Cork Talk with Guy Woodward

The Tim Atkin Cork Talk Podcast

Tim Atkin interviews veteran journalist Guy Woodward about his career trajectory from covering the casino industry to editing Decanter magaz

Key takeaways

• Guy Woodward's journalism roots include working for Amusement Business Europe, covering the international casino and arcade industry.
• The transition from print to digital has eroded traditional journalistic skills like shorthand and media law in favor of rapid online content.

Main topics

• Journalism career evolution
• The impact of digital media on news

Notable quotes

Don't buy wine for investment. Buy wine to drink.

Conclusion

A reflective look at how both journalism and the wine industry must ad

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:11) Thanks for downloading this episode of Cork Talk with me, Tim Atkin. A weekly conversation with some of the most famous people in the world of wine. Speaker 2 (0:22) Guy Woodward has spent his working life as a journalist, writing about food, travel, sport and even casinos, before turning his attention to wine when he moved to Decanter magazine. As an editor, columnist and content provider, he can look back over more than three decades of achievement. Our chat covered fine wine, competitions, the changing media landscape and what it's like to exchange legal letters with Robert Parker. Hello Guy and welcome to the podcast. Hello Tim, great to see you. It is indeed. Where are you? Somewhere hot and exciting I hope in the world. Oh I Speaker 1 (0:58) wish, I wish. I'm in Chiswick in West London. So, you know, no, I don't travel as much as I used to. I wish I did. But, you know, when you work for yourself, it's not like when you're on a salary, is it? Speaker 2 (1:08) No, exactly. You've got to make Speaker 1 (1:09) sure that you're still getting paid for something. Speaker 2 (1:11) Lots to talk about. I mean, you're a journalist above all, I think, and we're going to find out why in a minute. But let's talk a little bit about your upbringing. You were born, brought up in the West Midlands, he says, Solihull, yeah, near Birmingham. Was wine part of your upbringing? Parents, wine drinkers or not? Speaker 1 (1:29) My goodness, no. I mean, I can't actually remember ever seeing a bottle of wine in our house. Yeah, I grew up in Solihull. Both my parents were from near Birmingham. A few years ago, actually, my sister traced our family tree, and she went back 300 years, and she got as far as Northampton. So we were very much a Midlands family, have been for Speaker 2 (1:52) many, Speaker 1 (1:54) many years. My dad worked for a metals factory, and he enjoyed a pint. And I never really saw him drinking anything else. Apart from at Christmas, there was a bottle of Harvest Crystal Cream in the back of the cabinet. No, no, no, that would have been very exotic. I think my mum would have a, she didn't drink, so she had a bottle of Slur, and my gran would have had a Snowball. And honestly, that was it. I mean, my first interaction with wine would have been at teenage parties. when I was about 16 and I thought I was very sophisticated. I didn't want to turn up with, you know, everyone was coming with cans of lager or something. I thought, oh, I'd have a bit more sophisticated. And I'd bring along a bottle of Black Tower. Do you remember Black Tower, Tim? I do remember Black Tower very well. If you remember from that year, I think it's since been rebranded, but it used to come in a mottled black. Yeah, it was frosted, Speaker 2 (2:55) wasn't it? Correct, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 (2:57) And so I felt it, you know. It wasn't in the sort of flute, leech-framed milk that most of them were. It was in this standard Bordeaux-sized bottle, but mottled black. And I thought this cut me out as something quite special at these teenage parties. And as you know, exceedingly sweet, so very drinkable. And that was the first wine I can remember drinking and probably the only wine I drank until, I don't know, maybe at university. I was in the University Wine Society. Yeah, but were Speaker 2 (3:26) you from Speaker 1 (3:26) a musical Speaker 2 (3:27) family? Because, I mean, you're very musical. You studied music at university. And there are other wine writers, I'm thinking, Oz Clark, you know, Charles Metcalf, they're singers. But they're not, I'm not sure they actually studied music as such. Whereas you actually studied music at Manchester University, Speaker 1 (3:40) didn't you? I did. I went to, yeah, I went to Manchester, as you say, to do music. Primarily because, well, I was quite good at it, but it was never going to be a career. But it was a fun course to do, very sociable. You know, a good way of meeting girls. And the wine society was the same. I mean, Manchester University Wine Society, I remember, you know, it was not like one of those Oxbridge colleges that Oz and Charles, who you mentioned, would have gone to. It was, you know, it was Jacob's Creek and that sort of stuff, but it was very sociable. But no, yeah, I did music with a, no, I was never going to be, I was never at the standard of some of my counterparts. It was a lot of fun. I thought at one stage maybe wine, sorry, I thought maybe music journalism, Speaker 2 (4:26) because I was Speaker 1 (4:27) starting to get interested in journalism and writing. And I thought, okay, I'm not going to be good enough to perform. Maybe I could be a critic or write about it. But I decided it was all a little bit, it's all a little bit pretentious. Speaker 2 (4:40) So I ended up as a Speaker 1 (4:41) wine journalist, Speaker 2 (4:42) which of course is not pretentious at Speaker 1 (4:43) all. Speaker 2 (4:43) Yes, because that's not pretentious at all, is it? And you play the trumpet? I know that. And you play the piano as well, don't you? I play the Speaker 1 (4:48) trumpet. Speaker 2 (4:49) I play Speaker 1 (4:49) the trumpet and the piano. And I made the mistake of, I majored in the trumpet, but then I decided to switch to the piano, which was a mistake because everyone played the piano. I mean, you had to play the piano even if it was your second instrument. That was a given. And some people played it very, very well. I just preferred it, so that was why I majored in it. But actually, I'd have been better sticking off at the Trumpet because Speaker 2 (5:12) I was the only Trumpeter in my year. Speaker 1 (5:16) Anyhow. Speaker 2 (5:19) Still Speaker 1 (5:20) tinkering away a little bit on the Speaker 2 (5:21) job. I know you do. Speaker 1 (5:22) You did Speaker 2 (5:23) this postgraduate qualification in magazine journalism, so you're properly trained. You did media law and shorthand and all that kind of stuff. And that's increasingly unusual in journalism, and partly because of the demise of local papers, I think. Do you think that having trained as a journalist gives you a slightly different angle, maybe in a different sensibility as a wine journalist? Speaker 1 (5:43) Oh, sensibility is a nice word. Yeah, I... I'd like to think so. I mean, I think you're right. I'm not entirely, I suspect that, I'm sure there are still media courses at university and college these days. But as you say, back in the day when I did it in the mid-90s, it was very much centered around print journalism. Speaker 2 (6:04) So Speaker 1 (6:05) we were learning about shorthand. We were learning about production techniques, putting an actual print product together. We were learning law, that sort of thing. And sadly, a lot of those disciplines are no longer required, really. I mean, obviously, you don't really need shorthand anymore. Even law, I mean, you know, with most content these days written online, I dare I say law becomes less important because it's a bit fast and loose and you can soon change something if you've got something wrong. When you're a print journalist, you put something in print and you are responsible for that. So the law element was certainly key. But I think, going back to your question about sensibility, that's a nice word. I think what it taught me was how to recognize a story and the value of a story, what makes a good story, understanding what the reader's looking for, those sorts of things. It was a great course. It was a good discipline, really. I've always sort of felt for myself for a long time more as a journalist than a... I don't know. I've never been a wine critic. Yeah, I think Speaker 2 (7:11) I see myself the same way. A journalist who writes about wine, you know. It's funny. I mean, I remember when I started at Haymarket Publishing, we had to do courses. And, you know, the guy who did the features writing course, he said to me, you know, give me your first paragraph and you give me the first paragraph and you say, why should I care? Why should I care about this piece? I'm busy. Why should I read the rest of this piece? And I think too often you get people who don't think about that, particularly in the wine world, that they just think if they write a piece about, you know, burbling on about some wine region somewhere that people are going to read it. And why should they? As you said, there's no story behind it. Yeah, Speaker 1 (7:45) and to be honest. It's more important than ever now, of course, because there's just so much more content around. And if you capture someone's attention in that first few lines, particularly online, where it's probably coming up on some feed somewhere, Speaker 2 (7:56) you're lost. I mean, you did actually work on a local paper for a bit, didn't you? Researcher on the Birmingham Post and Mail. Then you went to precision marketing. Then the intriguingly entitled Amusement Business Europe. That was my big break, Tim. Yeah, it was a big Speaker 1 (8:12) break. Speaker 2 (8:12) And then you were the Guardian of the Sports Desk. So it's quite a diverse career. And what did you learn from those different things? I mean, not least as editor of Amusement Speaker 1 (8:20) Business Europe. Amusement Business Europe. But they now sadly defunct Amusement Business Europe. But no, that was my big break. I mean, I did a bit of, yeah, a little bit of part-time work on the Birmingham Post in their library, photo library. That gave me an insight into newspapers, which was great for that as a student. Amusement Business Europe was my first job in journalism, and it was a trade magazine for the arcade and casino industry. Ooh, how interesting. As per its title, it was an international magazine. Speaker 2 (8:54) Yeah. Speaker 1 (8:54) Um, and, uh, I mean, there's all sorts of trade magazines, as you know, and a lot of them, you know, still, still going, um, sadly not amusement business Europe, but, um, it was a small magazine. There were four editorial staff. So I joined as a reporter, but it was pretty hands-on. You were editing each other's work. Uh, and then, you know, having to source the photos, sometimes take the photos on film with camera, we were going to trade shows to see the new. fruit machines from, you know, Bell Fruit and Mayday and the new video games from Sega and Namco. But these shows were, I mean, within the first three months of being there, I was off to Vegas for some casino show. Speaker 2 (9:37) Macau. 24 years old. Casinos are quite Speaker 1 (9:39) glamorous places, aren't they? Absolutely fantastic. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I had an expense account, a minimal one, and I was going on these trips. And, yeah. But it was a great grounding because that world was a little bit murky. There were a few cowboys in that industry, and they didn't really want to be talking to trade press about their businesses. So it actually gave me a great grounding in how to try and get stories, how to speak to people, how to conduct interviews, how to try and eke out bits of information. And Speaker 2 (10:10) stay alive. It was a small magazine. Speaker 1 (10:11) It was stay alive. Within a few years, I was deputy editor and then finally editor. All within five years, I learned the whole discipline of putting a magazine together. Speaker 2 (10:19) And how did you move to Decanter? Did you know much about wine when you got that job? You were definitely a journalist, weren't you? Speaker 1 (10:26) I'd moved on a little bit from Black Tower, but I was sort of, you know, a very occasional and enthusiastic, I don't know, Chilean cabernet and Aussie Shiraz drinker. But by then, yes, I'd done ABU. I'd done a little stint on The Guardian on their sports desk, and that, again, gave me a pretty rigorous appreciation of the mechanics and responsibility of putting things in print. And, again, at the time, Decanter was largely print. This was 2003. The website had been going for four years. So I was employed as deputy