PR the Bulgarian way

Apparently, it could happen to anyone: but every now and then there is a sensational disaster in wine PR. By common consent, the last one occurred on September 16. Someone had the brilliant idea of sending 60 hacks off to lunch in Bulgaria to consecrate Domaine Boyar's brave, new winery in Sliven. A jet was chartered and the Prime Minister: Ivan Kostov, was laid on to greet the press. The aeroplane was provisioned with sushi and 15 cases of 1990 vintage Bollinger champagne. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, just about everything really. The plane came from Bulgaria and picked up 20 Continental journos in Brussels before docking in Stanstead. As the home team checked in it became clear that a couple of sleepyheads had forgotten to bring their passports. Arrangements were made for the nearest and dearest to send faxes of the relevant papers but, by the time they arrived, air traffic control had awarded the plane's slot to someone else.

The flight didn't actually take off until midday, some two and a half hours later: There were compensations, of course - three bottles of excellent champagne a head - but no plates for the sushi, which made it hard to mix the horseradish with the soy sauce.

When the jet finally landed at the military airport in Sliven plenty of gypsies had turned up to greet the by-now bedraggled hacks with hungry leers, but the Prime Minister had beaten a wise retreat and gone home to Sofia.

A coach none the less took the party to the new summit of Bulgarian wine technology where a buffet had been laid out. They had half an hour to do justice to that then get back on the bus and jet.

They were due to drop the Brussels party off first. Fuel was low by the time they reached Belgian airspace, and sadly the fuelling folk had gone home, too. They were stuck. The Eurostar was suggested as an alternative but that was found to be on strike. It was now 11.45pm and the organisers decided the best thing was to lodge the party at a hotel.

Now it was the turn of the Bulgarians to be short of the requisite papers, and visas had to be faxed up from the embassy. It was nearly 2am by the time the hacks stripped down to their undies for a few hours' kip. The wake-up call sounded a cruel three and a half hours later to summon them to the airport. The writers finally returned from lunch at 8am. Forty frazzled hacks spilled out onto the damp Tarmac to make their separate ways home.

By all reports, the organisers behaved with unruffled gentility throughout. Not for nothing had they been elected the wine writers' favourite PR's in the trade magazine Harpers a week or two before. The league ladder made curious reading. There were decent people at the top, but once you got down to the bottom rungs there were people I would cross a London street to get away from. I should never have chanced my destiny by accompanying them on an international flight.

It pays to be choosy. Not so long ago, I agreed to go on a trip to California with one of these firms. The programme looked good, and it appeared to offer the added spice of being paid for by a man called Michael who I took to be a crooner who divides his time between the recording studio and a selection of Los Angeles' choicer public lavatories. It was only on the journey out that I was disillusioned: it was another man altogether.

We had some wonderful estates on our list and everywhere we went we were treated with respect and kindness; but after a while it became less and less clear why we were there. Certainly, the PR had her own agenda. She was doing one of those wine trade exams and had a little project to do on lice. When we finished our tastings she would sidle up to each grower in turn and ask him searching questions about rootstock for an hour or two. Naturally, we found this boring. By the end of the week our relations with the guide were strained.

Then we finally learned that most, if not all, the wines we were tasting were to be inscribed on the list at a new restaurant in Berkshire, owned, as it turned out, by the same man who had paid for the trip. When I got back to Britain I waited an age before I even learned the address of the restaurant. No one ever had the possibly helpful idea of suggesting I come down for a meal. The gleanings of my trip provided material for several articles, but I suspect that none of them was exactly what my kindly patron thought he was going to get for his money.

That is wine PR for you. Its apologists will say that the pickings are slim; that the accounts which actually have some fat on them are the big, ugly ones like Gallos and Mondavi. There can't be much fun to be had there. Only occasional farces like that Bulgarian beano provide the little yeast to leaven an otherwise dull, flat loaf.

This article first appeared in Punch, Issue 91, October 1999