Archive for the ‘Rating Wine’ Category
It appears the French will keep at it until they get the results they want. For 30 years a certain humiliation infested the French wine industry as a result of the "Paris Tasting of 1976" in which California wines bested the French in a taste off. With great hope for vindication, the French watched the recreation of that tasting just this year. Yet again, California wines bested the French. Not content to be good PR practitioners and let this issue…
Anyone remember that great scene in the movie "High Fidelity" in which Dick walks in on Rob (played by John Cusack) who is reorganizing his record collection? Dick: "Doing it Chronologically?"Rob: NoDick: Alphabetical?Rob: NopeDick: What?Rob: Autobiographical!!Dick: No Fucking Way. Pretty ambitious. Organizing a record collection autobiographically. Clearly it’s not how you’d organize a selection of records if you wanted to offer them for sale. However, there’s no reason the organization of the selection of records for sale couldn’t be done…
Have you noticed the sheer number of books that are written every year that are essentially there to tell you what you taste? Magazines too. Wine magazines and newsletters and food publications essentially exist to tell you what things taste like. Sure, there’s info on why things taste the way they do and what tastes best combined with what and how to make things taste a certain way. But in the end, food and wine writing is all about talking…
My wife sometimes complains that too often I’ll open a bottle of wine, sit with a half a glass or a full glass, then never touch the bottle again. It’s true. I’m interested in tasting more than I am in drinking. The exception is low alcohol Rieslings. Those I drink…all the way down to the bottom. Yesterday night I was sucking on a 1999 von Schubert Maximim Grunhauser Abtsburg Riesling Spatlese. It’s around 8% alcohol. It’s a beautiful, somewhat exotic,…
Something very encouraging and thoughtful is happening at the Wine Enthusiast Magazine. It’s a trend that affects it’s scoring of California wines. In a word, that trend is Elegance. Some folks follow the scores and reviews of wines at wine publications closer than other. I fall into the "closer than others" category not so much because I want to get my hands on the high scoring wines but because these reviews and ratings do indeed drive sales. What Steve Heimoff…
