TDG: Wine Camp: 100 Point Perfection?

[badthings]

I have my own scoring system that I encourage my customers to consider: Would you rather have one bottle of that, two of those, or five of these?

revolutionary!

(referring to your name, not your point). welcome. Henceforth, I am going to use your scoring system exclusively.

[John Whiting]

I am convinced that context is at least half of our appreciation of food and wine.

Exactly! And context includes not only the ambiance but also the relationship of the elements of the meal with each other -- including, of course, how the food and the wine bring out each other's qualities.

A "wine tasting" combines the worst aspects of an orgy and a gang-bang.

[Gracchus]

Picking up where you left off, John, are you familiar with Terry Theise? The passionate madman and importer of small estate German wines and grower-made (RC) Champagnes? He has many inspired things to say about wine and the trade, but I especially love his remarks on Tasting vs. Drinking:

" I really do not enjoy sitting in some chillingly well-lighted room in a row with many other people as if we were taking the written segment of a driver’s test, with ten glasses in geometric patterns on the table in front

of me, little bitty bits of wine in each glass, sippin’ and spittin’ and combing my mind for adjectives. I don’t enjoy it because I think it’s a waste of wine, and even worse it is a sin against the spirit of wine, and I would just

as soon not participate.

Give me any one or two of those mature vintages, along with a mellow evening, a rack of lamb, and the company of people I’m fond of, and I am a very happy man. A great old wine is such a gift of providence that

it begs to be savored, to soak into your heart. Sitting in some creepy banquet room and “tasting” fifty old wines not only dilutes the aesthetic experience, it’s a macho snub of the nose to the angels.

Apart from which I respect the hard work of the vintner. If he knew his/her wine would end up, fifty years later, being opened in a “tasting” alongside forty nine other wines for a bunch of earnestly scribbling geeks,

he’d probably hurl a grenade at the winery and run away sobbing. I have enough on my poor conscience without contributing to that."

[Mark Sommelier]

Great quote, Gracchus. Terry is a close personal friend of mine. I look forward each year to his new catalogues of his German, Austrian and Champagne estates because they are full of such interesting and hysterical musings, anecdotes and outright bad jokes. The poor man recently suffered through a guest appearance on Mark Squire's bulletin board. I don't think he'll ever be the same........

[winebill]

Found this on Berry Bros, Website.........

Hugh Johnson Criticises Jilly & Oz - 15-Oct-2003

Britain's bestselling wine writer Hugh Johnson has accused Jilly Goolden and Oz Clarke, of "attracting ridicule" to the beloved subject of his expertise. Johnson, whose annual Pocket Wine Book sells millions, said that his colleagues often sound as if they are talking about fruit salad rather than describing bottles of wine. "Jilly and Oz are wonderfully entertaining," Johnson, president of the 243-member Circle of Wine Writers, told an audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature. He said that there was no harm in that, but that it did attract a degree of ridicule.

"I don't really want my favourite subject to be ridiculed. There is a problem when these people list all these flavours and aromas they think they have detected. It then gets on to the label of the bottle and what you are looking at appears to be a recipe for fruit salad." He added: "That is not what a wine is like. It is not appley or blackcurranty. People don't sniff a rose and say, `Oh yes, pineapple, cucumber'. It smells like a rose — and a bottle of wine smells like wine. Too much of this borrowing of terms to describe wines really doesn't help."

[Jinmyo]

Craig, I'm.. I'm not sure, but... I think I've learned some things about wine I might actually remember.

Very nice article.