The wine world probably won’t miss the Summer of `08. That’s because the Summer of `08 seems like wine’s Season of Discontent. A fictitious restaurant won an Award of Excellence from long-running wine institution Wine Spectator; Wine Spectator’s response, posted in their on-line forums rather than through a PR effort, showed a darker side of…
An Open Letter to (Busty) California Winemakers
To Whom It May Concern: I’ve just polished off another 1/2 of a bottle of your tasty, 14.5% abv wines… in fact, I’m pretty sure that even though it said 14.5% on the elegant bottle, it was probably closer to 15.2%. Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me if I stray off topic or get a…
Tales of the Purple Monkey: Bye-Bye Bush
This way-cool special edition of Tales of the Purple Monkey has Plumboo and I not tasting or reviewing any wine whatsoever! Participating as we do in the ongoing monthly wine blogger carnival Wine Blogging Wednesday, the Purple Monkey and I usually take part via a theme-based wine review. Instead, this election-year-inspired September WBW theme (hosted…
Dude, Where Are The Ratings?
Simple – there aren’t any. Next question. Ok, well maybe it’s not that simple, actually. Astute 1WineDude.com readers have pointed out that I have yet to clearly explain my wine rating system; or, more accurately, my lack of a wine rating system. So… I will try to explain it but bear with me, because while…