d r i n k s t e r: FERGIE OUT-GUCCIED CROSER IN 1984

“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)

08 August 2014

FERGIE OUT-GUCCIED CROSER IN 1984

ERNEST GAZING: Mark Shield was the most honest blunt wine scribe this dumb country has endured. Fuck he was good . This is from his Rough Marc column in the Wine and Spirit Buying Guide of December 1984: 'Packaging the winemaker.' I was the publishing editor and photographer. Brian John Croser - nicknamed BeeJay, Jaycee or God - was the head prefect of the wine business, self-appointed according to many. Now he's back running what used to be the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, or Wine Australia or the Australian Wine and Grape Council or whatever it is/was. Bacchus have mercy.