Raise a glass to Pinkie Tremble
Inez
(Pinkie) Tremble, wine writer and wine educator par excellence, died
in Cape Town on 5 January 2010, six weeks short of her 90th birthday.
Tremble
was the editor of Straight from the Grape,
an in-house newsletter for Spar supermarket wine managers, from 1985
to 2007. Armed with a diploma in wine from KWV, she started the
magazine when she retired after working for Spar for more than 20
years.
Her newsletter featured digest-style tips for busy
supermarket managers and pointers for the training and empowerment of
receiving clerks, shelf-packers and cashiers whose general training
hardly prepared them for the specific requirements of wine.
During
her supermarket years, Pinkie published three magazines for Spar -
for housewives, dealers, as well as in the ethnic Black languages.
She was also the national judge for Operation Upgrade and speaker at
various Spar dealer conventions.
She was an honorary member of
the SA Wine Writers Association, and a prolific freelance writer on a
wide variety of subjects - ranging from food and wine to
entertainment and the arts. In her heyday her articles appeared in
popular magazines such as Personality,
Car, Wynboer,
the Cape column of the now-defunct The
Retailer and the Malawi Airlines in-flight
magazine Reflections.
She also produced material for the radio medium, with more than 400
radio scripts to her credit. Her series They
made the headlines, ran for over two years on
Springbok Radio and her Requiem for a
Superstar - the Judy Garland Story - was
broadcast on the old English Service at prime listening time. She was
also a regular contributor to the Woman's
World programme.
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