Archive for the ‘Culture and Wine’ Category
Is it possible to judge a wine without ever having laid foot in the region where it was produced? I've been wondering about this really fascinating question ever since reading this comment by MW Tim Atkin, made at the opening of Fine Wine 2010 in Spain in April and published in Wine Business Monthly: "Critics who judge wines without visiting the country they come from are insane and insulting….Our interpretation of fine wine regions and grape varieties has barely evolved…
I've revisited "The World of Fine Wine" magazine of late and come away still believing that for the wine collector, the connoisseur, the Europhile, the wine investor or for those who crave forceful opinion about wine and the wine world couched in carefully rendered prose, this is perhaps the only publication you need. Word of Fine Wine is decidedly not a consumer magazine in the vein of The Wine Spectator, Wine Enthusiast or Decanter magazine. Published quarterly, given over to…
The finalists in the 2010 American Wine Blog Awards were announced today and they include a variety of nominees who are new to the finalist round. Having been involved in these awards for quite some time and having watched the world of wine blogs for longer, I've now come around to the position that wine blogs are indeed members of the "traditional" or mainstream media. For many, including myself, wine blogs have seemed to live outside this idea of the…
Why should you, the reader, give any credence to what I write on this blog? Why indulge in my version of reality by giving my words the time of day? I'm not a professional writer? I don't get paid to write this blog. I don't have an editor that I have to satisfy. I think the reason I have a decent readership is because it's pretty clear I have some sort of expertise in what I choose to write about,…
Napa Valley dodged a bullet this week. Were it not for the brave representatives of the people on the Board of Supervisors who resisted the call to allow dirty commercialism to infest this bucolic agricultural paradise, it's quite likely the beautiful grapes you see carpeting the Valley would soon be replaced by wedding chapels and limos filled with with off-the-rack tuxedo-wearing marauders. Worse yet, had the board of supervisors not voted to keep weddings out of Napa Valley wineries, this…
