I’m guilty of it…though I hope less today than in the past. I’m talking about using jargon when writing about wine. The wine industry, particularly its marketers, get away with murder by using certain words and phrases that, due partly to the marketers’ own over use and shoddy thought processes spurred by laziness, result in these phrases being meaningless or uncomfortably inaccurate. A selection of those words and phrases that have passed into near-meaninglessness:    Terroir: To often incorrectly used…

The fifth in a series of reviews of wine publications DAN BERGER’S VINTAGE EXPERIENCES I’ve learned more about the wine industry from Dan Berger than any other wine writer. He’s one of those writers who cares deeply about wine, the wine industry and the people who people it. So it should be no surprise that I would call his weekly newsletter, "Vintage Experiences", a must read. First, Berger has been at this for some time. He began writing about wine…

The issues surrounding the idea of Terroir are almost exclusively debated among those who have a stake in wine and wine quality or those who are hard core wine lovers. It’s similar to it being Civil War buffs who are the ones likely to debate General Lee’s strategy at Gettysburg. But if you want to see how the discussion of terroir can be taken out of the realm the geeks and into the bright world of common culture, all you…

Tasting notes and wine reviews are the bread and butter of wine writing. Everyone who writes about wine must at some point, if not most of the time, write a review of a wine. In the end, this is what the majority of readers want to know: what does the wine taste like. What makes for a good wine review? Obviously the components of wine provide for the structure of any wine review: color, aroma, taste, stucture. The worst wine…