Career

Initially an advertising copywriter for Collett Dickenson Pearce

Collett Dickenson Pearce

Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners emerged from the "Swinging London" cultural shifts of the 1960s as Britain's most glamorous and influential advertising agency, generally regarded as one of the finest advertising agencies in the world during the 1970s...

, Doyle Dane Bernbach, a founder employee of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO

Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO

AMV BBDO is an advertising agency that works with over 85 brands, including BT, BlackBerry, Sainsbury’s, Aviva, Walkers and Mars. AMV identifies and addresses business challenges for its clients with integrated campaigns, incorporating digital, social, experiential, print or broadcast...

 and later creative director for Lintas, Gluck was for sixteen years the wine correspondent of The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

with the column "Superplonk". In addition to contributing articles for other publications, including Harpers Magazine he was a wine critic of The Oldie

The Oldie

The Oldie is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons, and has an eclectic list of contributors, including James Le Fanu, John Sweeney, Thomas Stuttaford, Virginia Ironside,...

until 2011, and the author of 36 books about wine. Among his titles are Superplonk, Streetplonk, Brave New World and The Great Wine Swindle, the latter declared to become his final book due to the anticipated negative reaction of people in the wine industry. He also featured in the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 programme Gluck, Gluck, Gluck.

Gluck has been described as a "self-styled champion of the ordinary wine drinker, fighting against the perceived snobbery and stuffiness of the wine world".

In November 2008 a survey by the wine industry consultancy firm Wine Intelligence was made public, having polled the views of more than 1,500 regular UK wine drinkers, results show that Gluck was the fifth most recognised wine critic in the UK.

Controversies

Appearing in the Channel 4

Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 episode of Dispatches

Dispatches (TV series)

Dispatches is the British television current affairs documentary series on Channel 4, first transmitted in 1987. The programme covers issues about British society, politics, health, religion, international current affairs and the environment, usually featuring a mole in an organisation.-Awards:*...

titled "What's in your wine?" in 2008, Gluck stated, "Many, many wines are no better than a sort of alcoholic cola. You get artificial yeasts, enzymes, sugar, extracts, tannins, all sorts of things added", a statement widely received with outrage in the wine industry.

Gluck's other controversial statements include, "Terroir

Terroir

Terroir comes from the word terre "land". It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestowed upon particular varieties...

is rubbish. It is complete utter balderdash from the first syllable of its pretentious and mendacious utterance to its last". In reference to his opposition to cork stoppers

Cork (material)

Cork is an impermeable, buoyant material, a prime-subset of bark tissue that is harvested for commercial use primarily from Quercus suber , which is endemic to southwest Europe and northwest Africa...

, Gluck has stated, "Sticking a cork made from tree bark in a wine made in 1999 is like producing a modern motor car with a starting handle", and he has declared cork taint

Cork taint

Cork taint is a broad term referring to a wine fault characterized by a set of undesirable smells or tastes found in a bottle of wine, especially spoilage that can only be detected after bottling, aging and opening...

 "a serial killer of good wine".

In the book The Great Wine Swindle, Gluck contends that the wine industry is "populated by liars, scroungers and cheats, administered by charlatans and snake-oil salesman and run on a system of misrepresentation and ritualised fraud".

Gluck has also been involved in a public disagreement with author Salman Rushdie over who is the quicker book-signer.

In January 2009, Gluck made a series of contentions on the nature of beer

Beer

Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...

 drinkers in the "Word of Mouth" pages of The Guardian, in an article asserting the rising numbers of wine drinkers in Britain, stating that "beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies," and, "are also terrible lovers, awful husbands, and untidy flatmates". The statements drew prompt responses from beer writers Roger Protz and Melissa Cole, with Gluck challenged by Cole to appear at a beer and food pairing event.

Charity work

Gluck hosted deafblind charity Sense’s

Sense-National Deafblind and Rubella Association

Sense is a national charity in the United Kingdom that supports and campaigns for children and adults who are deafblind.-History:Sense was founded in 1955 as a self-help and support group for the parents of children whose disabilities were neither recognised nor provided for, children born...

first ever blind wine auction in October 2006, guiding guests through a wide variety of wine as they tasted the drinks in total darkness. The event was held at Dans Le Noir, a London restaurant where customers eat in the dark, that is one of Sense's corporate partners.