"White Dog Rising: Moonshine's Moment" - TIME

[Dakki]

Article is here.

The usual problems with TIME: Article is sloppily written (sorry Mr. Josh Ozersky, winner of a James Beard award), doesn't appear very well-researched, conflates illegal distilling ("Why is moonshine making a comeback? For the same reason absinthe did a few years ago. Because it's delicious. Because it's illegal. And because it's cool."), artisanal distilling and industrial production of white whiskeys.

But I've been thinking of something else: TIME has a pretty terrible track record predicting the future. Can we safely declare a trend dead when TIME reports on it?

[mbrowley]

Dakki ~

You're absolutely correct. There was such potential for this piece...to be split into about three separate articles; one on home distilling, one on craft distilling, and another on commercial spirits that evoke some of moonshine's white dog history. Instead, we got a sloppy, poorly thought-out writing conflating disparate concepts that was in parts just flat-out factually wrong.

I was so angry at the flubbed chance to say something worthwhile when I read it that I wrote a response called A Writer's Guide to Moonshine here to get better information out. It was writing such as this that inspired me to write Moonshine! in the first place.

Learned distillers and drinkers can disagree to some degree on what constitutes moonshine, but we can agree on what doesn't: the majority of Mr. Ozersky's article. The Time article was fumbled conceptually and, as a result, is a disaster of misinformation that readers who don't know any better will take as fact.

[Kent Wang]

You should send these comments to the writer.

My friend brought back a bottle of the Death's Door Whiskey from Wisconsin, and it's pretty weird. I'm not sure what to make of it.

[Dakki]

For all we know this Josh Ozersky posts here under a pseudonym. Who is he anyway? From Mbrowley's blog post I take it he's some kind of food sleb but other than his TIME articles I've never seen anything by or about him.

I expect he was told to keep the article short and accessible (TIME isn't a food or drink magazine and it's not exactly aimed at highbrow audience) but I don't think that's an excuse.

[slkinsey]

Josh Ozersky, aka "Mr. Cutlets," whose work I generally admire, is a passionate writer on food and restaurants who has exceedingly deep knowledge in certain subject areas, and he has done some valuable, informative and enlightening writing in those areas.

I wouldn't say that spirits is one of those areas, however. Indeed, I confess to being surprized he got that gig in the first place. Josh isn't even on my radar as someone I'd task with writing a piece on spirits. But, on the other hand, he is certainly has some name recognition in the broad category of "culinary writing" and this probably prompted the people at TIME -- who aren't exactly in the know when it comes to tis sort of thing -- to offer him the gig. He wrote a great and well researched book on hamburgers, and he has a kind of hip informal writing style. How different is that from writing about white dog, amiright? This is the kind of thinking that probably went on at TIME. Well, at least it's better than Mark Bittman telling people how to make a Margarita.

I can't really give Josh too much grief for it, though. You take the gigs they offer you and you do your best for the money they're paying. There's no way he could have done the level of research or accumulated the breadth of knowledge in this subject that someone like Matthew Rowley has. Sure, maybe they should have asked Matthew to write the article. But they didn't. And maybe that's not the style of article that they thought would appeal to their readership. If he pitched it to them and thinks it's written from a depth of knowledge in this area, that's different.