Archive for August, 2010

If I had the power to change the wine world I would send one type of wine drinker to therapy. It’s a personality type we have all come to know and loathe. Let’s call them “The Misinformed Know-it-All”. Let me tell you a story:

“Côtes du Rhône Is a Grape”
A friend of mine was recently in a wine shop in Brooklyn, perusing some Côtes du Rhône. He asked the clerk about the varietals in a particular bottle and the clerk replied “That’s the grape, Côtes du Rhône. It’s a French grape.” My friend tried to politely inform the clerk that Côtes du Rhône is a region in France, but the clerk adamantly insisted that Côtes du Rhône is in fact, a grape. Rather than humbly admitting fault, he clung to his misinformation with both hands.

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These days, everything seems to be a little easier thanks in large part to the internet. What used to take days, weeks, even months of digging through dusty papers and fragile microfiche in the library is now at your fingertips via online archives and resource sites. The phone book I had delivered to my house last week?… a good fire starter considering I have a handy app on my smartphone that doesn’t leave my fingers black. And of course it’s almost too easy keeping up with friends and family through the use of email, blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

But one of the best reasons to love social media these days is the opportunity to follow people and events all over the world without leaving the comfort of your living room.

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Disclosure—no, not the Demi Moore-Michael Douglas 1994 movie that made Pahlmeyer Chardonnay a star—is one of the buzzwords of the Internet age. Everyone wants it, and everyone seems to feel like they’re not always getting enough of it.

Today, rather than rattling on about what levels of disclosure I feel are appropriate in wine criticism/journalism, I want to know what levels of disclosure you, our readers, expect.

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The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) has recently come up with a PinotG Style Spectrum, which is supposed to tell consumers what kind of Pinot Gris they’re getting, on a scale that ranges from “crisp” to “luscious.” As an industry response to the multitude of Pinot Gris styles now being made in Australia, it makes sense as shorthand, so that prospective purchasers don’t have to actually read descriptive back labels or know how to interpret technical notes.

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