Cork Talk with Margaret Rand

Yeah, right.

Help! How has wine writing changed? And I don't just mean in the physical sense of, you know, we started out writing on typewriters and now we're probably writing things on our phones and things like that.

How has the actual job of wine writing changed in that time that you've been doing it? I think careers have

changed because we both caught that wave where you could make a living out of it.

yeah

before it was a hobby and now it's either a hobby or part of a portfolio involving other things

yeah

i don't think you can make a living out of wine writing at all easily now

i think it's tough isn't it i mean robert joseph who mutual friend of ours i mean he calls it the summer of love that we we caught the summer of love of wine which was really kicked off when mid 80s would you say yeah Or possibly, yes.

1888, 89, that sort of period? A

bit earlier, maybe.

But yes, yes.

I remember being on Wine and Spirit with you and going to interview the Australian Trade Commissioner who had huge plans for Australian wine in the UK market.

And this would have been 87 or something.

And they spent what was considered an outrageously large sum of money, £100,000 promoting Australian wine in the UK.

That was the start of the Australia boom,

wasn't it? And I remember a tasting before that, when I was at the Canter, they had a tasting of Australian Chardonnay.

Yeah.

And this would have been in the early 80s.

And it was a revelation because these were wines unlike anything anybody had tasted before.

Yeah.

They weren't expensive.

Not expensive and had the name of the great variety on the label and were approachable and soft and full of fruit, sometimes with quite a bit of oak.

Yeah.

Yeah.