Louisville Juice in Print
My article on Kentucky/southern Indiana wine is up at Edible Louisville. I’m pretty satisfied with the piece, given that it was written on a short deadline. The only thing that irritates me is the last paragraph, which I didn’t write. It mentions Kentucky being the home of North America’s “first commercial winery,” which is a popular belief with the local folks but not something supported by a lot of evidence. (There was a restaurant in Louisville that claimed to have invented the cheeseburger. I didn’t believe that, either.) Someone in the editorial process, operating under the heady influence of local lore, decided to insert that apocrypha without consulting me.
That is, surprisingly, pretty typical of the magazine business. There comes a time near the close of every issue when slap-happy editors just can’t resist the temptation to make things “better”. While that editorial input is often valuable — I’ve had editors save me from looking a complete fool — every now and then it’s embarrassing. A long time ago, when I was a full-time magazine writer on the west coast, an editor inserted a gossipy tidbit into an article I’d written. It turned out not to be true, and the celebrity it mentioned by name threatened to sue. I recall an uncomfortable phone call, the celebrity on one end bitching in his heavy New York accent, me on the other thinking my career as a writer was over.
Anyway, at least back then I was getting paid a lot of money; now I’m not. In this case, I worked for free, and when I do that I think the editors ought to leave what I write the hell alone. But that’s not how it works, and if I want it to work that way I should get a magazine of my own.
Here’s the lede of the article, which came to me while I was stuck in traffic:
We’re out there, we locavores, hunting and gathering local produce and protein. We shop the farmers’ markets and farm stands, and seek restaurants where the chef has a personal relationship with farmers — and farms where the farmer has a personal relationship with the Earth. We are a niche market growing so fast we’re characterized as a movement, doing right by our health, the local economy, and the planet as a whole.
“Customers are looking for exactly where their food comes from,” says Kathy Cary, proprietor of Lily’s-A Kentucky Bistro and a passionate advocate of local foods. “They look for the names of farmers they know from shopping at the farmers’ market. It’s quality and taking care of the countryside and community, the responsibility to help the farmers so they can stay farmers.”
The customers do not, Cary notes, extend this preference to their selection of wines, despite the fact that local wines offer the same economic and environmental benefits as local foods. Locavores may prefer that their pork tenderloin was raised on a verdant and humane farm just up the road, but they choose without thought wines produced in industrial wineries far away, wines that have tracked their carbon footprints halfway around the world.
Oooo. I tingle.
You know the drill: read it, and then send an email to the editor telling what a genius I am and how much you enjoyed the article. Except for the last paragraph.
May 12th, 2011 at 5:56 PM
Congratulations, Tom. I’ve always enjoyed the Edible X magazines. I think Edible Santa Fe was my favorite (no offense to the wonderful Edible Memphis).
The question of first winery in the US is so ridiculous that at least a dozen states lay claim to it. Part of it due to things like California having some wine production in the 17th-18th centuries, but not becoming a state until 1850. Or do you count first fruit wines or first grape wines? And then, first labrusca or first vinifera wines?
I recently tried through some decent Tennessee wines. I’ll keep your list in mind the next time I’m in Kentucky.
May 12th, 2011 at 8:53 PM
The key to Kentucky’s claim is the adjective “commercial.” The Spanish started making wine 100 years earlier in Florida — not part of the US then, and not “commercial” since they mostly made it for churches and only sold a little of it.
And next time you’re in Kentucky, let me know. First round is on me.
May 13th, 2011 at 7:01 AM
My favorite magazine editor story — I did a beautiful, wonderful piece about Alaska, and before I finished writing it, I ran the whole thing by the editor. Because I’m not supid, and I know how the magazine business works. I love it, she said. So I send it in, and get an email back shortly afterward: “Jeff, we need to make some changes. It’s not what we wanted.”
And I love that now many of us write for free. We’re finally just like actors.
May 13th, 2011 at 7:48 AM
“And I love that now many of us write for free. We’re finally just like actors.”
That is an excellent observation. Blogging as writing’s equivalent to community theater.
May 13th, 2011 at 8:22 AM
A long time ago I wrote a profile of a Los Angeles anchorman who was leaving the #1 rated channel for an independent that was going 24 hour news. I crafted a lede that was a play on his well-known history of having driven his beat-up old Volkswagon to pursue his anchorman dreams in Hollywood, and how he now drove a Rolls Royce — but was leaving the Rolls Royce channel to purse another dream at a channel that was the equivalent of a beat-up old Volkswagon.
When the article came out, the editor had changed the payoff Volkswagon reference to Yugo, which killed the whole thing. When I called to complain, he said, “Yugos are cheaper than Volkswagons. It’s much stronger now.”
May 13th, 2011 at 5:24 PM
It just occurred to me that the tag line on your blog title, “act locally, drink globally” is in accordance with the phenomena you describe in the third paragraph above. Will you be changing this?