May 23, 2008
The Compendium. It is one of my favorite things. A stash all things, or at least most thing, or a large selection of things on a particular subject. Dictionaries of all sorts and encyclopedia fall into this category and both items have always intrigued me. I got through "S" of the Encyclopedia Britannica when I was 13, but was interrupted by the sudden appearance of girls. I lost interest in a variety of things at that point, not the least…
May 16, 2008
Alice Feiring….You GO! I think it’s great that the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times would give Alice a fairly large stage to bitch and moan about California wine not being to her tastes and the contention that a single, Maryland-based Palate is the reason for her California Discontent. Alice is in the midst of promoting her new book that takes the art of bitching and moaning into a book length format. Feiring’s "The Battle for Wine and Love:…
May 8, 2008
The assumption of the American Viticultural Area (appellation) program is that there is something unique about those areas that are granted AVA status—that there is something about Oakville, Anderson Valley, Finger Lakes and Green Valley that make them distinct. However, the subtext of this quasi-appellation program administered by the federal government and completely embraced by the American wine industry is that the wines the emerge from specifically designated American Viticultural Areas are themselves unique because they somehow contain identifiable characteristics…
Apr 22, 2008
The following comment was recently posted on the Fermentation post that announced the American Wine Blog Winners: You have a very nice blog. I enjoy the information and access to other blogs. I’m a new blogger… have you seen the naked woman on the newest Imagine Wine label? Check out www.imaginewine.com. It is beautiful. I tasted the wines recently at the Santa Ynez Vintners Festival too and the wine is good and a great value, but has to be bought…
Apr 21, 2008
A variety of academic studies seem to have determined quite convincingly that the non-wine expert and even the non-wine interested don’t like the same kind of wines that the "experts" and those who have had wine training tend to like. The corollary to this is that the ratings of wine experts and wine critics seem may have little value for those who are not trained in wine. The most recent confirmation of this comes from a Working Paper published at…