Archive for the ‘Rating Wine’ Category
"I do not believe nature has any use for our democracies. Some things are better than others, and on of our functions is to guide our readers toward appreciation of these distinctions as gracefully a we're able." This is Terry Theise, the great importer of wine, explaining his belief that quality is objective and can be discerned in wine. It is also Terry explaining that it is the obligation of the learned wine aficionado to tutor the less knowledgeable in…
Tony Greenberg has a quick, nimble, searching and eclectic mind that he's beginning to train on the wine industry. More importantly, he's training that mind on the unique way the wine industry chooses to distinguish the hundreds of thousands of wines at consumers' disposal: ratings. "These judgments [ratings] are based on the false premise that wine assessment can be absolutely objective. But it absolutely cannot; there’s always a measure of subjectivity, even though our minds seldom reward nuance. Critics’ reliability…
Five years in to the wine blogging revolution and five days out from the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference, it's time to assess the things I now know and think about wine blogging and wine bloggers. 1. Given the number of new and compelling voices that make up the wine blogosphere, it's clear to me that prior to the emergence of this self-publishing revolution literary-minded wine lovers were denied access to what must have been a host of fascinating voices who…
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,…
I've been accused of being a "Distributor Basher". My retort to that accusation is that while I have bashed distributors, it's not a chronic condition with me any more than bashing White Zinfandel is a chronic problem. I have had a nice White Zin, it's just that the bad ones seem so prevalent. That said, what strikes me is that in this age of social media, citizen reviewers, YELP-reviews and meta ratings, wine distributors and wholesalers seem to have been…
