Sometimes on a hot afternoon a rosé or sharp Albariño just won’t cut it. With the weather we’ve had here in Santa Cruz, temperatures sure to spike over the weekend, I often turn to a cold beer to slake a thirst satisfied no other way. But what if I want those moments to be more than merely satisfied? What if I want exhilaration? If I only had a guide…. Well, I am happy to report that they are at it again, those Fearless Critics. Fresh off their groundbreaking The Wine Trials, this ever-widening circle of drinking friends has now returned with yet another very helpful guide, The Beer Trials. This time they’ve willingly sacrificed weeks of their lives for the humble beer drinker. And I am glad they did. What a world of taste and variety I have been missing!
As I discovered during a trip to Vermont some time ago, there has occurred an extraordinary explosion of artisanal, high quality beer production here in the states. It is no longer about Bud versus Coors, or dueling Michelobs, the choice of Corona or Pacifico for the beach. There are now new names to conjure: Saison Dupont, Russian River Pliny the Elder, Magic Hat, Boulder Planet Porter, Widmer Broken Halo. Just how massive has been the cultural shift to high quality beer making, abroad as well, I have only recently begun to learn. This book certainly helps! After years trying to grasp the intricacies of the wine world, is was in just the few weeks since the publisher sent me a copy, that this casual beer drinker can now more confidently find the IPA of my dreams. And understand why one might be better than another.
Yet the authors’ artisanal rap does not go to their heads. They are not fighting a variation of the culture wars. The Beer Trials is no high brow versus low brow. Their tone is itself humble, and humorous. Yes, I may keep my fond memories of stealing sips from my father’s Hamm’s.
“If this is a book with an agenda, then that agenda is simple: to broaden your horizons, and narrow your search, by arming you with better information about beer. If we can help you find a new beer to love, then our purpose is met.”
Written by Seamus Campbell and the intrepid Robin Goldstein, with the contribution of a dozen professionals, from homebrewers to the BJCP-approved enthusiast, The Beer Trials provides much more than a list dozens and dozens of beers from around the world. It is as well a guide to beer styles, flavors and ingredients. The section on adjuncts, additives, and unusual flavors was highly instructive. As was the chapter on off-flavors and flaws. I had no idea the flavor of malt could be further broken down into pale, English pale, crystal, medium crystal, Munich and Vienna. Now I do. Neither did I know what could be the differences, for good or ill, that adding oats, corn, rice, molasses, wheat or rye, brings to a finished bottle. Skunky, tart, sour, buttery, and soapy, these flaws are discussed. And the stylings created by proper use of Acetobacter and Brettanomyces? Of Brett they write,
“Brett produces a variety of phenolic compounds. [....] The most desirable of these is closely related to the clove-flavored phenol produced by weizen yeasts., and can come across as meaty (like bacon), smoky, or spice [....]
‘Old leather’ is the classic British description of Bretty beer — intriguing enough to inspire the recreation of 19th-century British beers, with authentic Brett flavors.”
As with The Wine Trials, all tastings were done blind. And again we are presented with compelling observations about the distorting effects of lifestyle marketing, observations central to all of the Fearless Critics’ work, and one of the many reasons I find their efforts important and commendable.
“If your job as a consumer is to look beyond all categories of lifestyle marketing, that doesn’t mean skepticism of Anheuser-Busch’s Super Bowl ads. It also means skepticism of the well-intentioned but ultimately narrow and unscientific opinions of the beer snob who insists that all great beer must be Belgian and cost at least $10. That enthusiastic beer geek may turn out to be even less aware of lifestyle marketing than your average Bud Light drinker.”
After a few pages explaining their methodology, their (harmless) scoring system, and price point symbols, we dive into the soul of the book: an examination of enough beers, more than 200, to keep me occupied throughout the Summer! Amber and Pale Lagers, Belgian, Brown and Dark Ales, including Porters, Stouts, and my personal favorite, India Pale Ale (though I will now look for a neuvo British Brett beer!), and Smoke, Sour, Strong, and Wheat beers are all well represented.
Another fine guide for a thirsty public. Highly recommended.
Admin
Coming on the heels of my review of The Wine Trials 2010 by Robin Goldstein and Alexis Herschkowitsch was a blind tasting in the Sierras with family and friends. I had planned a more conventional tasting weeks before. It was to have been with labels exposed and winery back-stories at hand. But after reading The Wine Trials 2010 I thought it would prove much more interesting to my non-expert friends were I rather to explore, unknown to them, some of the questions forcefully asked in the book. Is price correlated to quality? Can an expensive wine be sensed? Knowing only the price range of the wines, can folks ‘ballpark’ a price point? Further, is the evaluation of wine quality made easier or more complicated if the wines may not be discussed during the tasting? And what of defensiveness, intimidation, parroting the critics, post-tasting humiliation, all of the pleasure-robbing pathologies surrounding wine? Should the blind tasting be properly constructed, might this miasma of anxiety be displaced by, well, good, clean fun?
I did not follow the letter but the spirit of The Wine Trials’ Chapter 8 Drinking games for adults, the book’s instruction manual for blind tastings. My method was the following (and nearly all of these details were known to the participants): I purchased all of the wines from one store, Trader Joe’s. The price spread was from a few dollars to around $30. The wines were made of one grape, Cabernet Sauvignon, with one notable exception I’ll explain later. Four wines were domestically produced, in California. One was from Bordeaux.
I placed the bottles, five in all, in identical paper sacks. I then removed all of the tin and plastic on the necks of each bottle and pulled the corks. Only one cork was plastic. I concealed them. The bags were then taped closed at the neck. I left the room and requested that another soul randomly number the bottles which were promptly placed among the participants at the tasting table. I returned to the room and passed out notebook paper and pens.
Though unintentional, it happened that none of the wines I selected appear on the list of 150 recommendations in The Wine Trials 2010, though it may be that they were on the original gathering of 450 wines. I do not know. Neither is it particularly relevant.
Of the five participants (and I will be speaking of myself in the third person from time to time), there were three women, all mothers, and two men, both fathers. They range in age from the late thirties to the early fifties. All are college-educated; they think for themselves. Each soul is independent and will not hesitate to express an opinion. All are good-looking, talented and desirable. They are all middle to upper middle-class. All stick to a budget. None drink to excess unless provoked by the chafing coil of daily responsibilities. Four souls are avid, casual wine-drinkers; only one is an oft-times annoying student of the vine. All of their children were present, and, I should point out, quite amused at their parent’s behavior. Moreover, the secretive character of the wine tasting exercise interested them. Who doesn’t enjoy guessing what’s in the brown paper bag?
A simple series of questions was asked. “Which wine(s) tastes expensive?” “What is the taste of expensive?” “How much would one be willing to pay for a given wine?” Not asked was which wine was a favorite, though all were free to speak of such a thing only after the other questions were answered, or at least an attempt was made. Lastly, each soul was given the option to guess the grape. (It must be said that the questions were so designed as to shift the burden off of private reflection and onto that of a wine’s commercial reception.)
Dinner had already been eaten. The numbered wines were tasted in order. A single 12 oz. crystal glass was used by each taster, and each time the glass was rinsed with the next wine to be tasted. A spit bucket was provided. Its use was encouraged.
The results? The first wine tasted was from the general Napa AVA, a 2008 Spiral cab. This wine tasted ‘expensive’ by two participants. The tannin and acid was compelling. Too much oak (or oak flavoring?) was nevertheless present. Three folks said, rather emphatically, that the wine tasted like ‘just wine’, ’simple’, ‘thin’, ‘little depth, no story; Elmer’s glue’. Of the latter, they would not pay more than $6. This is a good thing because the wine sells for $4.99!
The second wine was a 2006 Napa Valley Robert Mondavi cab. No taster sensed that this wine was ‘expensive’. Indeed, after two folks volunteered that the wine ’smelled like rubbing alcohol’, tasted ‘metallic, like cherry cough drops’, ‘not complex’, no taster, it turned out, would be willing to pay over $10. Three tasters felt the wine worth less than $7! The retail price for this wine is $20.99.
The third wine, a 2001 Chateau de la Riviere Fronsac. The ringer. Mostly Merlot. But inasmuch as it was from Bordeaux I knew it would be a strict, harsh example. One thought it poor, hardly worth more than $3. The high acid and tannin was welcomed by others, though one taster felt it had but one note. Somewhere between $10 and $15 was the general consensus. Retail: $14.99.
One of the strangest wines of the evening, the fourth, was the 2007 California Pétanque by M. Schlumberger, Inc. Perhaps it was that it was tasted after the Fronsac. One felt it was quite cheap. Others detected chalk, roses, said it had a ’story’. The consensus that it was a medium priced wine. Most would pay $14 to $16. The retail? $4.99.
The fifth wine was a surprise. We had a near unanimous agreement that it was an ‘expensive’ wine, the 2004 Mt. Veder, Napa, Chateau Potelle. One taster said, ‘I would pay over $20 for this.’ Another said it was the ‘best of the evening’. ‘Bitter’ intro, but worth $15 at least added a third. A fourth soul agreed. One last voice, a fan of the Fronsac, said this wine tasted ‘powdered’. Like Kool-Aid, simply dump it into a glass of water. Retail: $24.99.
It is clear that a blind tasting exercise like the one described above, or that found in The Wine Trials 2010, ought to be a part of every wine enthusiast’s on-going education. Not only does it interfere with received commercial and critical opinion, but it makes short work of whatever expertise one may have felt they’re owed. What is interesting is the simplicity of the work. One need merely drink from a paper bag. And no one needs to feel disappointed. Tasting at cross purposes, finding mystery with the most modest of wines, it is a minor miracle that the human palate may draw distinctions from so small a sample. Five wines!
How strange is it that family and friends, first drawn together by a common purpose, a blind tasting, should nevertheless find themselves alone.
Admin
The Wine Trials 2010, by Robin Goldstein and Alexis Hershkowitsch (along with scores of others), is a curious book. At once rigorous and slippery, honest and evasive, it is precisely because of it’s structural ambiguity that it is a good place to initiate a discussion of what might be called the informal cultural anthropology of wine. And the discussion may most properly begin among small groups of wine enthusiasts tasting blind. This is the book’s great strength.
Robin Goldstein, whom I’ve never met, is perhaps best known for an interesting experiment (some folks used harsher language) he performed in 2008 involving the Wine Spectator’s (WS) ‘Award of Excellence’ program, the details about which this space has written. He created an entirely fictional restaurant on the internet, composed a wine list of WS ‘under-performers’, paid his $250 entrance fee and, voila!, the Award of Excellence was his. Equally importantly for Mr. Goldstein’s purposes (and ours) was the solicitation for advertisement space. Full details may be found on his website, Blind Taste. It was an amusing coup.
The Wine Trials 2010 takes elements of this project forward. First of all, it is important to stress that the tone of the book is a kind of hopeful skepticism, a forceful, yet playful insistence that though the consumer’s conscious freedom to taste is muted by three distinct cultural obstacles, they might yet escape through the practice of blind tasting. (And, of course, with the help of the wine recommendations in this book!) This is a book for adults interested in the ‘big picture’. It is meant to provoke thought. But that it also interferes with thought I hope to make clear.
The first of the three obstacles is the wine press, generalized under the titles Parker’s Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast. The second obstacle is the ‘placebo effect’, a universal feature of the human condition. The third obstacle, an equally universal feature, is cultural training whereby everyone is introduced from infancy into a specific gustatory regime. I shall briefly examine each in turn.
The Wine Press How is it that a $12 Domaine Ste. Michelle Cuvée Brut sparkler from Washington State is consistently preferred in blind tastings to a $150 Dom Pérignon? Or a $9 Beringer Founders’ Estate Cab to its close relative, the $120 Beringer Private Reserve Cab? Or a $6 Vinho Verde from Portugal to Cakebread’s $40 Chardonnay? Precisely because they were tasted blind. And the reverse, choosing the more expensive wine in the full light of day? In part, this is because of the distortions the wine press. Through well-publicized tastings by established critics, advertisement and a battery of lifestyle-enhancement triggers, the consumer comes to believe a higher price is correlated to quality. To see is to believe. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, the book argues. And it tries to show the reader why.
The Wine Trials 2010 tells us that four hundred and fifty “widely available” wines were initially selected, all under $15. As distinct from last year’s edition, this time around “We have accepted nominations from professionals in many different areas of the wine industry, from producers to sommeliers, importers to retailers.” It was from this pool that after multiple blind tastings among dozens and dozens of contributors, one hundred and fifty wines made the cut. Part Two of the book is an alphabetical compilation, with details and notes, of these wines. Now, what is surprising is that every one of the 150 wines “outscored much more expensive bottles in our brown-bag tasting.” It is surprising because of what the reader never learns :
1) The identity of the “more expensive bottles”. Indeed, very few expensive wines are mentioned in the book. Apart from the Dom Pérignon, Beringer and Cakebread, the only other wines touched on are Veuve Clicquot and a Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from Louis Latour. Were there others? What was the price spread? Were $20 bottles included? We just don’t know.
2 Neither is a definition of “expensive” provided. Is it $18, $25? (The least expensive of the wines mentioned comes in at $40.)
3) Lastly, though the Wine Spectator comes rightly under considerable fire for their very questionable methodology, readers are not informed whether the “expensive” wines were ever given especially high scores in that magazine.
These are important methodological faults of The Wine Trials 2010, in my view. Of course, the book’s principle argument is that value may be found at lower price points. I heartily agree. No one would argue otherwise, not in the real world. But I do not believe their case is properly made absent a full disclosure of the expensive wines’ identities, how the expensive were selected and how widely did the authors select. We do know that all wines had to be “widely available”. But that is the sole criterion, as near as I can tell.
The placebo effect The Wine Trials 2010 discusses very important developments in the field of Neuroscience concerning how it is that to believe something is true in fact physically alters one’s perception. The authors provide a fine, though limited bibliography for further reading. Recounting various historical and current experiments in which test subjects, from the sophisticated to the novice, were creatively mislead (shall we say), the book amply demonstrates the very real phenomenon of the placebo effect. In these experiments wine experts come to believe the same wine in different bottles, one expensive, one cheap, actually taste different; casual drinkers, when mis-informed that they are drinking a cheap wine said to be expensive, prefer the ‘expensive’, by significant statistical margins. New experiments are being formulated as I write, so rich is the field.
Perception and expectation do alter taste. About that there is no question. Mr. Goldstein calls this framing of experience “The taste of money”. This we know occurs. And it is a far deeper phenomenon than the casual drinker might be willing to admit. Or the authors themselves. Indeed, the clinical trials of new drugs are routinely abandoned because the pharmaceutical company is unable to show a statistically meaningful improvement in a patient over a placebo in blind trials.
Further, there is a large body of brilliant research on differing experiences of pain when a subject’s expectations are wildly distinct. Take, for example, a soldier shot on the battlefield. He is offered pain medication, but he refuses it, deferring to his fallen fellows. Why? With allowances made for specific details, it is because he knows he is going home; he knows he will see his kids and wife; he knows he will receive a hero’s welcome; he knows he will receive on-going medical care. He was wounded defending a cause. Clinical experience clearly shows the experience of pain will be attenuated.
Now contrast that series of expectations to the victim of a random shooting on the street. This poor soul has no expectation of proper, complete care; he does not know whether his employer will keep his job for him and whether, as a consequence, he will be able to pay the rent; or how he will provide for his family. He is the anonymous victim of a random crime. There is no ’cause’, just the brutal reality of the street. Again, clinical experience reveals a different experience of pain.
I’ve gone on this tangent because I think the authors of The Wine Trials 2010 grossly overstate the simplicity of consumers rising above ‘the placebo effect’. They provide what I would call a ’soft’ case. The research they cite, however methodologically flawed, still remains compelling. It is simply that neuroscience and anthropology, the hard research, provides stronger evidence of the persistence and durability of ‘the placebo effect’ than the authors appear to believe.
Cultural Training The Wine Trials 2010 offers some very valuable insight into modern wines, what they call a ‘globalized’ style. Recognizing the jeopardy much of the world’s wine diversity is in, they point to a plausible suspect. Robert Parker? No. For Parker is only the bearer of a cultural marker, a gustatory preference. The real culprit is sugar. From the book,
[...] the culprit for the style convergence might not be Parker himself, or his followers themselves; it might be the taste for sugar that he, and they, all acquired in childhood–a taste that an increasing percentage of the world’s children are now also acquiring. [....] Should we call Yellow Tail not ‘Parkerized,’ but rather ‘globalized’”?
I think there is something to this. And one might look no further than The Wine Trials 2010 list of wines itself for evidence of this increasingly important cultural factor. Sure enough, of the 150 wines selected a full 42 ‘Heavy New World reds’ (their category) made the cut in their blind tastings! Nearly a third, and by far the largest single grouping. Of course, they might argue that this is because the decisive factor for inclusion into the original 450 wines was that they be “widely” available. And Heavy New World red does not necessarily mean ‘globalized’. But it, nevertheless, begs the question. No discussion of this statistically significant result is entertained in the book.
And this takes us to a more difficult question about the value, you could even call it the philosophy, of blind tasting. Mr. Goldstein cites a lively discussion shared on Eric Asimov’s NY Times wine blog, The Pour, about the subject. Among the many topics touched on, Asimov insisted that “blind tastings eliminate knowledge and context that can be significant in judging a wine. [....] It is an almost anti-intellectual position. Obviously what’s in the glass matters. But the more knowledge you can bring to a wine, the better your understanding of that wine will be.”
In The Wine Trials 2010 Mr. Goldstein responds in a very curious, though similar, way. He writes, “Our descriptions do not rely solely on blind tasting notes. Without a doubt, a lot of the fun of wine is in all the stuff that’s not in the glass.” [emphasis in the original]
Now, I have not read all the original source material framing this exchange, but I will say that both gentlemen seem to agree that Knowledge, with a capital K, is extraneous to what’s in the glass. I couldn’t disagree more; for knowledge comes in many different forms. I would argue that viticultural and winemaking practice have a direct bearing on what’s in the glass. Whether biodynamic, organic, conventional, whether terroir-driven, practice and soil informs the wine. It is one thing to recognize it, it is quite another to claim, as Mr. Goldstein certainly does, that knowledge, this time with a small k, does not inform a wine.
Mr. Goldstein is equally dismissive of the notion that wine is meant to be consumed with food. Who would argue with what half the wine-drinking world holds to self-evident? Well, he erases entire libraries and cultures when he writes,
“It is true that information about your experience of a wine in the absence of food, or in a sequence of other wines, will not be perfectly relevant to a reader’s future experience of that same wine over a relaxing meal. But information about how the wine’s fruit character and tannins reacted with your next-door neighbor’s demi-glace might well be even less relevant”
Try telling that to a Spaniard! I guarantee that uttering such a thing will not get you invited into his family’s house.
It is almost as if he is claiming ‘knowledge’ of/about wine is limited to price, the eccentricities of the winemaker, label and prestige, only those elements that fall under the umbrella of wine marketing and ‘the placebo effect’. An astute student of socioeconomic folly does not make one a wine critic. Neither does he claim to be, to be sure. And as to that, it is a curious effect of this book that it leaves this reader with the impression that Mr. Goldstein does not himself drink wine. There is little passion for wine on the page. Intelligence, yes. I think he might be principally a creature of the behavioral sciences, perforce hamstrung by the multiple ways his freedom may be hijacked by subterranean cultural forces at work on us all. Or, perhaps, a touch of how the gynecologist might reflect upon the prospect of having sex. He’s just seen too much!
But I like the book, even though my point of view cannot find a home there. It is stuffed with ideas, too many to fairly discuss in a modest review. It forcefully puts forward a point of view, a series of challenges to a large part of the wine industry which deserve, no, demand to be heard. I like the book well enough to give Mr. Goldstein the last word.
“The aim of The Wine Trials–aside from seeking out good, widely available values under $15–is to question the institutional structures that govern the industry, to encourage people to learn their own palates through the exercise of tasting blind instead of trusting the numerical scores that Parker and the magazines assign. It is the economic power of these institutional structures that damages not only the wallet of the everyday consumer, but also the chances for a small, interesting, good-value producer–even one that makes a wine costing more than $15–to succeed on the store shelf or on the restaurant wine list.”
Please also see the spirited debate over at 1 Wine Dude’s site.
Admin
I’m not normally one to simply jump on the bandwagon of “topical” issues, but in the last few days news of a Sting has been rebounding though the ether and has popped up on several Blogs, Chat Forums and reference sites that I visit. Now the dust seems to be settling it could be a good time to take a relaxed overview of what actually happened!
The person at the centre of the story is Robin Goldstein – someone who seems to have a knack for attacking “The Establishment”, being restaurant reviewer at The Fearless Critic and author of the blind tasting book Wine Trials. On August 15th at the recent Portland meeting of the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) Goldstein and colleagues gave a presentation entitled “Do Expensive Wines Taste Better?” which seems to follow the topic of his book, the conclusions being “results indicate that both the prices of wines and wine recommendations by experts may be poor guides for non-expert wine consumers.” (I think this is actually more interesting than the main story, so some of you may want to just read the paper here and ignore the rest!).
Now to the good bit. Ahead of this presentation Goldstein apparently explained how he and an Italian colleague set up a sting on The Wine Spectator to obtain one of their Restaurant Awards of Excellence by submitting menu and Wine list information for a fictional establishment in Milan, Italy. Osteria L’Intrepido (Osteria is an Italian tavern or inn) duly received the award and provided Goldstein with the ammunition he needed to go further with this, on the same day as the Oregon meeting the details were posted on the “restaurant’s” website.
News of the scam broke on 19th August when Wines and Vines first ran the story on their website and then quickly the “Blogosphere” quickly picked up with Vinography, Uncorked, Dr Vino and even Jancis Robinson’s esteemed Purple Pages carried the news (possibly with an element of glee detected, since 2003 Jancis has been cynical of “the fact that there is an ‘entry fee’ for some lesser establishments may help to explain some pretty strange inclusions”).
On the Wine Forums WLTV (its members not known for their fondness of Wine Spectator) was first to post comment but soon the Spectator’s own forum was discussing the story with a mix of shock and internally directed anger. It wasn’t until late on the 20th that an official voice appeared in the form of Thomas Matthews, executive editor of the Spectator, which can be viewed here.
After Matthew’s letter the mood changed on the forums, with an immediate backlash against Goldstein for “dishonest journalism” and convenient omission of facts, although there was always an undercurrent of complaint against The Wine Spectator that never really went away. August 21st saw another set of blog postings, this time detailing the case for the defence – Steve Heimhoff (West Coast editor for the Wine Enthusiast) gave the most balanced view in his personal Blog while Mark Fisher of Uncorked was happy to simply highlight Matthew’s letter and invite comment (Mark has ruffled Spectator feathers in the past on this subject).
Now I’ve read and digested all the information several things spring to mind;
1) How quickly people seem to jump on bad news and carry it around the world, regardless of whether they may have only heard one side of the story. Also how vitriolic some of the comments are on the blogs and forum threads, against The Wine Spectator, Goldstein, and those who “dared” to attack or defend each of them – how quickly lines are drawn and polarisation occurs.
2) Goldstein’s reporting of the scam, and the subsequent rapid media attention, miss out some interesting facts that Matthew’s discloses in the Spectator response. Goldstein didn’t just send out $250 and receive an award, as is implied in most of the stories. This was carefully planned and executed (he worked with a colleague in Italy) and he set up fake reviews on the site ChowHound (since removed). Matthew’s states that the Wine List submitted contained 256 wines of which only 15 scored less than 80pts, “Overall, the wines came from many of Italy’s top producers, in a clear, accurate presentation.”
3) That it was no great surprise this had happened, the Spectator Awards have been cause for cynicism for years now, no matter how much Matthew’s tries to claim otherwise. It is clear that the Awards of Excellence have a relatively low reputation amongst the wine enthusiasts’ community (The WS & WLTV forum threads make that abundantly clear) and this isn’t going to help. No matter what tools may have been used to fool them there is clearly “…something rotten in the state of Denmark”.
So, although I’m in danger of re-hashing so much that has already been said over the last few days, what is my opinion?
To The Wine Spectator. Keep the $250 submission fee to present a restaurant for an award, I can imagine carrying out basic due diligence (hopefully improved after this story) still costs someone time and money, BUT tighten your standards a little and if a restaurant does get past Stage 1 then to actually receive the award you cover the costs of a ”mystery diner” to actually check out the place and give some real feedback to WS HQ – I doubt they’d be a shortage of volunteers on the WS Forums or even organising something with local newspapers in the town/city in question – you may lose some of the profit, but would gain some major credibility.
To Goldstein. The media was bound to sensationalise this story as soon as it was picked up, however by omitting pertinent facts on what you did to get the award and only sharing the juicy parts you haven’t helped. Sure, it’s great publicity for you and your book, but these Awards were an easy target and it would have been better to share all of the background right from the beginning.
We are already seeing a backlash in the wine community against the methods used in implementing the sting and this has obscured any point you were trying to make, leaving only a cheap publicity stunt visible. The comments section on the Osteria L’Intrepido website is in the high 80’s now, including several requests for the full wine list submitted, I trust you will offer some reply to some of the questions posed there?
To James Molesworth (Senior Editor at The Wine Spectator) who said “This is the problem with the ‘blogosphere’. It’s a lazy person’s journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic…”.
Just because everyone that had gone to press with the story at the time was coming down hard on the Spectator doesn’t justify use of such crass generalisation – there are many of us out here in the “blogosphere” that do plenty of research, look a little closer to home for some of the harshest criticisms. I hope that the more balanced reporting in the last few days has improved your obviously low opinion of our community.
There may be more yet to come out of this spectacle, but I’m going back to drink and write about some wine.
Greybeard.
Sometimes on a hot afternoon a rosé or sharp Albariño just won’t cut it. With the weather we’ve had here in Santa Cruz, temperatures sure to spike over the weekend, I often turn to a cold beer to slake a thirst satisfied no other way. But what if I want those moments to be more than merely satisfied? What if I want exhilaration? If I only had a guide…. Well, I am happy to report that they are at it again, those Fearless Critics. Fresh off their groundbreaking The Wine Trials, this ever-widening circle of drinking friends has now returned with yet another very helpful guide, The Beer Trials. This time they’ve willingly sacrificed weeks of their lives for the humble beer drinker. And I am glad they did. What a world of taste and variety I have been missing!
