News clip blunder #1 for 2008
January 6th, 2008If you’ve been following my blog last year, you’ll know I gave several examples where writers for newspapers or magazines (some of them highly regarded) wrote articles on whisky that contained blatant errors. It was clear that they didn’t know what they were writing about.
We all make mistakes and I’m willing to allow some latitude, but errors of this magnitude shouldn’t happen. It is bad for the producer and the consumer. It’s worse than not writing anything at all.
Well, this year, I’m going to keep track, and it didn’t take too long to find one. News clip #1 for 2008 comes from the January 2008 issue of Go magazine. It’s entitled, of all things, “Whisk(e)y 101″.
I knew there was going to be trouble when the author poses the question “But what’s the difference between scotch and whiskey.”
She later notes that “scotch is made from malted barley, which explains why it is also called malt whiskey.”
So much for blended scotch.
She then moves on to Irish whiskey, explaining that “Irish single malts are typically made from a combination of malted and unmalted barley.”
It’s so important for writers to educate consumers about pure pot still whiskey, and statements like just makes things worse.
But, here’s my favorite line:
“Bushmills Irish whiskey and Glenfiddich Scotch whisky both credit the local water near their distilleries as the source of their distinctive flavors.”
So, that’s how they do it…
I could go and list other examples from this article, but I think you get the point. I will do what I have done with the other misleading articles last year. I’ll let the publication know of the mistakes. Hopefully, this will help to minimize future blunders.
We all need to police people writing on whisky and make sure they help our cause, not hurt it. If you see an article that is misleading, point it out to me. Let’s do our best to spread the word and correct these mistakes.
