The biggest problem with wine scores is that they evaluate the obvious: how a wine tastes. What really matters is how interesting the wine makes your dining companion. Now that would be worth rating. Indeed, you have to wonder why we rate wine in the first place. After all, it is just a drink. We certainly don’t rate orange juice or lemonade; we don’t have beef shank critics talking about the region from which the cows hailed or syndicated cabbage columnists talking about how the September rainfall affected the leaf set. Perhaps this scrutiny is a testament to the way […]
Wine Articles
Drinking the Numbers: What’s Your Wine Score?
Continued from Part 1 of Wine Ratings In 2001, Robinson started using a 20-point scale in response, she told me in an interview, to her readers’ request for scores. But only on her web site: her books are “point-free zones” as is her Financial Times column. “The 100-point scores don’t mean much to us in Europe,” she observes. “Points will never be as emotive on this side of the Atlantic. Traditionally, if scores were used here at all, it was simply to achieve consensus on a tasting panel.” She also believes that the most useful assessment of wine comes from […]
Pairing Wine and Seafood, Shellfish and Steak with Sommelier Allison Vidug
Allison Vidug, sommelier at the Shore Club in Toronto, shares her tips on pairing wine with fresh seafood and shellfish, as well as great cuts of juicy steak. Tell us about the wine list at The Shore Club. Since I took over the wine program, my focus has been on creating a classic list with wines that suit the menu. The Shore Club’s menu is all about simplicity and quality of ingredients used in steak and seafood dishes. The wine list will include classics from the Old World, New World and, great Canadian wines — which I am most excited […]
Can You Judge a Wine by its Label?
Continued from Part 1 of Reading Wine Labels It’s 5 p.m. on Friday—the dinner party is in two hours and you’re standing in the middle of the liquor store. In front of you are thousands of bottles of wine. Should you consider only wines over $15 so your host won’t think you’re cheap? Do you grab the bottle with the small furry animals on the label or will the guests think you live inside a Disney movie? Should you go for the wine with the cheeky name for a laugh or might someone be offended? If you’re not […]
Reserve Wine Labels and Other Extra Special Meaningless Terms
Continued from Part 2 of Reading Wine Labels There’s nothing like having to buy wine at the last minute to take to a friend’s house to cause a panic attack. No other consumable is put on the table in its original package. At social gatherings, the wine label is like a blinking billboard telling your guests exactly what you think of them and of yourself. So that piece of paper affixed to the front of the bottle is all you have to go on. In the quaint old days, merchants simply wrote on the label what was in the bottle. […]
Message on a Bottle: Art on Wine Labels
Most people wouldn’t dream of stacking their art collection in a damp, dark basement. But wine lovers aren’t like most people—and their art isn’t like most art: it’s Post-It-Note-sized and glued to bottles. Wineries today are not only perfecting the art of making wine, but also the art on the wine: they’re creating works of miniature art on bottle labels, sometimes painted by famous artists. This Novello label above (and at the series at the very top) was created by Toronto designer Daryl Woods of Public Image Design. The marriage of wine and art is as old […]
Can You Judge a Wine by its Label? It’s an Art
Continued from Part 1 of Wine Label Art In an ocean of wine, the label is the siren song that says, “Take me home with you.” For many of us, buying wine is an exercise in shallowness: we think pretty pictures must mean good wine. We find fluffy creatures endearing. We believe the winery actually used those glistening grapes. We long to share that pastoral landscape or partake of château life. Like most marketing, wine labels are intensely aspirational. (That’s probably why we have yet to see one featuring someone passed out on the floor.) But it wasn’t […]
Design on Wine: How Much Does a Wine Label Influence You?
Continued from Part 2 of Wine Label Art That’s not a bad deal when you consider that the latest vintage retails for about $600 a bottle, and increases with maturity. Many other wineries around the world have engaged artists to design their labels, including several from Canada, most notably Hillebrand Winery Estates and Colaneri Estate Winery in Niagara, and Calona Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley. Stylistically these images range from the traditional (château on a hilltop) to impressionist (sun-dappled pickers in a field) to modern (bold contrasting colors, strong lines). Other elements, such as embossed or gold-coated printed […]
Are Wine Labels by Famous Painters a Work of Art?
Continued from Part 3 of Wine Label Art And while it may not be ironic that you can buy the print of the label more easily than you can the wine itself, it certainly is a paraducks. Perhaps Kenwood Vineyards, of Sonoma, California, wished it had gone with an inoffensive iguana for the 1975 label. Over the years, Kenwood (dubbed the “Mouton of America”) has commissioned more than thirty artists to produce label images, including Pablo Picasso, Henry Miller, Sam Francis, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Wayne Thiebaud and Jim Dine. But the very first label it proposed for its Artist […]
Some Like It Hot: Do You Like High Alcohol in Wine?
My head pounds. My lips burn. My teeth sting. How could I have been so naïve? When the invitation arrived for “a tasting of one hundred blockbuster reds from the new vintage,” I was pleased, even a bit excited. Now I feel as though I’ve spent two hours with a drill-crazed dentist who thinks anaesthetic is for wimps. At this tasting, five local importers are showcasing their wines to a handful of writers. The room is thick with the sweet smell of alcohol. On a long table in front of me are 65 bottles of powerhouse Australian shiraz. The next […]
