About

This blog is about the history, imagery, and tasting of wine. The posts extend beyond simple tasting notes and producer profiles in an attempt to appeal to a broad audience. The rich history of wine will be told through the history of art, numismatics, archaeology, history of medicine, and personal travel experiences.

People

Aaron Nix-Gomez
Principal Author
Silver Spring, Maryland

I work as a software engineer for The Applied Physics Laboratory, The University of Washington. I have been interested in wine for a very long time. Like food, it is inseparable from my daily life. Over the years I have taken notes in journals, sheets of paper, text files, email, Mark Squire’s Bulletin Board, and occasionally Wine Berserkers. I even had a wine-of-the-month club for family and friends. After a short break from taking and posting notes I found myself itching to share about what wines I drank, to post pictures, and archive my old tasting notes. Jenn suggested a blog might be the best format for my enthusiasm. I believe she is right. For futher background information start with my introduction to fine wine with The Bristol Wine Circle  with additional posts under Personal History.

Julie Abo
Author
Meyrin, Switzerland (Suburbs of Geneva)

I am a teacher by trade and I am spending a year away from my home of Lincoln, Nebraska, USA in Meyrin, Switzerland with my proton-smashing husband and my two girls who are learning French faster than I can say “bonjour!” I love to walk in the vineyards that are literally meters away from our apartment. I wish I had even more time to taste more wines! I’ll do my best to make a small contribution to this blog!

Lou French
Author
Bethesda, Maryland

Lou’s life-long passion for wine began when he worked at Wells Discount Liquor in Baltimore, Maryland during the early 1980s.  He continues to takes notes on all of the wines he drinks and is interested in wines of all origins and ages.

Tasting Notes

We write down tasting notes for the vast majority of all wines which are encountered. Most of these encounters occur at home where we typically have two to four bottles open. With this constant rotating selection, notes for a particular wine are typically taken over a two to three-day period. We also frequently taste at one of our houses where we open six to eight bottles centered on a theme. At the end of the tasting we split up the leftover wines then retaste them the following night. All leftover wine is enclosed with a liberal dose of Private Preserve. It is from these evenings that the majority of the formal tasting notes are generated.

We also write notes when we taste wine at a restaurant, casually at a friend’s house, a wine store, or a trade tasting. We record these shorter, less formal notes because we find the impressions are still useful. These tasting notes are always accompanied by the event at which they were tasted.

The vast majority of the wines reviewed are privately purchased by the authors or their friends. A small portion of the wines are tasted at public events held by wineries, importers, and wine stores. Any published reviews that stem from public events or free samples will be clearly noted.

Rating

All formally tasted wines will be rated similar to Michael Broadbent’s scoring system where a wine may receive zero to five stars. We would drink wines receiving two stars at parties, bars, and restaurants if they are value priced. We would not hesitate to drink any wine receiving three or more stars. Most informally tasted wines will be marked by Not Rated. Wines tasted at store or trade events typically fall into this category because we do not feel comfortable rating a wine based on one or two small pours or from inadequate stemware.

*****    Outstanding       Arresting, the best, truly memorable.
****     Very Good         Makes one smile, worthy of the effort to find.
***      Good              Gives strong pleasure, good character, our daily drinkers.
**       Moderately Good   An enjoyable wine appropriate for parties and meals.
*        Fair              Drinkable but no character or too many negative traits.
No Stars Poor              Flawed or undrinkable.

Parenthesis and Aging Estimates

Parenthesis signifies that a wine which is currently drinking at one level should improve to a higher level with age. For example, ***(*) signifies that a wine is currently drinking Good but with age will become Very Good. Wines that may be drunk now with pleasure will have an age estimate starting with Now. If the wine requires age then the start date signifies when it should be tried again. The stop date signifies when the plateau of drinking will end.  It is not that the wine still stop drinking well once the end date it reached, rather an estimate of when it starts declining from prime drinking. These estimates should be taken lightly so you may judge if a wine may be drunk now or should be cellared and its relative longevity.