1 Wine Dude
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Code of Ethics

For the sake of transparency, I’ve outlined my personal blogging code of conduct / ethics below. I welcome any questions, concerns, or comments you may have about these – the bottom line in all of this is that I am here in the blogosphere to be as fair and genuine as possible in what I write.

I am not a journalist by education or by trade. I am not directly affiliated with any of the companies or websites linked on this blog, apart from advertisers / affiliate programs who (obviously) pay me in some way/shape/form to be listed in the sidebar and affiliate links that help you find wine or products mentioned here (those have no influence on the critical aspects of the site – I get the same amount if you click on a link to a wine I pan or praise).

For the purposes of creating 1WineDude.com content, I do not work in a paid capacity for/with any wine shops, wine retailers, wine stores, winemakers, or wineries. Therefore, I consider myself an independent source of wine information, and I choose what I what to write about, what I say about each topic, and when it gets published.

I reserve the right to refuse to review any wine that is sent to me for the purpose of a review on this blog. If a winery or distributor sends me a wine, and I do decide to review it, I review it objectively. That doesn’t mean I am without subjective taste preferences – it means that I might give it a bad review if I find the wine to be of poor quality.

Similarly, I’m not opposed to junkets, dinners for wine tastings, events, or lodging at/by wineries – but I won’t accept them if they come with any conditions, and if I take part in them I reserve the right to write objectively about the junket and its wines (or possibly not to write about it at all… ah, you get the idea…).

As a general rule, I do NOT taste & review wines blind. This is because I don’t know anyone in the normal world who drinks their wines blind with dinner.

Unless otherwise stated, every product and/or wine reviewed on 1WineDude.com is a sample provided to me (though never in exchange for coverage or promotion on this website).  I do not accept offers for sponsored content here on 1WineDude.com.

I make no claims or guarantees whatsoever as to whether or not this blog and its contents will entertain/educate/enlighten/offend/exacerbate you, incite riots, contribute to the fall of Communism, make the roads safe for cyclists, or give you the ability to produce useful mechanized farm equipment from pieces of clay and raw hemp.

I do hope it will help you to enhance your appreciation of wine, however!

I want to encourage lively, respectful and fun debate in this blog.  In fact, this thing is really boring without YOUR input – so feel free to contribute often.  We need to keep it clean, though, so any comments that appear to fall into the following categories will be deleted (repeat offenses will get you booted from leaving comments altogether):

  • Spam (duh)
  • Comments that violate any U.S. law
  • Obscene or threatening language, or attacks/insults that are personal in nature this is a site for adults, and colorful language is okay, but don’t take things too far)
  • Blatant product promotion
  • Intellectual property right violations (or potential violations)
  • Private information / data published without prior consent
  • Comments that are blatantly off topic or that link to off-topic material

Also, by leaving a comment on any post on this website, you accept that you totally rock, acknowledge that you possess excessive amounts of intelligence and good looks, and agree not to act like a douchebag.

I do not provide e-mail addresses or other information that may be collected on 1WineDude.com (through the contact form or through the comments engine) to any third parties; they are stored only in the password-protected systems of my E-mail program and the blogging platform (WordPress), primarily because I’ve got no idea how to prevent those systems from storing them. Demographics and other information is provided to potential advertisers only in the aggregate (e.g., “X% of readers live in the U.S.”), and no specific individual information is ever used for that purpose. Advertisers may be placing and reading cookies on users browsers, or using web beacons or similar technology to collect information in the course of Advertising being served on 1WineDude.com (if you aren’t down with that, there are plenty of browser add-ons out there that, once installed, can help mitigate/prevent that from happening for your browser). WordPress cookies are employed by this website because, well, it’s running on WordPress. Please refer to the Privacy Policy for additional details.

This is a standard disclaimer on the advertising front: I allow third party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit this site. These companies may use non-personally identifiable information (e.g. click stream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you. These companies typically use a cookie or third party web beacon to collect this information. To learn more about this behavioral advertising practice visit the NAI at http://www.networkadvertising.org.  To opt-out of this type of advertising, you can visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices. Generally, I don’t control the advertising until after-the-fact, and I don’t accept advertising from individual wine brands (so if you see any, it’s because Google served it up and I’ve yet to filter it out!).