the call to execute Rushdie, the author "is not commenting on the latest threats to his life. It is understood he is anxious not to inflame the situation". When asked by the Associated Press if his silence was at the request of the British government, Rushdie replied by e-mail stating "The British authorities have not asked me to do or not do anything. I have simply chosen to remain out of this storm for the moment. And nobody is turning anything down." The media noted in July 2007 that Rushdie "has not been seen in public since the 16 June announcement of his knighthood." However, he was photographed receiving his knighthood formally the next year at a ceremony which, breaking with tradition, was not announced in advance of his attendance.
Meinhard Görke, known as Hardy Rodenstock was a German publisher and manager of pop and Schlager music, and a prominent wine collector, connoisseur, and trader, with a special interest in old and rare wines. He became famous for his allegedly uncanny ability to track down old and very rare wines, and for arranging extravagant wine tastings featuring these wines. It has been alleged that Rodenstock was the perpetrator of an elaborate wine fraud. In 1992, a German court found that Rodenstock had "knowingly offered adulterated wine" for sale. On appeal, the case was settled out of court.
James Cameron Suckling is an American wine and cigar critic and former Senior Editor and European Bureau Chief of Wine Spectator as well as European Editor of Cigar Aficionado. Suckling is internationally regarded as one of the world's most influential wine critics, and one of the most experienced critics of vintage cigars.
The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia is a reference work on wine written by Tom Stevenson and published since 1988 by Dorling Kindersley, selling over 600,000 copies in 14 languages.
Tom Cannavan is a Scottish author and a wine journalist. He is considered a pioneer presence on internet of the British wine writing establishment.
Kevin Barry is an Irish writer. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels. City of Bohane (2011) was the winner of the 2013 International Dublin Literary Award. Beatlebone (2015) won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize and is one of seven books by Irish authors nominated for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award, the world's most valuable annual literary fiction prize for books published in English. His 2019 novel Night Boat to Tangier was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Barry is also an editor of Winter Papers, an arts and culture annual.
Jeannie Cho Lee is a Hong Kong–based, Korean-American wine critic, author, journalist, consultant, wine educator and Master of Wine, the first ethnic Asian to achieve this accreditation. She was 25th on Decanter's Power List 2013.
Tanners Wines Ltd is a family-owned independent wine merchants company based in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England.
Benjamin Wallace is an American author and magazine writer known for his 2008 book The Billionaire's Vinegar.
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French author Annie Ernaux "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". It was announced by the Swedish Academy on 6 October 2022. Ernaux was the 16th French writer – the first Frenchwoman – and the 17th female author, to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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