How Wines are Selected & Reviewed on Winewaves
- All wines are purchased in retail stores with my own funds.
- I follow a “random walk” methodology. The aspects that influence my purchase decisions include the variety or blend, my mood, the label graphics, the way it is displayed in the store, the price, the “buzz” about it, its origins, its reputation (if it is familiar to me), its lack of reputation (if it is new to me), word of mouth, others’ recommendations, personal sales pitches, and even the shape of the bottle, appearance in the bottle, alcohol content, vintage and closure type.
- Winewaves takes a visual approach, and as such, I do not taste “blind”, but rather “identified”, knowing the context of what each wine is trying to be. Like a dog show, I’m looking for wines that are visually attractive and show well in all aspects when compared with their “breed standard”.
- I won’t review a wine based on one taste. Only after working my way through one or more bottles over time, sometimes with food, will I form an opinion. This might be termed an “extended use” evaluation.
- When I’m not fond of a wine, I let it pass. You won’t find negative reviews on Winewaves. If you want to know about a wine I may have tried and didn’t like, email me. Privately I’ll inform you of why that wine didn’t work for me.
- If you go back to Winewaves posts from mid-2005, you may notice I gave numerical ratings for a while. I believe this can be done but decided to leave that to the serious wine gurus.
- The only scale I use is a three level value rating: outstanding value, excellent value and very nice value. These are all very much recommended. I might assign a “very nice value” to a $40+ wine that is actually of higher quality than a lower priced wine that gets an “outstanding value”, due to its high price.
- The closure type also comes into play. Whether the wine has a real cork, synthetic “neocork”, plastic “cork”, screw cap, or glass stopper influences my opinion about a wine and its value. Other things being equal I prefer screw caps because they are cost effective and have little or no effect on the wine in the bottle once it has left the tank or barrel in the winery. Corks may be romantic but one in twenty will ruin the wine with some degree of a nasty “moldy or damp basement” smell. That added risk carries with it a cost that must be accounted for in the value equation. When a bottle is off, or “corked” as it is often referred to, I will try another bottle and not mention the bad bottle.
- Alcohol content is always noted.
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