I've had an ever-growing, more agitated and upset and volatile relationship ( one-sided so far as I have never expressed these thought publicly yet to those at FOOD & WINE magazine ) with these issues that come of FOOD & WINE to my house here each and every month. My Big-Beef : where's the wine? In this current issue I see hardly any mention of wine at all in 226 pages? I know, there's a wee-bit about wine but it's hardly anything. It hardly made any impression on me at all and I am in the wine business , have been ever since 1980 when I returned to the United States from being in Paris, France off-and-on for all the the 1970's where I had learned about wine and food and many cultural things, too.
I have been meaning to write Dana Cowin the editor of FOOD & WINE for a very long time now. Actually almost every time that I get my new issue of FOOD & WINE I mean to write her this long and protracted - lengthy - rant and rave of displeasure's and wounds I perceive I have received along with the rest of the wine world for stabs and jabs and slights and omissions and whatever else that continually points to one thing - and to one thing alone : that food is king and the wine is something there just to make the food look better - nothing more , nothing less. I know, I know, this all sounds so harsh and like I am ranting and perhaps mad and foaming at the bits? Perhaps, but in this case not. I am, an artist and quite lucid and quite sane though I do have many " flights of fancy " and I do embellish on many things. I'm a story-teller and I like to extrapolate and " add to the equation " of wine and it's many stories. I admit to all of this readily. But I am quite sane here in protesting this lowly status that wine seems to be given in all of your issues.
Why not reduce the size of the word : " WINE " and put it in lower caps? Why not reverse the word order once in awhile and call the magazine : WINE & FOOD? I told this all the other day at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits to a lady trying to sell us a subscription for FOOD & WINE. I started much the same way as I did this blog : " I have a big beef with FOOD & WINE, I receive monthly issues at home and I am always wondering - where's the wine? "
In this current issue of FOOD & WINE July 2011 I read Dana Cowin's editorial : Where I'm Coming From - My Recent NYC Expeditions and I kept saying to myself : what do these chefs know about wine? All I kept hearing about was food. Where was any mention by Dana of wine in any of this? Doesn't the pairing of the food with the wine - or the wine with the food mean that both should be considered when experimenting and creating new recipes?
Isn't the " magic " that occurs when wine and food are combined ( where a " new " taste is created that exists only when the two come together ) mean that there should be some mention somewhere of the contribution of wine to food ( or vica versa? ) in creating these " new " recipes? And yet I read nothing about wine from Dana. Aren't any of these chefs also inspired by wine as well as food - or beer or liquor or liqueurs as well as food?
I'm not happy with this magazine. I occasionally like a story or article or a picture or recipe but overall I find the magazine really lacking and more about making money and less about serving the public that may or may not buy it. That saddens me greatly. So I say with my one lone voice : be less about money and be more about dreams and individuals and ideas that need to have a platform even if they are not the 5% of what is most currently hip or chic or saleable in this split instance. Get back to your roots and be less slick and like a really posh country club or fraternity or sorority of the very elite and privileged few. Be there for the everyday person. In essence be a little more reachable. Give us an impression of something more than you all living in an exalted and white shiny tower.
And if you are going to put the word WINE there by FOOD and have them the same size then devote more time to wine ( as well as beer, liquor, and liqueur as well as now sake and apple ciders, too - as the world's interest is ever-growing for more on all of these things ).
In this issue of WINE & FOOD July 2011 I was appalled by so many glossy ads on wine like Columbia Crest and Geyser Peak and more. They almost look like you wrote them or that at the very least that you endorse them. Page after page after page of glossy-smart-looking pictures and writing in these ads. Funny, it's almost like with them that you get paid for them and do not have to do any writing or work on the WINE in these issues because they do it all, or most of it for you with all these glossy pages? Money talks loud and speaks volumes and the question is : where do you stand in all of this? The lines have been pretty well blurred here.
Consider this a wake-up call from a wine-lover and artist that thinks it is the right thing to be said now and that feels that he is not completely alone in voicing these thoughts here? Cheers, TONY
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