Talk:Commandaria

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	Wine Portal Commandaria is part of WikiProject Wine, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of wines, grapes, wine producers and wine growing regions. Please work to improve this article, or visit our project page where you can join the project and find other ways of helping.
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Commandaria (reviewed version) has been listed as a good article under the good-article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a review.

Thanks for the great Commandaria article. I'm a little confused by what is meant by the "oldest named wine". My Oxford Companion to Wine says that Commandaria may be the oldest continuously produced wine, but there are many wines older than it that had names, although none exist today. Just curious which one you meant. Wnissen 17:48 13 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Thanks! Being Greek, seeing a Cypriot wine at the liquor store caught my eye, so I bought a bottle and noticed the claim of "oldest named wine" on it, so did some more research to find out its history. I believe their claim (one found on many sites on the web as well) is that it is the oldest named wine that is still produced, not that it's the first wine ever to have been given a name. Perhaps there's a better way of phrasing that?

-- Delirium 04:28 14 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Contents 1 Vandalism 2 Xynisteri 3 Re-Formatting? 4 Good article nomination

[edit] Vandalism

I am a Cypriot and home-produce Commandaria or Commanderia(as I believe it should be). I might be wrong but the name I believe comes from the French commanderie and should be spelled commanderia. If I am wrong I apologise for editing this article, but I thought this is what Wikipedia is about. Doing some more research, Gran Commandarie was actually called Gran Commanderie, and therefore Commanderia is the proper name for the wine. Some producers name it Commandaria but it is probably wrong. Some users are too narrow minded to accept any other opinion, obviously. I would also like to complain about a user who called me a vandal for pointing this out. I find that this behaviour deters other users from contributing to this project.

I wouldnt call it vandalism. Spelling is notoriously variable throught history. Commandaria seems to me to be the most common spelling, so I would leave it like that, but you are welcome to add a note about variation etc. Justinc 09:30, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Hello, I am the user who thought the spelling change was vandalism. Sorry about that, I didn't realize that there was a question as to the spelling. The convention on the Wikipedia is to use the best-known English-language term, otherwise we would be changing all the references to Koymanδaρia, which would totally confuse everybody. The two most authoritative wine books I have, the Oxford Companion and the World Atlas of Wine, both use Commandaria, but then again they are both British. The latter even has a small picture of an admittedly hokey-looking label that uses the Commandaria spelling. Plus there are twice as many hits on Google for "commandaria wine" versus "commanderia wine," and a Google image search for commanderia turns up no pictures of bottles with Commanderia on the label. I'm certainly willing to use the "e" spelling if that's what's used in English, but I'm afraid I don't see any sources doing so. I apologize for thinking you were a vandal, and for using that word in the description. However, the worst sort of vandals on Wikipedia are the ones who change a single character in such a way that no one notices, causing an error that takes sharp eyes to fix. Since only the first appearance was changed the first time around, it really seemed that it was a deliberate error - spelling consistency is most important when there are several variants. I see that you later changed all occurences consistently, which is a good thing to do; in general one should also move the page to the correct title. I hope you will continue to contribute to the Wikipedia. Wnissen 13:48, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I am the user who likes the "e" version again. I understand your point now. I was just disturbed because I spend a lot of time in the Wikipedia pages (reading mostly) and the thought of being called a vandal in a place I really appreciate was frightening. I therefore apologise if I overreacted. On the spelling issue, I agree that most people spell it with an a but since the word came from the French Lusignan regiment and given that the word in French is commanderie I strongly believe it should be so. Actually about 1/3 of references to the name use the "e".Maybe then it would be best to add both spellings here?Also,Wnissen, I understand you are a wine lover.I once tasted a wine that I could not find ever since.I asked and was told it is rarely produced some years only in France.It was called Chateau la Ram. I would appreciate any advice on this.neoph1 20:16, 1 August 2005 (GMT+2)

I see you have made quite a few more edits to various pages; on behalf of the Wikipedia, thanks. The wine you are thinking of may be Château La Rame, which is a wine similar to Sauternes though not produced there. Their reserve is only made in good vintages. Google produces a number of hits, including this brief overview: [1] Wnissen 23:16, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

The 'a' version seems to make much more sense to me, because it is the name under which it's universally sold. There are two brands available at my local wine shop, both spelled "Commandaria". This also appears to be the dominant usage when googling. Nonetheless, I'm changing the intro to mention both variants. --Delirium 06:31, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for changing that. Wnissen 13:30, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xynisteri

To my knowledge Xynisteri is a variety of white grapes, hence the deletion of red from the text. StephP 17:42, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re-Formatting?

This article has now grown considerably and I propose it is re-paragraphed into a more manageable/readable format, rather than just allowing it to grow as one big block. I have looked around and unfortunately, even within WikiProject_Wine [2] there does not seem to be a consensus (or even a suggestion) as to the formatting of such articles. No wander no wine articles have any star ratings… Similar wines such as Marsala (wine), Sherry, Port and Madeira all seem to follow their own (home made) paragraphing. Anyway, as a start, I propose the article gets broken down into:

1. History
2. Production
3. Authentication
4. References

Any thoughts anyone?!Georgeg 00:00, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, the wine project is still in its infancy and I don't think there has been any concentrated effort to develop a format style. For a wine style, I think your format is a nice one (though I would clarify what you are going at with "authentication"). For a varietal style, I would insert a Geography/Climate section and follow it with Production and then History, etc. Agne 00:13, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for your message and suggestion. I am not involved in the Wikiproject wine, however I do think that a standardised article structure is vital for the project to work. Apart from making article visually more pleasing and easier to navigate, it allows inexperienced or transient editors to slot info into the right places. A good example is the respective Airports project [3]. Georgeg 00:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

In fact having just had a look at the wine project pages again, the above is not even in the list of goals.Georgeg 00:39, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Well a project is only the sum of its parts and I would encourage you to consider joining. You are quite right about the benefits of standardization and your help in developing a working format would be very appreciated. Agne 00:40, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, thanks for the invite, but you might have noticed the timing of my wiki-contributions are at best, erratic (due to work damn it). I’d rather not commit and be a bystander. Back to the point here though, by Authentication I meant the criteria for meeting DOC. And within that I would have included the geography of the region (in this case the mentioned area and villages in the article). But I guess you might be right, geography could form its own paragraph. Georgeg 01:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the majority of any projects membership tend to be "sign up bystanders" but any contribution to our wine articles are certainly valued and appreciated. I would like to move this conversation over to the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine page to maybe get some other folks interested. Would you mind if I did? Agne 01:25, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead.Georgeg 06:08, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

As the original author (nearly four years ago!) of this article, I certainly endorse any sort of reformatting that would make it easier to read. --Delirium 09:18, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good article nomination

I have two concerns about the references before passing this as a Good Article.

1. There is no reference for the claim that Commandaria is the world's oldest named wine still in production, either in the introduction or in the "History" section.
2. The claim of winning the Battle of the Wines is referenced to a wiki, not a reliable source.

Both of these claims need to be referenced to a reliable source, or reworded in line with a reliable source, or removed from the article. Lyrl ^Talk _C 01:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

1. Hi, a couple of references added as per recommendations on point 1.
2. Regarding point 2 I am not sure I follow. The reference provided for the claim is in fact the BBC article ( Wine, the Last 1,000 Years. h2g2. BBC (May 21, 2002). ). The one you referred to as a wiki reference ( Henri d'Andeli-La Bataille des Vins, Verse 15 [4] ) did link to the poet and the article on the particular poem that relates to that event but that was just as further info to the reader. It also linked externally to the full French verse of the poem and indicated which verse one needed to seek out. Anyway, I have removed that reference, although i feel it would have been useful. Does this need further change? StephP 11:56, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy on point 1. On point 2, I was not clear - the poem was fine, and I feel it did add to the article. The "Wine, the Last 1,000 Years", however, is, um, after reading h2g2, not exactly a wiki, but subject to many of the same errors. It is hosted on BBC servers, but its content is not reliable in the same way an article by a BBC journalist would be. Lyrl ^Talk _C 00:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Reworded, and deleted reference inserted again! StephP 09:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Good work. Lyrl ^Talk _C 00:25, 4 April 2007 (UTC)