Who do you trust? What makes you pull the trigger on wine buys?
Gary Vaynerchuk, Poll, Robert Parker, trust, Wilfred Wong, wine buying habits, Wine Spectator
We’ve been thinking about this a lot. Forget the whole discussion of who’s a critic and who’s not. What matters is who you trust. We all have various methods for making purchases of all sizes, and wine is so subjective, so variable, that a guide you trust in navigating this world is truly invaluable.
We realize that you might have several go-to sources when deciding whether to buy a particular bottle, but for the sake of simplicity, please select the ONE that is most likely to seal the deal in your wine purchases. As always, your participation and comments are much appreciated.
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get your wine on
2005 Amavi Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, Walla Walla
We’re always looking for reasonably priced Cabs, and while this is creeping up there in price, $28 is still more than reasonable for what you get. Concentration of black fruit, some peppery spice, a hint of structure and layers of complexity. While labeled a Cab, this is more a blend, with Cab coming in at 76% and Merlot, Syrah and Malbec making up the balance. I want some Walla Walla
2006 Curran Gewurztraminer, Santa Ynez Valley
We got the chance to try the Curran Gewurztraminer at a winemaker dinner we attended in February, with Kris Curran and Bruno d’Alphonso. We’ve been bugging our sales rep for this wine ever since, and are thrilled that Curran has finally released a tiny amount to retailers. Yay! A perfect wine for the summer.Get some Gewurz for $29.99
2003 Rocca Family Cabernet Sauvignon, Yountville
We heard that Gary V. reviewed the 2004 yesterday and loved it. We loved that wine too, but we jumped at the chance to get the 2003 which we feel is nearly as good, since it’s a bargain at under $50 a bottle. Stellar juice from Celia Masyczek, the winemaker of Scarecrow, for a fraction of the price.2003 Rocca, please!
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freshly pressed
Interview with Wannabe Wino (aka Sonadora…aka Megan):
As we often do when we have a new bloggerpack to shill, we’ve interviewed the blogger in question. Without further ado, the blogger known as Wannabe Wino — our questions are in bold, her answers are not:
When and why did you first decide to plunge into the crazy world of wine blogging? How do you fit it into your work day?
I really hated my first job. At some point in my 8 months of working there, well, really within the first 2 months, I literally reached the very last page of the internet. I swear it exists. Also, because they had eliminated my position at work prior to me even officially arriving, they literally had nothing for me to do, no one talked to me, it was pretty much my own living hell. So the blog was born of sheer and utter boredom and the realization, after reading every last thing about wine on the internet, that no one was talking about the wines I was drinking. You seem to have incredible endurance as well as devotion when it comes to wine drinking (and blogging, of course!). Do you and Matt really open a bottle nearly every night? Who chooses what to drink of the two of you?
We take the ocassional hiatus, but on an average week 5-7 bottles get opened in our house. This week we’re on a hiatus, but it’s almost Friday. We take turns picking what to drink, but generally ask the other one if they would prefer a red or white or base it on what we’re eating for dinner.
I’m finding more trouble fitting blogging into my day-to-day life recently. I carpool to work with Matt and his hours have increased again as of late, limiting my non-content-filtered internet hours even more. I usually write my posts fresh every morning and post them right then. I try to devote time on Saturdays to routine maintainence and such. The hardest thing for me is interacting with other blogs since they are blocked at work, and I’m literally awake for all of 2 hours when we get home.
Also, do you think about what you’re eating first, and pair that with wine, or what you’re drinking first, and then pair that with food? What’s your favorite food and wine pairing of late?
90% of the time I pick the food first. We work fairly long hours, so I tend to only be able to get to the store once a week. Meals are planned on a weekly basis, usually based off what’s on sale and what looks fresh when I get to the store. At the moment I’m really digging Sauvignon Blanc with parmesan baked tilapia.
Besides Cali wines, which you seem to love (and we love you for that), have you discovered any part of the world or wine region that you’re becoming as interested in or excited about? Or are you a California girl now and forever?
I always like a wide variety of wines from lots of different places, but California wines hold a special place in my heart, having been my first real introduction to how great wine can be. Some other perennial favorites are Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa, and last winter Italian reds were calling my name. I expect Italy will start to play a bigger roll in my wine drinking in the future.
What’s the worst bottle of wine you’ve ever had? Best?
Yellow Tail Riesling was by far the worst “wine” I’ve ever had. The stuff tasted like melted plastic flowers doused in chemicals. It was foul. The best? Now that’s a toughie. I’ve had so many great wines and I just can’t choose one.
Any wine travel planned for the coming year? If you could go anywhere in the wine world, where would it be?
Well, I hope to be able to go to the Wine Blogger Conference in Sonoma this fall…other than that, we’ll probably take our annual trek to CA around Easter. No international travel for the time begin, the dollar sucks. And, as usual, we like to go out to the local VA vineyards on the weekends.
Interview with Wannabe Wino (aka Sonadora…aka Megan)
Price Check: 2005 Protocolo Tinto and 2006 Bodegas Borsao Campo de Borja Red
Coming Soon: The Great Whatsit!
wine jargon
Frizzante
From Wikipedia: Frizzante is an Italian wine term term for semi-sparkling wine (as opposed to Spumante, which is generally used for fully sparkling wines). Frizzante wines generally owe their bubbles to a partial secondary fermentation in tank. You might notice a light fizz or tingly sensation on the tongue with a Frizzante wine, compared to the more carbonated sensation that more fully sparkling wines yield.
Scorekage
Okay, so we made up this word yesterday after a great restaurant experience. We brought a bottle of wine with us, expecting to pay a corkage fee. But the restaurant either forgot to charge us the $15, or decided to be nice to us. We scored! Hence, “scorekage” has entered our lexicon. This can also refer to BYO friendly restaurants that don’t charge for corkage under any circumstances.
grapewise
domaine547 In the News: Los Angeles Business Journal
We’re thrilled to be mentioned in this week’s Los Angeles Business Journal! Check us out either on the LABJ site, or click for the excerpt after the bump.
Blogs to check out: Noble Pig
We’re suckers for food sites with great photography. But there’s a lot more going on at Noble Pig, which is why we read it religiously these days. In addition to great recipes with the aforementioned photographs, the site boasts wine tasting notes (with a shopping list handy via the sidebar), and observational pieces about everyday life outside of the culinary.
domaine547 In the News: Los Angeles Business Journal
Blogs to check out: Noble Pig
Hello Wine blog from Amy Christine
April 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Robert Parker for me. I’ve been following him for years and his palate is more aligned with mine than anyone else. I enjoy what Gary V does, but his palate is so far off from mine that I have to closely pay attention to what he says about a wine to be sure if it is something I might like.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Who do I trust? hmm… I’ll trust anyone once. I don’t put any more weight on one person’s recommendation over another’s except where I know I have liked an individual’s past recommendations. When it comes to Robert Parker, I do use them as a guide in somewhat of an inverse fashion: If RP rated less than 90 then I consider buying, if RP rated 90 or higher I tend to steer clear.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Boy how I wish everyone was like Taster B and avoided wines highly rated by Parker! It would surely make the wines I like much easier to find and probably less expensive to boot!
April 15th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I voted other but it really should be others … first off - Steve Tanzer - followed by MANY Vayniacs, my LWS owner and, of course, myself. I do trust GV but sometimes our pal’s don’t mesh.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I can’t cast my vote becuase domaine547 isn’t listed (!?!?
April 15th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
NY Pete, I forgot about Tanzer. Whoops!
Pamela, I lump myself into the Local Wine Store category, even though d547 is virtual. But thanks for your vote of confidence!
Taster B and Winestein, I think you’re a match made in heaven
April 15th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I would (of course) have to go for the “A friend I trust” but adding also some online “friends”. That means I have to include my real friends but also wine bloggers I trust.
Thankfully now we can easily have access to much bigger number of opinions than ever. We just have to choose who to trust and follow.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Great poll. I even wrote a post about my answer: http://indiscriminateideas.blogspot.com/2008/02/three-steps-to-picking-bottle-of-wine.html
April 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Jeff, I remember that post and loved it. I should have linked to it here…so sorry!
Andre, thanks for commenting. I think what you guys are doing is really interesting, and seeing as cellartracker gets a high ranking here, I think that bodes well for younger wine communities like Adegga. Can’t wait to see how this all unfolds, but clearly there are changes happening as to how we all get our information and make purchase decisions. Very very interesting!
April 16th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
my school of thought about wine “raters” is similar to Taster B’s in that I trust someone at least once. In starting into my wine geekdom I learned which wine raters palates I most closely resembled and then went from there. There is obviously a difference when Spectator gives a wine a 90+ and Enthusiast gives it a 78. These days I trust my palate, bloggers and the guys at my local wine shop who know what I enjoy most in a wine. I have only had a couple of the wines that Gary V has thought were bomber because some of that juice he pours is pretty pricey and half of ‘em aren’t distributed directly to Virginia and I am usually to cheap to pay for shipping. haha But on the whole our palates seem to match up.
Wow - that was a long answer.
cheers
John
April 16th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Wow, this is pretty shocking, and very intriguing.
With 42 votes in, critics (GV, RP and WS included) are receiving a mere 19% of the votes.
69% go to peer/personal recommendations (LWS included here, with a huge showing by Cellartracker and a good showing for bloggers as well).
12% are uncategorized within the “other” designation.
While this is clearly a poll that is being answered by people already using the interwebs to do wine research (hence, a propensity for cellartracker, bloggers, etc.), it still hints at a larger trend.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I think the advantage to Cellartracker (which I voted for, by the way, no offense!) is that you generally have several opinions on the wine and hopefully from some fairly knowledgeable people (since they were serious enough to start using Cellartracker in the first place). You can get an idea as to the consensus on a wine, much in the same way you can by reading customer reviews on Amazon.com, or computer-related reviews on Newegg. And you can kind of weed out the stupid people in the reviews (like the ones who review a GPS and complain because it told them to turn in the middle of a block into a building and they did so and smashed their car).
April 16th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I’m a CellarTracker and friends/local stores gal myself, although if it’s a really unusual bottle I do occasionally have to resort to WS I will admit. But I tend to gravitate more towards the lower scored wines, like TasterB. It it’s got an 87 in Wine Spectator, I usually like it a lot!
April 16th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
First off, kudos on the Dirty Dancing reference. That just really made my day.
Obviously, I have a biased outlook here - I like my tool
But I will say that I am not surprised that the most votes go to friends, peers and on-line. I think this is true generally, not just a fluke of your reader-traits. Most of my friends do not know much about wine. And almost none of them take the time to read WS or any other review or online blogs. They generally get suggestions from other friends.
And for the big review sources, it is difficult to get a feeling for how your palate matches the reviewer’s palate. Most of the reviews are done by many different people, even within one shop like Spectator or Parker. If you cannot match your palate to theirs, what good is their review in the end?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
[…] is. There was overwhelming response to our poll on what you use to guide your wine purchases, with Cellartracker coming in a strong 3rd with 12% of the vote. That leads us to believe that many of you probably enter notes into […]
May 16th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Jill - All the research I’ve done pointed to ‘trusted recommendations’ coming top. Thats usually a friend, but in a lot of cases the guy who runs the local wine store becomes a friend. For those that have developed trust with particular critics that fills that demand, and if someone cant get a recommendation from a trusted source, we found that nothing beat a slew of reviews from “people like me”, which would explain CT’s strong showing