Tag Archives: vinography

Terroir: Idiots, Elvis & Sex

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I’d love to give you a summary of this article, but I can’t. The BEST thing, by far, that I can do is three short quotes. If these don’t make you want to read the rest, and make you want to explore the concept of “terroir”, then I’ll drink a bottle of Gallo!

The Shakespeare of Terroir – Alder Yarrow at Vinography quoting Terry Theise

There are two types of people out there. There are those who understand that the soil makes the wine, and then there are those who are idiots.

Saying weather acts upon terroir is like saying some years Elvis was skinny, some years Elvis was fat. Elvis was still Elvis.

I like to say that Grand Cru vineyards are the earth’s erogenous zones. They are special places that tingle when sunlight hits them.

I particularly like the last one – full of potential for elaboration!

Enjoy!

The price of success – $3.99 a month

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Interesting development to happen straight after my last post:

A special announcement from Vinography

Seems like I am in good company in reading Vinography, but I don’t think I shall be parting with the money. Sorry!

[EDIT: of course, it could all be a big April Fools joke – the timing is suspect and of course designed to get tongues wagging, but it would seem unusual to quote WS like this?! Does it make it more or less likely to be a fake since it is pretty much what Neal Martin did with erobertparker.com?]

[CONFESSION: If it is a joke, that’s twice I’ve fallen for one today! Doh!]

[FINAL EDIT: I suppose I could claim extenuating circumstances: wine with dinner, the fact that here it is after midnight, so technically no longer April Fools, … but the truth is, I fell for it. At least I know that Spaghetti doesn’t grow on trees]

Wine Culture Online

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This blog is still in its infancy and who knows how long it will last, nor if it will establish any regular pattern. I suppose random thoughts on a regular-ish basis is the nature of blogging, but to become a regular destination for people you need to establish your “voice” and your “theme”, just like any other publication.

So, while I muddle my way through, I thought I would maybe point to a few of the others that I read and who are contributing a great deal to the same debate in their own way, and which appear in my blog roll. These are pretty much all blogs that write about the nature and business of wine rather than tasting the wines themselves.

Jamie Goode
www.wineanorak.com
Jamie’s site is an engaging mix of wine tasting notes (some great and varied ones), thoughts on matters vinous (particularly closures) and his own life (dogs, films, music and making his own wine). I get a lot out of his blog and this post is a recent example of many of these threads in a single post.

Spittoon.biz
www.spittoon.biz
Andrew Barrow has a number of different sites and blogs, and a variety of interests, but spittoon.biz seems to be the main one. His blog combines a lot of news relating to wine as well as his enthusiastic support for a series of food & wine matching posts called “Combinations“. Not only are the dishes and wine matches explained, but he takes some cracking photos too.

Fermentation
fermentation.typepad.com
Tom Wark is a California based communication and PR specialist who has an interesting view on the business of wine. Some of the “business” he discusses is specific to the US, so the regular reviews of the unbelievably complex and protectionist US wine distribution business are not always relevant, but are usually entertaining anyway. However, he has a lot of interesting points to make on branding and communication, and he recently set up an award for the best wine blogs (hence the link above) that is worth taking a look at.

Vinography
vinography.com
Alder Yarrow is a well known US blogger on wine (and won the award above for best wine reviews) and is well connected to what is going on with the wine culture online in the US. I like his take on most aspects of wine culture and would recommend reading anything that falls under the heading “Ramblings and Rants“. He also includes reviews of wines (heavily California weighted as you would expect) and local wine bars which could be of interest to anyone travelling out there. Also, check out the main page where you will find a reasonably comprehensive list of wine blogs (I only say “reasonably complete” as I am not yet included, but it has hundreds of others, including ones in Spanish, French, German, Chinese, etc.)

These are just a few blogs I read regularly and that influence my own thinking and posting. Of course there are other sites (not blogs) like Jancis‘ site, Decanter, wine-pages.com and more as well, but you probably already know about these.