Archive for the ‘Rating Wine’ Category
Arthur, of redwinebuzz, commenting on today’s earlier post about what should be the standard for quality in wine, makes the case that a high high quality wine is that which best displays their classic traits and characteristics of the variety or combination of variety and terroir. (Correct me if I mischaracterize you Arthur. Using dog breeding as an example, he writes: “What makes a Doberman a classic example of the breed? The way it best displays the traits and characteristics…
"In yet another anti-intellectual effort to take fancy-schmancy wine down a peg or two, a new book purports to demonstrate that price bears little relation to quality and that the experts don’t know what they are talking about." This is how Eric Asimov at The Pour begins a post that I think is deliciously provocative. The "effort" he is referring to is a new book entitled, "The Wine Trials". The book describes a set of blind tastings of wines costing…
Two sets of unsolicited wine samples showed up at my door yesterday. (Thank you, both!) They will get drunk, but they won’t get reviewed here at FERMENTATION. I was looking back over some earlier posts of mine and one in which I offer some resolutions for a coming year noted my desire to find someone competent to review wines at Fermentation. I think when I wrote that I must have been thinking that this lack of wine reviews at Fermentation…
I’m constantly watching for the emergence of new wine-related media. In particular I’m partial to publications that don’t cater to the average wine drinker, but rather try to fill that smaller niche of sophisticated wine folks. Basically I’m greedy. Such a publication has emerged and based on the first issue I recommend it highly. The Sommelier Journal is new and focuses most of its attention of publishing for sommeliers and wine professionals. Yet, any one with a higher level of…
And your mission is, if you choose to accept it: Create a criteria for choosing the top ten (the "Grand Cru") Pinot Noir vineyards in California. Not Top Ten Producers, but Top Ten Pinot Noir vineyards. This topic of building such a criteria came up today when I was speaking first with a pretty well known Pinot producer and it arose again when I was speaking with a very knowledgeable wine writer who has a real passion for Pinot. All…
