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California Winemakers May Routinely Use Formulas To Achieve Certain Scores
During one of my many recent Left Coast jaunts, I had a rather disturbing conversation with a California winemaker over dinner. It’s a conversation that haunted me for weeks afterward, until I could catch up with that particular winemaker (who needs to remain anonymous for…
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Does The Wisdom Of The Crowd Provide Better Wine Reviews Than The Experts?
[ WARNING: following is one of my lengthy diatribes. If you’re the lazy and impatient busy type, skip to the summary! ] Do you believe that fine wines are multi-faceted? What I mean is, do fine wines change over time, present different shades and complexities…
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What We Learned From The Fulvio Bressan Debacle
Friuli winemaker Fulvio Bressan’s racially-charged political comments about Cécile Kyenge, Italy’s first African-Italian government minister (you can read the translation if you’re up for it, but fair warning: it will most likely disgust you) just caused a large crap-storm in the wine world. In my…
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Blinding You With Wine Evaluation Science! (VineSleuth Data Show That Expert Wine Tasters Are Actually Consistent)
Piling onto so-called expert wine evaluators has become all the rage lately. Remember when the California State Fair commercial wine competition judges got steamrolled (again) by data showing that blind tasting medals are awarded in a random distribution? So expert wine evaluation is all just…
