Archive for the ‘Rating Wine’ Category
A previous post on this blog in which I challenge the critics of the 100 Point Scoring system to make a compelling case against the system is up to 60 comments. What a surprise!! While a number of very astute points have been made in the course of those 60 comments, one stands out as perhaps the most important thing a wine retailer or winery could take away from the discussion. The comment comes from Gregg Burke, owner of Maratene's…
Do women winemakers bring anything to the act of making wine that ellude male winemakers? This is the question that struck me as I looked at a fascinating new website highlighted in an article at Wines & Vines Magazine. The website is essentially a searchable database of woman winemakers whereby one can search for winemakers of the more interesting sex by name, region or winery. The site itself has the goal of providing women with more networking opportunities, encouragement and…
Trying to make a compelling philosophical case against using 100 points to rate a wine is like trying to make a case against answering the question: Do I or do I not like this wine? Yet within the world of wine media, we are talking about the 100 Point system…again. Why? You know why? Because people who are affected by published scores don’t like the fact that people seem to follow the people who give out 100 Point scores. At…
Evaluating and assigning (or not) medals to roughly 80 young cabernets and syrahs, over a period of roughly an hour and a half is not hard work. However, to do it well requires certain abilities. I leaned this again this week after returning to wine competition judging after about 6 or 7 years away. I was in Long Beach helping to judge the Long Beach Grand Cru, a well established wine competition run by Dan Berger and benefiting the Legal…
Somehow the conversation strayed into "wine and literature." A crew of us wine geeks were gathered for the purposes of enjoying our geekishness when one of our gathering was provoked to ask: "Can someone tell me why there is not really good literature that has wine as its focus or at least as its setting?" This led us to think if the premise was correct and we decided it was. But the answer to the question couldn't be that it…
