BBC Food and Drink – The Wines

Please have a look at this page for the wines used in the BBC Food and Programme and my suggestions. Back to my thoughts…..

I watched the new BBC series of food and drink this week and was pleased to see the format was back to something more approaching the good old Food and Drink days when chef Michael Barry and wine experts Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke really helped to educate and bring knowledge of food and wine to the masses.

The new Food and Drink presenters are Michel Roux Jr and Kate Goodman, representing Food and Drink respectively and assisted by a guest chef each week. It is good to see some coverage of wine on prime time evening viewing but what really seems to have caught peoples’ interest is that, whilst wines were mentioned, poured and matched to the food, the programme did not give out any particular information about the wines.

There was no mention of the name of the wine or a stockist only a rough purchase price and, in this case,  the fact that the wines were a Portuguese red wine from the Dao region and a German Riesling from the Mosel.

Of course, the Tweets started flying around Twittersphere as people debated this and tried to identify the wines. A couple of my Facebook followers also wondered about this,

• Angela Ellis Nice to see wine being involved in food… For a change!

  Tuesday at 08:06 via mobile · Like
• Helen Williams ummh just couldn’t work out why they were sharing glasses of wine, perhaps the BBC has a tight budget, it was also frustrating that they didn’t tell us exactly what they were drinking. James seems to be able to tell us on a Saturday morning so not sure why they couldn’t.

  Yesterday at 05:53 · Like
• Fareham Wine Cellar I am afraid I wasn’t watching that closely!

  Yesterday at 11:48 · Like
• Angela Ellis Yes Helen! Why can’t they? Apparently the can’t push specific brands on bbc but Saturday kitchen is always leading supermarkets as suppliers so that’s allowed as readily available to all. Annoying!! Of course we need more than.. It’s Riesling!

  Yesterday at 11:58 via mobile · Like

Why Can’t BBC Food and Drink Name Wines They Are Showing?

So what exactly was was going on? It seems that the BBC is following its Editorial Guidelines reference Editorial Integrity and Independence from External Interests – Product Prominence.

We need to be able to reflect the real world and this will involve referring to commercial products, organisations and services in our output.  However, we must avoid any undue prominence which gives the impression that we are promoting or endorsing products, organisations or services.

So it seems that Food and Drink are unable to name the wines they are recommending much in the same way they don’t name suppliers of the food ingredients. So how is it that Saturday Kitchen manages to get away with it?

Update 09/02/13 – Anyway, it seems that the wines will be  listed on the website from now on!

Fareham Wine Cellar sells both Quinta dos Roques and Reichsgraf Von Kesselstatt wines (admittedly not the ones mentioned but others from the same producer).

I also noticed that a little cutaway sequence of a glass of red wine being poured used a bottle of Urbina Reserva Especial 2001.

Read more about – BBC Food and Drink Wines