Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Archive 6

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Something interesting

In researching for the American wine article I've came across this article link, written by a Wikipedia Administrator, An Untapped SEO Opportunity: Image Link Love From Wikipedia. The article is essentially touting the business benefits of donating free images to Wikipedia and the subsequent brand advertising you will get in return. The article centers around our wine articles as examples and includes a list of wine-related articles that would benefit from these pictures. Admittedly, I'm not sure what my overall impression of this is. My first instinct is that seems close to "selling advertising space" which seems to be foreign to the "Wiki-way". But at the same time, I will admit, that Durova is an admin of whom I respect immensely and her involvement gave me reason to look closer and be more open minded. I do want the overall quality of wine articles to improve and free images are very valuable but I suppose there is a fine between the encyclopedic worth or the image and whether its just advertisement for the sake of advertising. Any thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 00:37, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I get somewhat mixed feelings about the article. Sure, it would be good if we got more high-quality wine related images uploaded, but this product placement talk worries me. From now on I'll always take photos of the parking lots of all famous wineries I visit, to have on hand in case product placement photos appear... :-) Tomas e 21:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I suppose it depends on how obvious of a product placement the photo is and in what context or article it is being used in. For instance, I uploaded Image:Moet and glass.jpg for use on the Moët et Chandon page which I think is perfectly appropriate. On the other hand, I will admit that I'm not really thrilled about its use on the Champagne (wine region) page even though I added it there. I wanted to have some image of a glass of champagne and the Moet picture was the best at the time. I can live with that till hopefully something better comes along. AgneCheese/Wine 22:28, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
I'd agree that the preference should always be non-commercial, and that commercial images will be second-best. OR actaully third-best where the commercial-ness is very 'obvious' (so more appropriate just to the company page, like that Moet + glass). But OTOH you do end up with some commercial presence even in images that aren't intended as adverts, for instance in my recent trip, I took quite a few photos of road signs saying "Vignobles de XXX AOC - Chateau de YYY". They're very evocative of the area, but are technically WP:ADVERTs, even if it's a man and his dog operation that doesn't 'export' further than the next village. But I'd agree that anything owned by a multinational should be confined to the company page where possible, and substituted on other pages when less commercial images become available. Another test could be the image licence, which should be as free as possible with no attribution restrictions ideally. FlagSteward 19:27, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Outside opinion

What do you guys assess of the notability of Kistler Vineyards? The two claims (both uncited) that I see are a 100 point score by Parker's Wine Advocate and a trivial mention in Sideways. It does have a relatively fair amount of ghits and gnews hits for a smaller winery. I'm partial inclusion myself but I don't know if that is just my West Coast US bias :) because I've obviously seen their wines around where I'm at. I'd like to get a broader opinion by some of our European and Aussie members. AgneCheese/Wine 03:20, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Their wines aren't seen in Australia, but I have heard of their reputation through various sources. I checked the Robert Parker "World's Greatest Wine Estates" book and that only records a 97 point score for the wine in question (though there may possibly be multiple notes by Parker). That said, the inclusion of Kistler in the "World's Greatest Wine Estates" book (1 of 23 in the US) may be a step to establishing notability? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Camw (talk • contribs) 12:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Shouldn't this discussion of an article's notability or lack thereof be held on the article's talk page? Toddstreat1 12:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Many times this page gets more traffic and attention then some of the smaller wineries pages. Plus a conversation here can open up to a discussion on the broader scale of establishing notability of wineries. If the page was showing active editing (as you have done) then a note would certainly be placed on the talk page-which you beat me to. :) AgneCheese/Wine 22:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps. The name Kistler Vineyards didn't ring a bell with this European (but I'm not that good at Californian wines). However, using Wine-Searcher[1] and limiting my search to Europe returned a reasonable number of hits (several vintages), primarily in the UK and Germany, so Kistler wines seems to have some distribution in Europe, and could probably be said to be somemwhat notable even on this side of the pond. I think Wine-Searcher and what it tells about distribution and availability is a good supplement to the wine guides since a few of us consider wine as something made to be drunk (eventually) and not just read about. :-) But in all honesty, from my experience it seems much easier for producers of Californian Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz to earn a name in Europe, than those who focus on Chardonnay. On another note, a search using my account on erobertparker.com told me that no Kistler wine has ever received 100 points, and since the RP 100 claim actually is a RP 97, I removed it from the article. Tomas e 22:26, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
That is a good point. European distribution is actually a pretty big deal for smaller wineries in the States. Its not an easy task. AgneCheese/Wine 22:31, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I add some g-news/Wine Spectator/Decanter "hits". While not perfect I've found that a collection of those three tends to give an idea of how much coverage in the wine world a winery has to set itself apart from just being a winery and notability apart from being a "local well known". Its also good fodder for some reliable sources for the article. AgneCheese/Wine 10:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Coming late to this although I've queried some of the US vineyards in the past, the trouble is that all things Californian 'benefit' from systematic bias. FWIW Decanter is my first source for the notability of US wines - as the UK is the centre for the international trade, anything decent usually finds its way here, even though it seems most of the Kistler here ends up at Gordon Ramsay's restaurants for eg US$350 for the Noisetiers 2002.... I agree there's a problem as neither Parker points nor price in itself is a guide to notability (although price x volume maybe is), thanks to all these little boutiquey wineries that barely get distribution outside the state let alone internationally. So if Californians get articles in Decanter then I'm impressed, if it's just 1-2 ratings then I'll get worried but see what the Spectator has to say. If it feels like they've achieved genuinely North American notability but just haven't bothered to export, then I'll probably be happy to let them in. As a test - see if you would let Camel Valley through - have you heard of them? With 14,500 Ghits and9 Spectator hits I'd say yes, but at the bottom end - they're probably one of half a dozen English vineyards that are genuinely of international interest. (and no, I've no affiliation, in fact I haven't drunk anything of theirs for a while, that reminds me....)FWIW my view would be that Kistler should stay, Kathryn Kennedy is marginal, the others are probably the wrong side of marginal as I put weight on the views of the wine press. FlagSteward 19:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that systematic bias plays a huge role and I will regretfully admit that my early Wikipedia wine edits was decided skewed in that direction with little regard for the international stage that wine is on. I've seen my error and have been consciously working to correcting that. I think a middle ground between Wine Spectator and Decanter is the best route because each has stronger "bureaus" in wine writers that tend to dominate their coverage. For instance, I think Spectator does a much better job in their Italian wine coverage then Decanter but no one can come close to Decanter in French wine coverage. With American wines there will always be more coverage in Spectator then Decanter and that is expectant. I agree that a mention of an American wine by Decanter is impressive but I wouldn't take a lack of mention as a huge negative mark. As for for Camel Valley, I actually had to laugh out loud when I read your comment and "have you heard of them?". I have a friend who did marketing for Wine and Spirits in conjunction with the the International Wine Challenge and meet Sam Lindo, the winemaker. She included their sparkling wine in a blind tasting party we had and made a silly fool out of me in trying to guess where it was from. (For some reason I was so adamant in thinking it was a Cava!) So yes, I have heard of them and would consider them notable. They certainly are one of the pioneers in English wine. AgneCheese/Wine 03:54, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

List of wineries

Recently I stumbled upon these articles

I'd like to open this up for broader opinion but I just don't see the value and need of theses articles, outside of being an advertisement for this wineries-contrary to Wikipedia is a not a wine guide. Furthermore the details that are not advertisements would be better suited in the corresponding AVA articles-Sonoma County AVA, Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, Napa Valley (wine). Any thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 22:23, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Update I'm going to move any relevant and worthwhile information to the AVA articles and submit these articles for AfD. Essentially we have here the potential for two duplicating articles with the list of wineries articles standing to be an advert article.AgneCheese/Wine 23:00, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The AfD discussions for anyone interested. AgneCheese/Wine 23:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, I think some lists like these are useful to Wikipedians - certainly I think the list we have somewhere of the Bordeaux cru classés is encyclopaedic, and I can imagine that there are a handful of other areas where the same might be true, we have one of the Barossa Valley from memory. Perhaps if it's aimed more at vineyards than companies that helps allay WP:ADVERT fears, but I think to the sort of person these things are aimed at, it is more useful to have general lists than to stick to the letter of the AVA/AOC. Would it make sense to have separate lists of crus classés for Pauillac, Margaux, St Julien etc? OF course not - but it's still a pretty well defined area and notability. Define notability as 'entitled to a sensible AVA' perhaps, and I can see that List of vineyards in the Napa Valley would be a perfectly encyclopaedic list. Sta Cruz Mountains or Sonoma County as a whole I have more of a problem with, but List of vineyards in the Russian River Valley would probably be OK, I'd guess a high proportion would be notable to some extent. I guess that's the test, if >2/3 of the contents of a list have Wiki entries anyway, then a list becomes more of a navigation tool round Wikipedia than advertising.FlagSteward 19:20, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that list of vineyards would be a different matter. For one, with vineyards we are dealing with the terrior characteristics rather then just the commercial aspect. I think a list of wineries have some benefit but is kept more appropriately in context as an external link on the wine region page. AgneCheese/Wine 22:00, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
One point that can be made about a list of Châteaux in the 1855 Bordeaux classification, in different to a list of "somewhere" wineries is that a) it can easily be verified as complete, b) the classification principle and the relevance of being included (with respect to notability, price et c.) has definitely stood the test of time. BTW, this is not a bias specifically against US wineries on my part. While I've contributed e.g. some Germany-related wine material and plans to add more, I have no plans whatsoever to create a list of, or article on "Wineries in Bernkastel-Kues" or "Vineyard owners in Forster Ungeheuer" or some similar subject. Tomas e 22:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
The classification lists are a different matter all together and have historical significance. They are also not trying to list every single chateau in Bordeaux in a directory style article. There are hundreds of estates in the Bordeaux region that will never have an article or mention in any relevant wikipedia article because they don't pass the standards of WP:CORP and you'll never see those wines outside of Bordeaux. I'm afraid that my fellow Americans over on the article deletions are thinking very locally, especially when they say that the majority of Sonoma's 250 wineries are notable. That is simply false. The majority of those wineries do not have distribution outside of the West Coast with a sizable number of them not even going far from Sonoma and surrounding counties. I do wonder what these same editors would say about a Wineries in Bernkastel-Kues or Vineyard owners in Forster Ungeheuer article and if they would see the same type of local, isolate bias. AgneCheese/Wine 04:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
Here is an interesting comment by an editor on the Sonoma County wineries AfD. Apparently he is in favor of doing away with our AVA article because he believes more people will be searching on collective articles about the wineries in an area then on the wine region itself. I obviously disagree with him but he appears quite passionate in his point. AgneCheese/Wine 02:19, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:WINEGUIDE

Just an FYI. Another editor has expressed dissatisfaction with Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a wine guide and discussion is taking place on the talk page. AgneCheese/Wine 07:34, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Good Intentions

Hi everyone, just a quick note to say that I'm still here and still full of good intentions (!), but unfortunately still really busy :( I would like to finish off the few remaining red links in Spanish Wine Regions, contribute to the Appellations debate, and also to the Organic/natural wine articles, seeing as that's the type of wine I make!!! see you all soon and keep up the good work :) --BodegasAmbite 08:58, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Spam from wines-fr.com

A number of the French region articles have been attracting links from wines-fr.com, which have a tiny bit of information in french about the region but are mainly sales pages. I've cleaned up any that I've found with the spamfinding tool but if people could just keep an eye on that one. I've got a few things to say about other stuff on this page, not been around so much. But article-wise I've been pottering around Burgundy - I've put up the first of my pics from my trip, I'm quite pleased with the one of the Grand Crus of Chablis FlagSteward 15:31, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Oooh gorgeous pics. One small request though, would you consider adding Category:Wine-related images to your images. I've admittedly been bad about that myself and I've have tried to be good adding them to the new pictures I've put up in the Winemaking article and trying to back track with my other photos. Actually, if anyone is poking around a wine page with pics it might not be a bad idea to check out the info on the photos and see if they need the category. AgneCheese/Wine 18:09, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

This article takes my breath away

Ripple (wine)
On a more serious note. What do you guys think about merging all these Bum wine types into one article? The others that I can see going here would be MD 20/20, Thunderbird (wine), Night Train Express, Cisco (wine), Wild Irish Rose, Buckfast Tonic Wine and maybe Boone's Farm. Does anyone see these article becoming more then individual stubs and collections of trivia and pop culture reference? AgneCheese/Wine 11:37, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Well, at least some of the bumwines are notable, or at least notorious. Some of 'em probably don't merit an article of their own, just as not every microvintage of the good stuff merits an article. OTOH, longstanding bum wines like MD 20/20 and Thunderbird certainly are notable to get an article. We shouldn't be adcovating for merger or reduced Wikipedia coverage of these bevarages just because we don't like the shit; there's a longstanding precedent on Wikipedia that the perceived quality of something has little to do with notability--and some things are notable precisely because they are bad.  :)
  • If anything, such beverages are outside the scope of this WikiProject. So don't waste time on bum wine, or try to exile it from Wikipedia. Just ignore it. But if the WikiProject does decide that bum wine falls under its scope, it should cover it fairly. --EngineerScotty 19:56, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I'll agree with EngineerScotty, these items are not even wine, they are only "wine" in name only. Most of them are malt beverages. On the prior comment I also believe that these articles should remain separate as they are distinctive products, even if "wine drinkers" scoff at them. I know many a college kid who drinks Boone's Farm and some of those others.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 01:05, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the quality of the wines are irrelevant. My concern is whether or not these articles will ever become more then a stubs worth of info or simply a collection of trivia and pop culture reference. If not then I think a merger would best serve the article and subject matter. AgneCheese/Wine 09:03, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I could see a summary article expanded upon but I think certain ones have a legitimate case for having their own articles. I'm not too sure Boone's Farm is a "Bum wine" if not more than a college kid's drink, wow this is a tough topic. This just reminds me of when I worked for Disney as a chef and the blues club at Pleasure Island sold MD 20/20 in a paper bag as a joke and people used to actually order it.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 15:18, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

  • There's a cajun restaurant in Portland, Oregon called Le Bistro Montage that offers (or did at one time; I haven't been there in years) a cocktail called "The Ex Wife"--a mixture of Night Train and vodka. Cost $80 per drink. No, I never ordered one, but I suspect that it did occasionally get ordered by inebriated folks with more dollars than sense. --EngineerScotty 18:03, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Update Another user has nominated Bum wine for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bum wine. While I don't think the article should be deleted, the nominator have some valid concerns that need to be addressed. Starting with the title, can anyone think of a better one that has some references or support? AgneCheese/Wine 00:10, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Fermentation (wine)

After looking at the three main articles that somewhat deal with fermentation in the wine sense-fermentation (food),Fermentation (biochemistry) and Ethanol fermentation. I decided to create an article that primarily deals with the fermentation in strictly a winemaking sense. I figured that to add the winemaking components that are needed to any of those articles would overwhelm them or seem out of focus. Any thoughts, comments or suggestions are always welcomed as well as any help in changing some of the wine related links that are currently scattered throughout the three above mentioned articles to be redirected to this article. Thanks! AgneCheese/Wine 21:12, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It looks great, puts the other fermentation articles to shame. There's a decent shot of red grapes fermenting at winemaking which could go in the "other types.." section. Well done though, it was an article crying out to be started. An absolute must, even.. (sorry).. --mikaultalk 10:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

List of Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée wines & Alsace

In the List of Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée wines article, the Alsace wines are listed with Alsace + varietal designations as separate appellations, and Alsace Grand Cru + vineyard as separate appellations. (But not with Alsace + existing non-Grand Cru lieu-dits or Alsace Grand Cru + vineyard + varietal designation, which would be equally logical and add a few hundred more.) I consider this to be wrong, since the INAO lists three AOC rules for Alsace: AOC Alsace, AOC Alsace Grand Cru and AOC Crémant d'Alsace. Everything else is additional designations, not separate appellations. It seems that the mentioning of a specific lieu-dit is mandatory for Alsace GC, but that doesn't make each lieu-dit a separate appellation. Unless anyone voices any objections in the next few days, I'm going to cut the Alsace entries down to three. I'll also check up on a few "sec" and "rosé" from other regions in th list, because I suspect that the case is the same with these. Tomas e 14:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

No protests in two weeks about all the Alsace "AOCs" so away they went. It actually turned out that e.g. Bergerac sec, Bordeaux sec and Bordeaux rosé were appellations of their own, but not Jurançon sec, Saumur sec blanc, Bergerac rosé or Rosé d'Anjou as judged by INAO's online database of AOC regulations. (Those designations which appear in the heading of any AOC document, alone or not, have been judged to be separate appellations, the rest have been judged to be designations within an appellation.) But then again, few people have accused the AOC system to be extremely logical... Tomas e 16:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
I think you made the right call and speaking of confusing AOC stuff, what do you guys think of breaking up the massive List of Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée wines into smaller List of Bordeaux AOC, List of Côtes du Rhône AOC, etc. I suggest this for two reasons 1.) The article is 45 kb long and sometimes it not as easy to spot errors like what Tomas e notes above in such a mammoth article. 2.) While the article does have a regional breakdown all the links are to the village rather then the AOC while the top alphabetical listing includes both the AOC and the region. This inconsistency causes a few problem but foremost it makes it difficult to see at a glance (for example) which Burgundy AOC articles need to be created. I suppose a "quick fix" would be to change the regional sort links to all go to AOC but that really wouldn't be any quicker then creating a List of Burgundy AOC page. Any thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 03:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, this list needs to be gone through again, no matter what, to identify erroneous inclusions, non-inclusions and spelling errors. The question is if this is more easily performed within the framework of a number of regional AOC lists, and if such lists would mean that we lose an article that would be of interest to some? Actually, I'm not sure. It's also a matter of updating the information. There seems to be a few changes per year, either name changes or elevation of VDQS to AOC. (Demotion doesn't seem to happen...) Tomas e 18:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
This main article could a be a sort of disambig page. A list of lists you can say. Maybe keep the first alphabetized section and then link to the regional one. I see benefits in having both organizations. Some people may know the AOC but not the region and vice versa. AgneCheese/Wine 22:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Oak related articles

I've been looking at our articles relating to the use of oak in winemaking-namely Aging barrel, Wine barrel, and Oak chips-and I was thinking about merging the Wine barrel and Oak chips article into a renamed article Oak (wine) that most deals with the winemaking concepts behind the use of oak-some of the history of when it was first used, regional preference and style as well as the actual properties that oak imparts. Previously there was a merge request with merging Aging barrel and Wine barrel but I think the Aging barrel article should stand alone since it deals with non-wine related concepts and could also be the location for information about the actual construction of the barrels at cooperages and such. What do you guys think? AgneCheese/Wine 09:21, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

They're all bit of a mess. There's very little at Aging barrel which set it apart and loads of crossover (and conflicted info) in all three. I like the idea of an oak-related article. I assume you knew that corks come from the Holme Oak? I have a pic of one you're obviously welcome to use. --mikaultalk 10:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I noticed this "mess" when I recently was working on the Swedish-language wikipedia's article on oak barrel aging, and was trying to figure out which article to use as the Interwiki-link. I wish you good luck, and I think you should carefully consider which would be the best title of such a merged article. I'm not offering any hands-on help, but some thoughts:
  • The comment above raises a valid point. You should probably try to avoid having to discuss corks in the same article as oak barrels and oak chips. So "everything about oak and wine" is a bit too wide.
  • An article on oak in wine/oak barrel aging would reasonably discuss why and how barrel aging takes place, different types of oak and barrel sizes used, and the effect on the wine of all this.
  • Because of this, it seems reasonable to discuss oak chips as an "alternative method" in the same article since it aims at giving an oak influence.
  • I'm not sure that an article that only discusses the effects of oak in wine is the best framing, to the exclusion of whisk(e)y and various other spirits. Many general observations about size of barrel, effects of toasting and so on will be the same, and many barrels (esp. Sherry) "migrate" from wine to whisky production during their life cycle.
  • While something with "oak" in the title wouldn't be wrong, I think the article also should cover the other species of wood sometimes also used for wine barrels, such as chestnut (in Italy?).
Tomas e 20:36, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Some great points, especially about the scope. I do agree that the information relating to cork should belong in the main Cork (material) article. I can see cause for a mention and link in this article. I still think that the main aging barrel article could accommodate the relevant information related to whiskey and spirits. The whiskey article itself includes some pertinent information. As for the use of other tree materials like chestnut, they are not too common but I can see a section called Alternative materials or such that can include information on the other wood types. As for name, I'm partial to Oak (wine) because of the ease of article wiki-linking. AgneCheese/Wine 21:20, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Update Article created. Still needs some work but I'm all oaked out. :p As always any suggestions, critiques, grammar fixes, etc are always welcomed. AgneCheese/Wine 02:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

New Spanish Wine Article

I just created a new Spanish wine article, but I did a typo in the title :( Its created as Plà i Levant (DO) but it should be Plà i Llevant (DO). Could someone please fix it and/or tell me how to do it myself. Sorry, but I don't know how to do it! --BodegasAmbite 10:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

You need to cut & paste the article (blanking the page) to Plà i Llevant (DO) and then set up a redirect to it from Plà i Levant (DO). To do that, click "edit this page", look under the "edit summary" box and click #REDIRECT [[]], type Plà i Llevant (DO) between the square brackets, save it, and you're done! No harm done, in fact it's often a good idea to set up redirect pages for articles with difficult-to-spell names; you might want to set one up at Pla i Llevant (DO) and Pla i Levant (DO) for example. --mikaultalk 11:35, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

thx for the instructions. will try to do that when I get a mo'. sounds a bit complicated (but I'm sure it's easy once you know how!) --BodegasAmbite 13:42, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Could you check out what I'm doing wrong with the redirect business!!! I cant get it to work. --BodegasAmbite 14:30, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Hard to tell; did you ask for the page to be deleted? All you need do in general is click on the red link (or get to the "page doesn't exist" page some other way), look under the "edit summary" box and click the #REDIRECT [[]] text there (or type that text into the edit window) then type the name of the page you're redirecting to between the square brackets. The preview doesnt work as you'd expect, so just click save and you'll see the redirect link come up. I've done the one you tried: have a go at the others I suggested if you want a practice.. useful skill on the wine pages, this ;o) --mikaultalk 17:14, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems that what was intended has now been performed. However, I like to point out that there is a more convenient way to perform the same operation: click on the tab "move" a few steps to the right of "edit this page". This will migrate a page's content to a new name and make the old name a redirect in one simple step. What's more, any discussion page will be moved along unless any collision takes place. Therefore, the "move" tab is usually to be preferred to the manual operation described above. In this case, I see no reason to have the misspelled article removed, keeping it as a redirect seems very reasonable. If our most active contributor of Spanish wine articles manages to misspell a D.O. name, it seems a safe guess that several other people are bound to misspell it as well... :-) :-) Tomas e 18:15, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, you live and learn, thanks, Tomas. Incidentally, shouldn't that be mis-spell..? ;o) --mikaultalk 18:19, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
I was out of hyphens for the moment. :-) Tomas e 18:31, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys for sorting all that out for me. I'll try to remember both techniques for next time something like that happens. --BodegasAmbite 10:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Wine tasting descriptors

Oh what a merry mess I got myself into with this article :p While admiring Mick's work on the Wine tasting article I came across this older discussion about creating a list of wine tasting descriptors. I was originally opposed to the idea because mainly WP:OR concerns and the utter and complete subjectivity of wine tasting. However over time I began to see the need to have an article that could be linked when an article talks about "powerful" wines and such. After finding some sources that dealt a little with tasting terms I went to work. Little did I know what a headache it would be! Trying to avoid current and future OR I decided it was best to make sure every entry was sourced (though admittedly all those footnotes look gaudy). I'm now wondering how helpful this article is going to be because many times we have multiple "entries" that essentially say the same thing-"overly tannic", "overly alcoholic" etc but this was about as far as most of the sources went without me adding (essentially) personal perception of what differentiates a sense of Chewy tannins versus Soft or Supple tannins, etc. In all honesty I think the external links will end up being the most helpful aspects of the article. If anyone has a better idea or wants to take a hand at it, by all means. AgneCheese/Wine 11:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Browsing through the list, it looks like a mixture of descriptors that are more-or-less objective, and those that are more-or-less subjective value judgements as to the quality of the wine. The former are related to measurable components in the wine and/or can be described by a direct physical sensation. Examples could be acidic, dry, oaky, sweet, or tannic. The latter include such terms as balanced and connected (sounds a bit hippie-like to me...), but also firm, lean, supple and so on. Also, some of the descriptive words are clearly non-neutral such as describing tannic as "a wine with aggressive tannins". Huh? To me, a tannic wine is a wine with noticeable, usually high levels of tannin. Together with a piece of well-matured, salty hard chesse there's nothing "aggressive" about those tannins... And the description of "green" I don't agree with at all, it's about green aromas (grass, green peppers, green stems of plants...) rather than acidity, and sometimes of unripe tannins that give you the same sensation as an unripe banana that sticks everywhere in your mouth.
Could a division into more-or-less objective and more-or-less subjective terms be a start? On another note, I'm surprised that I can't seem to find a description of UC Davies Prof.em. Ann C. Noble's Wine Aroma Wheel in Wikipedia. My understanding is that the aroma wheel isn't just a copyrighted gadget, but is also based on published sensoric research performed by Noble, which should mean that the structure of the wheel and its descriptors could be included without copyright problems. The aroma descriptors used in the wheel, and their grouping into categories, should therefore have a much more solid foundation than terms found in your average wine writer's magazine or book. By the way, I've seen it written somewhere that spending a lot of time describing the "mouthfeel" of wine is something introduced by American wine critics (such as, guess who...). I assume that means that the classical English wine writers more described aromas and that elusive quaility - "balance". Tomas e 15:47, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
That's a great idea. I struggled with this too, and completely brick-walled every time due to the NOR issue. The blissfully obvious, encyclopedic answer is to declare the subjective/objective distinction and the perfect "objective tool", if it is indeed free-licenceable, is the Nobel system. And of course "balance" is indisputably more valuable than "feel"... --mikaultalk 22:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Yeah the "subjective/objective" part was a brick wall and nearly all the sources sort of lumped them together as well. I wasn't very keen on some of the source description as well but again was hesitant to deviate much from the sources. Obviously one can derive a subjectivity even in their interpretation of the terms. For instance, I don't view "aggressive tannins" as non-neutral because whether or not that is a positive or negative attribute is largely up to the tasters. My wife is actually quite found of wines with "aggressive tannins" because for her they add to the complexity and mouthfeel. The phrase "green" is another one with the "grass, green peppers..." being more along the lines of what I, personally, would call "vegetal". In my experience I have heard green used synonymously with vegetal but in this case I went with Robinson's description which is also a common usage.AgneCheese/Wine 00:03, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Another way of grouping the descriptors could perhaps be according to the senses (sight - smell/aroma - taste - feel come to mind), and try only to include "objective" descriptors there, plus a category for "overall judgement" or something similar that makes it obvious that we're talking about the "subjective" under that heading. Tomas e 01:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
That sounds reasonable though admittedly I would prefer if another editors would do the deed. Working on the article frustrated me too much and it would be a while before I would feel incline to work on it again. AgneCheese/Wine 19:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Keeping up with the B's

I was looking through our list of B-class articles and was surprised at the wide range of article quality in the category. Looking at the description of the assessment classes as well as the example given of a typical B-class article it was easy to see that several of wine "B articles" have a way to go before they really become B's. Admittedly I found several articles that I wrote or assess like Alternative wine closures‎, Missouri wine, & Château Pétrus that in hindsight are really more "Start class" then B class. It seems that B article should be closer to a GA then then a stub with a little more content. Some wine examples that seem (to me at least) to be clear "B's" would be Austrian wine, József Törley, and Oak (wine). I think its important to be a little more discerning with the quality of wine articles so that we have a more accurate reflection of the areas we need to work on as a project. In general we've done a great job in getting things beyond a stub but I think there is a larger gap between start & B then what we initially gave credit for. I went through and reassessed some of the ones that I felt didn't match up with the assessment guidelines but there was a lot of ones that I felt "borderline" about and sort of left them with the B-ratings. I encourage other wine project members to do a review as well to get some extra opinions and insights. AgneCheese/Wine 23:36, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:WINE talk page banner

Does anyone who is knowledgeable about the coding know of a way to make the banner default in the "closed" or "hidden" sense? It is rather large and somewhat obnoxious with it open to show the open tasks and everything. Maybe it's a browser issue but even when I close it and then come back to the talk page it is open and large again. I fret that it may become an annoyance for the article's talk page users as well. AgneCheese/Wine 19:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I was just on a number of articles and noted that and just came here to offer to "nest" the banner, which I will go work on now.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 18:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I have made it so that it rests in collapsed mode until the user clicks the "show" link.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC 19:07, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
My hero! :) AgneCheese/Wine 20:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

New Harvest (wine) article

As an FYI. I went through the list of articles that linked to the general harvest article but I'm sure I missed a few. I titled the article harvest (wine) to make it easy to do a pipe link with the disambig. If you come across a wine article with a wiki link to harvest I would appreciate if you could double check to make sure it goes to the right article. AgneCheese/Wine 11:54, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Great French Wine Blight

I noticed this new article made the DYK on the main page today. Nicely done and already up for GA, but without any WineProject tags on it as yet. What's the usual way: contact the author, dive on in and assess it..? --mikaultalk 13:50, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Already did. :) It is a very nice article. My only (very minor) concern is that that title is not a very common one. It is typically referred to as the Phylloxerra epidemic which include the more wide spread European and California devastation. But again that is a minor concern. We can also the larger epidemic article with a link to this French-specific article. AgneCheese/Wine 14:17, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
A very good article, but I also think that the title is less than ideal, since there have been other "wine blights" than phylloxera in France and elsewhere. I wouldn't be too keen on using terms like "The Medium-Plus French Wine Blight" and "The Medium-Minus French Wine Blight" (or perhaps the other way around) for oidium and downy mildew. :-) In the fullness of time, we should probably consider another way of arranging and naming the phylloxera material in Project Wine, but I believe we have other work cut out for us for at least a few more weeks before that. ;-) Tomas e 19:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
I like the title and the article for its "historical event" approach. There's quite a lot of this in History of Wine which isn't properly exploited there, that's to say, misses out on opportunities for sub-articles in this very readable and surprisingly non-OR narrative style. I found History of Rioja wine a very entertaining read, immediately putting me in mind of the History of Sherry (which I know will be a red link..) and the Phoenicians (who really do deserve a special place within the wine project articles and whose wikiarticle doesn't even mention the precious beverage by name) I'm reading up on their winey ways at the moment, fascinating stuff! As you say, one day.. :o) —Preceding unsigned comment added by MIckStephenson (talk • contribs) 22:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Oooh, I might just start work on that History of Sherry article, especially if your game. :) I agree with you about the article with the Phoenicians and truth be told there is probably a series of a historical articles that could be written about various groups and cultures that have had a significant impact on the world of wine. Off the top of my head, in addition to the Phoenicians and wine, Romans and wine, Greeks and wine, Roman Catholic Church and wine, etc. AgneCheese/Wine 10:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Enologix

This is an article that we could use more people keeping an eye on it. There is a lot of conflict of interest editing going on with IPs and User:Enologix. I've attempted to work with them to encourage them to contact us or make suggestions on the article's talk page rather then edit the article but to no avail. I posted it on the COI board and got it semi-protect for a month from IP edits but we will probably need to watch it for a while. If a couple more folks could add it to their watchlist that would be great. AgneCheese/Wine 10:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

As you say, there's nothing on the Talk page to indicate what the edit war (or whatever) is about. I could of course try to chew through dozens of edits to try to find out where they are disagreeing, but perhaps you have been following the article enough to give us few hints? I think I understand the basic science and the ideas behind what Enologix does, and in a sense it is unsurprising that chemical analysis together with chemometrics has been applied to wine in order to estimate Parker ratings when the same procedure is applied online to estimate octane ratings for petrol in refineries. If a test engine can be substituted, then why not Bob's nose? How well it works in practice is of course another thing, and given the controversy surrounding so-called Parkerization of wine, this is obviously an article that very much calls for NPOV! Tomas e 22:14, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't describe it as an editor war, just an apparent unwillingness on their part to work with us or any other impartial editor to edit the article. They want to control the content and what is written about them [2], which is obviously not conclusive to an NPOV article. I made a good faith attempt to try to expand the article and seek their input (admittedly I edited in probably a more friendly slant then what would be ideal). It is edits like this that I find the most troubling because it more deflects criticisms then placing it in a neutral light. AgneCheese/Wine 22:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
"Competing academics" - huh? Of course he will be attacked with a blowtorch by real scientists if he doesn't publish. If he doesn't publish he's neither a scientist nor an academic, but rather a consultant. Offhand, I don't know which Wikipedia guideline(s) that correspond to "Wikipedia isn't a forum for you to defend youself", but I'm sure it's in there somewhere. Tomas e 01:23, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

My first time

I had a go at taking a redlink to stub article, Château Climens, my first for this wikiproject, and wonder does one normally leave it at that, or post it at some WikiProject Wine new articles page? I might not have looked hard enough. MURGH disc. 00:37, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Well done, and I hope you make a habit out of it! I see that you've already added the Project Wine template on the discussion page, and assessed it for importance and quality. Once you've done that, the article will be picked up by a 'bot that operates every few days, and it will be announced in a frame on the project page (somewhere a bit down on the left) together with other added, deleted, renamed or reassessed pages, and will be included in the list of articles that is the basis for the project's summarized assessment matrix. Tomas e 01:14, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
(EC Tomas beat me too it :> )Actually you did a really great job. Adding the project banner to the talk page adds it to our assessment log which shows up on the project's front page where everyone can see. I reassess the article as a start class since it is more developed then a one paragraph stub would be. Again, great work! AgneCheese/Wine 01:16, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation of the system workings and encouraging words. MURGH disc. 01:26, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Wine by Country - how to structure such articles

I have been playing around with the article on Cyprus wine, trying not only to expand it, but to do so in a standard worthy for future GA consideration. I am, however, struggling to decide under what headers to slot in the info I come up with. As such, I would welcome a discussion on the structure of such articles. A quick scan indicates that the major articles on this subject (eg French wine, Italian wine, South African wine etc) have all followed their own structure. There are at least 15-20 articles on wine at country level (most of which need much work) so this sort of discussion would surely be useful not only to help improve current articles but also to be used as a guide for future ones. Apologies if there is an existing template which I have missed! (if so would someone please direct me there?) Georgeg 14:33, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately (like our grape articles), they seem to be all over the place. To some extent that is a negative but to another extent it maybe unavoidable due to the differences of the subject matter. For instance, in working with the American wine, I found that that most of the reliable sources play heavy emphasis on our appellation system and labeling laws so I included it with similar emphasis. With German wines there is more focus on their classification system since that is featured prominently in reliable sources. One area that I think could be minimized in some country articles (like German wines and Italian wines) is the long list of grape varieties. Obviously in some cases there are a lot of indigenous varieties which are unique and merit mention. But I think it would be more helpful to have a link splinter article like List of Italian grape varieties and a summary paragraph of the important grape varieties of various regions rather then a full breakdown. Overall, I'd think any country article would need
(in the order I would personally put them)
  • History. If this section gets too long then there should be a History of Cyprus wine type article created.
  • Wine regions. For smaller countries like Cyprus you could probably include some more geography/climate/soil details in the article but for larger and more diverse areas like the US & Italy, it is not helpful to go into that much detail.
  • Classification or Appellation system Any unique laws or regulations of the wine that the reader might find of interest. In the future we may want to include a pic of a standard wine label for a visual aid. (Kinda like what is in German wine label.
  • Grape varieties/wine styles Again I think countries with excessive large lists or tables should probably be moved to a splinter article. This section should be more of an overview of the grapes and wines that a region is most commonly known for. Ideally more of the detail stuff should be found in the smaller wine region or grape articles themselves.

Then for the rest there should be some flexibility because every country will have some unique aspect that may need to be included. AgneCheese/Wine 15:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

In reply to the above:

  • I agree that long sections should be moved into a separate article of their own but I think a summary should remain on the country page (with of course a relevant link).
  • I don’t disagree with the content you have suggested. The content of all these articles tends to follow similar lines, in broad terms at least. As you say some articles have a bit more info on certain subjects but that should iron out in time.
  • I agree that different regions have their own particularities.
  • However, I think there should be a guidance template. I don’t think it should be rock rigid, it should be flexible to allow for country variations and probably to offer “optional headings”. What I am ultimately suggesting is the creation of a page similar to say grape article template, or even this book template.

Am I just trying to be too tidy?! Georgeg 17:01, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Nah, you're not being too tidy and there is nothing wrong with coming up with a suggested template for editors to follow. If someone feels industrious, we can get started on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wine/Template wine region article and move the discussion to that page's talk area. AgneCheese/Wine 17:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Template wine region article Georgeg 20:08, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Tempranillo

Mick and Bodega are already over there but any outside perspective is always appreciated. Essentially we need to figure out a way to clarify that Tempranillo grows well in the "cooler" climate areas of warm regions. There is an anon IP (or rather 3 from Denver with likely the same person) that is insistent on the phrasing "hot and dry" climate when all the reliable source specify ideal planting in the cooler site of the warm region. Due to the anon IPs interaction it is clear that the phrase "cooler climate" is misleading so we need to find a compromise that will clear that up hopefully to the satisfaction of everyone. Again, any ideas or comments are always appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 17:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

  • Update It appears that our IP friend is not satisfied with the conclusion of our previous discussion and so we have opened up an RFC at Talk:Tempranillo#RfC. All views are welcomed. AgneCheese/Wine 05:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

FYI-Wine related deletion

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glossary of wine terms AgneCheese/Wine 17:40, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

International Wine and Spirit Competition Rmhermen (talk) 02:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

U.S. state appellations

I have created at least a stub article for each U.S. state appellation. I would encourage anyone to help improve the articles. The ones I think are most important, because of their place in the history of the U.S. wine industry are Ohio wine (Cincinnati was once the center of the U.S. wine trade), Virginia wine (Thomas Jefferson tried to establish a wine industry in Virginia), Florida wine (the first place wine grapes were planted in the United States), and Massachusetts wine (home of the Concord grape, and an important historical source of European grape variety imports). Of course, the other states need love, too.--Kharker (talk) 23:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Wine Project survey

Howdy, I think after a year plus it maybe a good idea to evaluate how the Wine Project is doing and what we can do to improve. I created Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/Survey and encourage anyone interested to please share your views on various aspects of the Wine Project and Wikipedia's wine coverage. If you have any questions of your own, feel free to include them as well. Also, if anyone is "code savy" could they post a notice about the survey on either the project's front page or on top of this page in a way that won't be archive by the bot? I started looking at some pages about coding and figured I'm in over my head in this regard. Thanks! AgneCheese/Wine 22:25, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

California wine

I'd like to work on improving this High-Importance level article but in reviewing it I realized that it is essentially a History article with no details on the climate, geography, wine regions, grapes etc. Rather than do a cut n paste move to a History of California wine article, I did a page move to preserve best the history. I will be working on creating a new California wine article that follows the format of our other state/wine region articles like Washington wine, Mosel wine, Languedoc wine, etc. It'll probably take a few days so I just wanted to let everyone know so there is no panic with us temporarily not having a California wine article at the moment. AgneCheese/Wine 17:13, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Grape synonyms

Just a friendly FYI, if you are working on a grape article be sure to create an applicable redirects of synonyms so that someone searching for the grape under a different name won't think that there isn't an article and create a second article on the grape. I just uncovered something similar with Blauer Portugieser and Portugieser. I suppose the same advice would ring true if you writing about Chateaus, wine styles or regions with different spellings or accents. The nice thing is that redirects are cheap. ;) AgneCheese/Wine 00:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

1855 template update

I thought the old 1855 template could use some touchups, like collapsability and maybe a 'tighter' solution. I posted a version up at Template_talk:Bordeaux-1855, for opinions to be put. Changes, it should initially be collapsed, the old one was better and such, please have a say. MURGH disc. 01:49, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I took the liberty of changing that from 1885 to 1855. Tomas e (talk) 00:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that and the comments. Taking many into account I made another 2 versions of the various extremes and then applied some compromises to the original top suggestion (the top v1 is now actually v4 to make it extra confusing) so please comment. MURGH disc. 03:14, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
With the header problem taken care of, the template looks about like my initial level of ambition, a little tighter, collapsable, appears to belong to the WP family of templates.. The issues left are the language decision, and, since help from a template wiz opened gave way to new possibilities, the choice of standard blue monochrome or colours to distinguish between red and sweet (golden) white. Maybe I haven't found the ideal colours to represent this, but a consensus preference would be nice to conclude things. MURGH disc. 00:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Wine related issue on WP:AN/I

Not that it is anything to "celebrate" but I actually think this is a first. I mean wine is normally such a quiet, peaceful subject. :p Problematic employee POV pushing on Employers article. The article in question is the Armand de Brignac and it is quite a mess. Anyone interested in getting their hands dirty with this one? AgneCheese/Wine 09:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

As with Cristal below, do we really think that an individual (and as yet totally un-notable and devoid of Parker points) product should have it's own encyclopedic entry? WikiProject Wine doesn't really have the ambition to have article on each and every individual wine, does it? A description of a certain wine should rather be part of an article of Cattier Champagne, shouldn't it? Such a page should of course mention the fact that their vineyards are Premiers Cru, which is lower in classification than the Grands Cru vineyards which dominate real prestige champagne and even the modestly priced champagnes of many village cooperatives such as Mailly... :-) I also notice that they carefully avoid mentioning the time this bubbly spends on its lees, which is usually one of the "boast" parameters for prestige cuvées. It just seems like a proof of marketing cynicism in Champagne at even higher level than before. Tomas e (talk) 00:42, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
While I think Cristal certainly does merit its own article, I agree that not every wine brand merits its own article and would support a merge to Cattier Champagne (which probably would need to be created). I do have suspicions as well about the overall "quality" of this wine and (at the risk of sounding snobbish) think this is more of a case of flash in the pan marketing rather than the case of a distinguished or unique wine brand making a mark in the wine world. However I predict some resistance by non-wine project members who may view this wine as a Hip Hop or some pop culture icon. AgneCheese/Wine 08:36, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Considering all of that, it might be better to create a "champagne in popular culture" article, where this stuff can be added or omitted based on its relevance and notability to that, rather than wine in general. --mikaultalk 12:08, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
In fact, the Champagne (wine) article doesn't seem to have any information about the marketing of champagne after c. 1900! Nothing on the ups and downs of the champagne market during the 20th century, product placement, effective connection of champagne with luxury, effective/jealous protection of the champagne brand... Here's something that could be expanded, or perhaps be made into an article of its own! Tomas e (talk) 13:49, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I created Cattier (champagne) (that was the name of the redlink on the List of champagne producers page), and tried to focus on their frequent spectaculat bottlings to put Armand de Brignac in perspective. Tomas e (talk) 16:26, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there's real mileage in a cultural article, so I've made a start on Champagne in popular culture, just with stuff from Champagne (wine) for now. I have decent citable lists of "appearances" of champers in music, art, literature and film which I'll add in later. Then there's the various marketing angles to cover, which should deal with some of those placement issues, and probably a section on the rap star, rock star, formula one and ship launching stuff. It's fun to research, if anyone fancies lending a hand; I could particularly use some guidance with the crossover from the main Chamapgne article, ie. how much to duplicate, how much to move, etc.
We might not nail this AN/I problem in the process, but at least we can make it read better :o) --mikaultalk 19:52, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
And straight away, it's up for AfD :o/ --mikaultalk 19:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Champagne dreams and Hip Hop Trivia

Another article for some extra set of eyes Cristal (champagne). The issue is the sourcing and encyclopedic nature of the reference of Cristal in various Hip Hop and rap songs. I'd like to see a reliable, third party source to back up the claim that "Cristal assumed a place of prominence in Hip hop culture" or "It has been used as a status symbol by rappers, who make frequent reference to it in their music, often calling it cris or stal" rather then just examples and sources to music lyrics or videos. But other viewpoints are always welcomed. AgneCheese/Wine 16:01, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Does Cristal really justify an article of its own? Why not merge it with the Louis Roederer article (where it deserves a section), which would perhaps help to judge the encyclopedic relevance of hiphop lyrics in an article of a champagne house? Tomas e (talk) 00:20, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I like that suggestion a lot but another editors has put some good effort into finding reliable sources. As for the individual notability of Cristal, I think it probably does merit its own article along the lines of Dom Perignon having its own article separate from Moët et Chandon. Even before this hip/hop stuff, Cristal was an iconic wine in its own regard. AgneCheese/Wine 08:28, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind having Dom Perignon (only) in the M&C article, but I seem to recall that Dom Perignon is registrered as a separate domaine name (probably just for marketing purposes), which Cristal is not since it is Louis Roederer Cristal. Redirects of the type [[Domaine#Brand]] would lead information-seekers right anyway. But for the moment, I feel my wiki-contributing time could be spent better that doing this. Tomas e (talk) 13:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Wine

Hello everybody, I came across the Portal:Wine awhile ago and had noticed that it had not been updated in quite sometime. I mentioned something to Agne27 about it a couple months ago, but I got caught up in my graduate studies and my other projects here on Wikipedia, but I was going to offer to update the portal each month as I currently take care of the Portal:Food right now. I have a bit of free time now to organize the page a little bit, add some more items and set up a system to keep it updated. I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on it before I go jumping in and taking over something that someone else had been working on. Let me know what you people think.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 18:13, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that is a fine idea but I would also mention this to personally User:Charleenmerced (I'm not sure how much she watches this page any more) since she first started the portal. AgneCheese/Wine 00:37, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Carignane to Carignan page move discussion

Feel free to add your thoughts to the Talk:Carignane#Requested move page. AgneCheese/Wine 06:40, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Just passing through (waves) - life's been a bit frantic lately. May have some Wiki time after Christmas, but no guarantees. ;-/ But Carignan's a no-brainer IMO. Duly Talked, ditto the 'cool' Tempranillo debate. (summary: no it's not. ;-/) FlagSteward (talk) 18:45, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Moved - and the grape not the dab gets the Carignan page. Although the Talk pages haven't moved yet, if any admins want to do the necessary - I've asked the guy who moved the articles to do so. Whilst we're on the subject of moves, does anyone else think that Silvaner should be at Sylvaner? To my mind English always uses the 'y' spelling (influenced by Alsace), but when I tried to move it a few months ago people couldn't look beyond the thousands of Ghits from German sites (with an i). FlagSteward (talk) 14:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I have commited a Zin with Agne...

...and the result is a beautiful bouncing Zinfandel article. With no corny Zin references, I promise! :-) I honestly just meant to tweak some of text for WP:CSB and ended up rewriting the whole damn thing from scratch. I hate Wikipedia sometimes....
Fortunately Agne (with some help from Amatulic) took over just as I'd about had enough, which has kept the thing rolling until it can't be far off GA. Since it's a Top, it would be quite nice to nail it, it's certainly getting to the stage where more eyeballs would be useful to just generally copyedit, find the odd reference that we've not nailed down yet, that kind of thing. I even have a bottle of Primitivo lurking somewhere that I could take a pic of.FlagSteward (talk) 02:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh that sounds so dirty. :p Once some pics are added, I say go for it. You certainly did a great job and I was glad to help. As for the pics themselves, we definetely need a wine pic and a DREAM pic would have a side by side of Cali Zin, Primitivo and Crljenak Kaštelanski though I think the third wine would be hard to get. <wine snobbery> And in fairness, we probably should have a pic of the much malign White Zin if anyone is willing to be seen purchasing a bottle ;) </wine snobbery> A side by side with red Zin pic probably wouldn't be bad either though I did come across this lovely White Zin pic on Creative Commons that may worth a look. It looks a little dark for White Zin (maybe a wine cooler?) but the photo's author says it is. I do like the overall artistic quality of the pic. What do you guys think? AgneCheese/Wine 03:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You're sure it's the best shot of the wine we can get? Seems a shame to have to show it in plastic cups rather than glasses, and I must say, the colour does look a bit off.. <snicker> --mikaultalk 10:55, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, the plastic cups are what makes me really want to use the pic. :p But I just can't quite get over the impression that its is White Zin mixed with something or a wine cooler of sort. AgneCheese/Wine 01:23, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Plastic is probably quite appropraite for White Zin :-) but glass would be nice. What a shame it's just about unavailable in the UK. Hmm, actually it might be interesting to see if I can find any here, there might even be labelling differences, but I refuse to buy any on principle. ;-/ I've snapped my bottles of Primitivo and Zin, although the former is empty and I'm trying not to open the latter just yet ;-/ I'll mebbe wait a day or two to see how the bottle image debate goes. Oh and OT, but I've moved around the sections on Tempranillo a bit - the average English Wikipedian isn't so interested in every regional synonym or the viticulture stuff, so I moved it to the end as per the other grape articles. I've also tweaked the translation of the poem a bit so that it's clearer (I think?? 13th century Spanish isn't really my thing). I've not looked, but there's a 'dormant' photo of the white mutant at the top of that section, anyone looked to see what the copyright is on that? FlagSteward (talk) 14:40, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Italian stats

www.politicheagricole.it has good information on what DOCs use each grape, the basic requirements for each DOC and even some old production volume information, but my Italian isn't good enough to figure out where they hide the stats on acreages of each grape. I know that sounds a bit organised for the Italians to work out, but I'd guess the EU insist on it. Wein Plus has from somewhere got a stat for 17,000ha of Primitivo (compared to 21,000ha of Zin in California), and I trust WP enough that it'll do as a reference, but it would be nice to have an 'official' source. FlagSteward (talk) 17:36, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Oxford Companion 2006 ed. (article Primitivo, p. 547-548, signed by David Gleave MW) says "fell from 17,000 ha/42,000 acres in 1990 to just under 8,000 ha in 2000", and that its recent claim to fame "has staunched the loss of vineyards in the 21st century". Not quite official, but at least figures with a year on them. Tomas e (talk) 19:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I've since found a scientific paper that says it was 45,000 in 1970 - twice that of Zin - but now 8000. There must be an official source for that 8000 though. (and gov websites get updated annually, so we can keep on top of it). FlagSteward (talk) 15:10, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Label photos

That reminds me, have we got a definitive statement on the copyright issues associated with photos of labels and bottles? I think we're fine using a low-quality image of a bottle to illustrate a specific article about an individual wine, say Penfolds Grange as that's similar to the rules on using a book cover to illustrate an article about a book. But as I read the guidance, we get into dodgier territory when we use a copyrighted design (as a label is) to illustrate more general concepts, like "Chardonnay" for instance. I'm quite happy to be told otherwise, it's just that generating images is quite labour intensive (hmm - I've not got up most of my holiday snaps from September...), so I'd rather get it 'right' from the start. FlagSteward (talk) 02:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It maybe worth getting some more expert opinion but I do think the "low resolution" is the key. As long as its not a image that someone can make good quality copies of and "infringe" upon the copyright holders commercial interest, then I think we are okay. AgneCheese/Wine 03:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
AFAIK labels are ok as long as they don't take up the whole frame. So you can (and should, for good enc value) snap the entire bottle, ideally with a glass of the stuff inside, with impunity. Don't worry about resolution, it's best kept high-ish for quality reasons and has no bearing on copyright. --mikaultalk 11:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I've asked for more help over on Wikipedia:Media_copyright_questions#Wine_bottles_and_labels and tried to split up what images we might deal with and what articles we need to illustrate. I've also had a poke round WP:FAIR and similar pages - I hadn't realised that stuff published in the US before 1978 without a copyright tag is fair game - but that presumably only applies to US wineries, as normally the winery only sells ("publishes") directly in its own country. And that scanning labels in a US book would 'read through' as though you were scanning the original label, but it doesn't read through in UK-published books. Mick - the 'low res' thing is to comply wth 'fair use' requirements on stuff that's copyrighted, at least as I understand it labels count as 2D objects even if a bottle is 3D. Man this stuff gets complicated.... FlagSteward (talk) 14:33, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I haven't read anything about this for years, so I may be out of date, but the biggest issue is that, a few conventions aside, there's no such thing as international copyright law. What's freedom of panorama here isn't always fair use there, etc. I agree, you might be in a grey area with 2D scans of labels, but a 3D wine label appearing even quite prominently in a shot isn't, AFAIK, a copyright concern in most countries in the world. If I had to argue the case I suppose I would, but I've never been challenged yet <touches wood> --mikaultalk 00:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Thing is that the Wikigods tend to be pretty conservative about copyright, to avoid having to argue the case. AIUI they mainly worry about the law in the US, which is where the servers are, and the law in the country of publishing, as potentially Wikipedians in that country could be using the material. And the structure of publishing means that most books go through a few multinational publishing houses, which "publish" directly in different counties. With most of the wines that we would be interested in, they tend to be imported by middle men, so it could be argued that 'publishing' of labels happens only in the country where the winery is situated. I think I'm going to stick with pretty low-res stuff for labels, no more than 300-400px wide, just to be on the safe side. Incidentally Mick, did you get anywhere with your "tips for photoing wine"? I know I need some, although I'm getting better - that Grange one was one of my early efforts, I am getting better. Main problem for me is getting good lighting - I've ended up just using natural light, but we don't get much of that up at 52N at solstice time! (sun sets less than 8 hours after sunrise at the moment, it's dismal) FlagSteward (talk) 15:08, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
It's done, sort of, could do with being a little more concise of course; concentrating on glass & bottle shots will help, as will keeping it down to key pointers. I'll set up a subpage later today and maybe add some example pics this weekend: I'm very busy with work at the moment, worse luck :o/
Lighting-wise, a brightly-lit room is often just as practical as outdoor light, especially this time of year.. the kitchen's often a good choice, especially if it has ceiling-mounted fluorescent tube lighting. Re your scanned labels, 400px is probably big enough to read most detail, at least on-screen. If it was ever printed, that would equate to a 2 inch image at best, though still big enough to be descriptive. I still think you'd get more leeway if they were still on the bottles, as you're creating your own copyright in the act of photographing them, but it's probably academic anyway if the image is that small. The problem is that a 3D version might not have the label full-frame, and so would really need to be bigger. This brief discussion about logos is quite typical of peoples attitude to these things, even among our resident zealots. --mikaultalk 10:40, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
So is it then so that if a 3D detail image is tight enough to crop out the bottle, the legal view is different, and viewed same as a 2D scan? I've taken a few tight 3D label shots (User:Murgh#Images) and thought it went under own copyright-public release, but have I been wrong in tagging them with {{PD-self}}? MURGH disc. 11:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
If you took the photo, you owned the copyright to the photo and your releasing it into public domain is your prerogative. This also applies to a photo you might take of something already in the public domain. The problem here is that the things you photograph are often (though not all, esp the older ones) copyrighted works, so your photo should be other than a "straight" reproduction of them, ie, include more than just the works themselves. A number of your closeups (apart from making me bottle green with envy; did you get to taste these?) are quite close reproductions and certainly fall very close to that gray area FlagSteward is asking about. However there's visible aging and bottle curvature there, which makes a significant difference to that. I'm not one of those who is paranoid about copyright and see it as a two-way street: in some cases (like wine labels) no harm is being perpetrated, on the contrary, you are in fact raising the profile of the wine/winery/label/designer with your reproduction. Your PD-self license makes it clear you seek no gain for yourself and clearly refers to the photo you took, not the design on the label. Finally, if someone took your photo as published here and tried to reproduce it in print (as they are free to do under your license) it would be way too small (and curve distorted) to produce a quality copy. IANAL, but I can see no way in the world under which this could be construed as "damaging", and think you're on fairly solid ground. --mikaultalk 13:13, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, but that's comforting enough until someone raises a complaint. I also assumed the wear and tear and amateur setup made some difference from a crisp industrial lit shot. It is interesting where wine labels compare to WP featured illustrations of books, comic books certainly, where Fairuse is taken rather more boldly by justification of 'example of work', 'critical commentary', 'significant publication events' and such. Ultimately I think it's difficult to imagine any producer would be offended to see their product visible in the world, but with the goal to have a free-yet educationally well-illustrated Wikipedia, the guidelines seem fuzzy.

And no, I get to taste too few of these gems my savvy grandfather left us, except the few that look damaged (and yet, a 1953 Petit-Village reduced to below its shoulders, with a wormwoody cork to battle with for half an hour, was in the end spectacular beyond anything I've ever tasted.MURGH disc. 16:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm jealous Murgh. ;-/ BTW, Amatulic has also been raising the issue of bottle photos as advertising over on Talk:Zinfandel - personally I think there's more problems on the copyright side, but people might want to contribute there.... FlagSteward (talk) 15:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Notable wine regions in Grape Variety articles

A very interesting and rather important discussion is going on over at the Zinfandel talk page. In addition to another very pertinent discussion about describing (or how to neutrally describe) stereotypical attributes of wine made from grapes in certain regions, the discussion is mainly focusing on how to determine neutrally if a wine region is "notable for" or "well known" for producing a grape/wine. The center point seems to be between grape growing (acres planted) and the reputation of the wine from grapes in an area. All opinions are welcomed and wine project members are encouraged to participate because hammering out this important point should have an impact on the look of our wine articles across the board. AgneCheese/Wine 09:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Lists, dabs and cats

Just to say I've fixed {{wine}} so that it now works if you assess as Dab, Disambig, Cat, List, Template - as you can see on the main page, Lists now come up on the bot statistics. I've got all 200-odd wine categories loaded up in AWB to assess when I've got a brainless moment, so don't worry about doing those, but I thought I'd highlight that this option now exists. And also let me know if I've broken anything... Oh and Agne, talking of the list of cats, we seem to have a load of Geelong cats in the hierarchy that don't belong there - I suspect that's something to do with you? ;-/ I guess that "Geelong" doesn't belong here, "Geelong wine" might. FlagSteward (talk) 15:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't remember tagging Geelong or doing anything with Category:Geelong. Does it have to do with the Category:Wine regions of Victoria cat? AgneCheese/Wine 15:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the main Geelong cat was in WRoV, and it was inheriting down - I think I've fixed it. I'm not sure I needed to set up a cat for Geelong wine region and Mildura WR, but I have anyway.FlagSteward (talk) 19:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I do not think we need these. Category:Wine regions of Victoria will do. The Mildura one was empty. The Geelong one contained only the article on Geelong itself and that was in Category:Wine regions of Victoria. I removed it from the Geelong Wine Region cat making that empty. I was then bold and speedy deleted both categories. We can always recreate if they are going to be substantially occupied but I do not think that will ever be the case. --Bduke (talk) 22:48, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Just to say that I've now assessed all the cats I could find - they're now at Category:Category-Class_Wine_articles, so feel free to use them freely on articles. And do tag any other categories that you find, there's bound to be some lurking out there. I'll admit that there might be one or two where fingers and thumbs got mixed up and the wrong country tag went on - I know I caught 2-3 like that. But I thought I was being nice giving all the regional ones country Project tags of some kind, although I didn't fancy looking up US state Projects.
OT, I've created stubby articles for Oeil de Perdrix and Rhone Rangers if anyone wants to have a go with those, they were more red link killers than serious attempts at articles, but the link between ODP and White Zin is DYKable (damn, I didn't copy the refs, but they're in the Zinfandel article. Anyway, I'm just about off for Christmas now, time for some serious drinking rather than just writing about it!!! FlagSteward (talk) 14:56, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
LOL, best wishes! I fret that outside of a few get together with friends that I will have plenty of time this year to work on wine articles during the holidays. The kids are scattered across the country all too "pregnant" to travel. :/ AgneCheese/Wine 15:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Wine Technology

Probably one for when Bethling has a moment, but as part of the Zin article I found that we didn't have an article on spinning cones. We do now, and it's a sufficiently non-wine thing that it needs a distinct article, but I was wondering whether we needed an article that brought together 'new' techniques like SC, reverse osmosis, microoxygenation and so on. The existing articles on say RO don't really cover the wine angle. Obviously winemaking would be the first home for it, but I suspect that one could probably make a full article out of it, and it would be a nice one to have. FlagSteward (talk) 15:22, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll try and look into it, most likely at some point after the new year :) I'll admit I don't know too much about some of the new technology out there, but I'm sure I can find some references in the sources I have. --- The Bethling(Talk) 10:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I might have a few good sources too though I do lack the context and background knowledge of winemaking to probably use them effectively. Let me know when you get on the article and I could probably help with referencing the stuff that you already know to reliable sources for the sake of WP:V and WP:NOR. AgneCheese/Wine 14:23, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Get our Tops off?

...the list of Top nominations if they've been around for long enough? It looks like we're agreed that Guyot and NY wine aren't going to make it, do we have any formal way of ending a nomination period? I've seen other Projects have a rule that once a majority have opposed a nom for 14 days, then the nom is judged to have lapsed. And incidentally, I've nommed the Glossary of wine terms for a Top since Lists are now eligible for proper assessment. FlagSteward (talk) 19:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, we never really established anything formal (do we really need to?). I think we've given the articles more than an adequate opportunity to garner support so I see no problem with moving them. AgneCheese/Wine 13:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
We should not be too formal. Seasons Greetings --Symposiarch (talk) 18:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
I just thought it made us look a bit rubbish having votes from 7 April still outstanding at Christmas, if there was some formal criterion then we could clean these things up more quickly without having complaints that we're depriving people of democracy or some such. I'm quite happy to leave them a month if you want, but 8 months just seems a long time.... FlagSteward (talk) 01:24, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree that 8 months is a little crazy. One month does seem fair. I just don't know if we need to formalize or crystallize a time table. An entry could be put up and within 2 weeks get 10-12 opposes and we'd probably shelve it earlier then a month just because the circumstance warrants it. AgneCheese/Wine 14:25, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Bot archive dates

I did give a detailed edit summary but I figure I might make it more noticeable in case anyone had an objective. I lowered the archive bots time from 19 days to the 10 days that I believed it was originally. There is more activity on the page and we were starting to have stale conversations linger on the page for quite some day. While I don't think we should go lower than 10 days, if someone feels that it should be higher I would have no objections to changing the date. AgneCheese/Wine 14:29, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Wine

The Wine Portal has been slightly reorganized, with a couple new sections for featuring wineries and people in the wine industry along with some other new things including full archives. It has also been updated a bit early for January and will be updated once per month when I update the Portal:Food. The news section I slack on a bit, updating just a couple times a month, if not once a month with some interesting articles. As I know this projects has quite an effort in the DYK realm, feel free to forward them to me when you put them on the main page and I will add them to the portal.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 21:37, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

The Wine Portal is also up for Peer review which is the step prior to submitting it for formal featured portal status. Please feel free to stop by and comment.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 22:45, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh wow, that is pretty nifty. Thanks Chris for taking up this task. AgneCheese/Wine 01:45, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

"I'm not drinking any *bleeping* Merlot!"

And that's final! :p Um, yeah. Anyways. There is currently a discussion (well hopefully there will be a discussion, right now we just have some unfortunate reverting) about the presence of a long list of unsourced trivia over at Talk:Sideways. I've been keeping my eye on this article because it is culturally relevant to the American wine industry. Sort of like Mondovino is to the globalization of wine debate. Haven't added the banner to it. I guess I probably should add it, unless any wine project member has an objection about it being out of our scope. AgneCheese/Wine 08:40, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Sylvaner/Silvaner

(splitting section. FlagSteward (talk) 01:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC))

Eh, I don't feel too strongly either way but I will note that in the States it is normally Silvaner and that the Brits Clarke and Robinson mostly refer to it with an "i" as well. AgneCheese/Wine 15:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
That surprises me - sure you're not just seeing it in a German context? The only Oz book I have doesn't mention it in the index ;-/ but Jancis is normally very precise about "i" for Germans and "y" for Alsace, I thought she normally defaulted to "y" though when talking generally. FWIW both Johnson and Broadbent use "y" most of the time, and the dictionary type books I've had refer to Sylvaner (Silvaner). The German thing complicates matters, but for talking about the grape rather than German wine, y is definitely "normal". Here'san example of a German supermarket in the UK selling German wines with a "y". I'd not seen it before but their wine buyer maintains a blog - interesting seeing life from the POV of someone buying lots of, ahem, "good value" wine. Still, I'm amazed to see a beerenauslese for ~$US8, even if it is Ortega and Optima, must be worth a go. FlagSteward (talk) 01:20, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Yeap. - Oz Clarke Encyclopedia of Grapes pg 242-243 Harcourt Books 2001 ISBN 0151007144. Though I will note that while the section header is "Silvaner", he does uses the "y" for talking about Alsace as well. Apparently Italy also uses the "y" too.
J. Robinson (ed) "The Oxford Companion to Wine" Third Edition pg 630-631 Oxford University Press 2006 ISBN 0198609906. Silvaner is the main entry for the grape with the "Sylvaner entry making a brief mention of the alternate spelling in France and directing folks to the Silvaner entry for the full details about the grape.
J. Robinson Vines, Grapes & Wines pg 170-172 Mitchell Beazley 1986 ISBN 1857329996. Main entry is "Silvaner" as is general usage and description of the grape but you are right that she does switch to the "y" once talking about Alsace.

Again, no strong feelings either way. (Kinda like Syrah/Shiraz) If I had to be pinned down and make a choice for either grape, I would be more partial to the French spelling in both instance just because of the large role of French wine in history. But unlike Carignan, there is no gross inappropriateness to the grape being at either title. IMO. AgneCheese/Wine 14:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that i or y is no big deal, and I would favour "i" because I've seen & drunk more bottles with that spelling, the German acreage is probably the largest (5300 ha against 1500 ha in Alsace), and Franconia in Germany is probably the only region where Silvaner is considered at all good. For those who can read German, Wein-Plus, tells us that it its usually spelled with "y" in Switzerland and Austria (which could mean that a few "y"s have crept across the border), and that its official name in Germany is "Grüner Silvaner". Tomas e (talk) 23:08, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Oh I can quite accept that there's a lot of German 'i' about, it's just that in my experience, in the UK at least, it's always spelt with a 'y' except sometimes when talking about specific German wines. To be honest I'm a bit surprised Jancis uses 'i' in the OCW, on her website there are examples of her using 'y' in general contexts and there's even a mention of a German producer talking about his 'y' wine. Maybe that reflects a bit of targetting the OCW at North America, when 'y' is so common in the UK? I guess it's tough to resolve 70/30 situations like this definitively, I guess I can live with the article retaining its 'original' spelling even if it's not British, damnit! :-)) FlagSteward (talk) 13:00, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Germany's 13 wine-growing regions

I supposed we've all made our New Year's resolutions, and pledged to contribute more articles, edits, images and references to WikiProject Wine, and to incorporate all the latest grape genetic research results in all wine-related articles. On that note, I created articles (or stubs) for the five "missing" German wine regions. This means that we now have articles on all 13, and that the Template:German wine regions now actually points to wine region articles rather than rivers and such. I can't help but pointing out that German Wikipedia, although some of their articles are much longer and deeper than our's, actually has articles on only 11 of 13 German wine regions, since their articles de:Bergstraße and de:Saale-Unstrut-Region are general geographical region articles (and are both rather lacking in wine content).
If anyone is worried that we'll run out of work related to German wine, I'd like to point out that several of the regional articles still are stubs (and some not entirely POV-free) and only one (Mosel wine) is classified as "B" (mostly thanks to Agne's efforts - BTW, compare our article to de:Mosel (Weinbaugebiet)). After that, there are 39 districts, 167 collective vineyard sites, 2,658 single vineyard sites (which were 21,000+ pre-1971), and 68,598 vineyard owners (as of the 1999 viticultural survey) to take care of, so we're not likely to run out of work on German wine-related subjects anytime soon. Oh yes, I almost forgot, and 59 national and hundreds of regional wine queens throughout the years. Tomas e (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

(Agne cackles with devilish laughter and rubs her hands menacingly together at the thought of new DYK fodder) Excesssssssssssssslent...... AgneCheese/Wine 02:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Enoteca/Vinothek in English?

I was thinking of adding a small article on the Enoteca "phenomenon", which originated in Italy, and is usually called Vinothek in Austria and Germany. Now, I absolutely don't want to call it a "wine shop" (which I've seen some of them translate themselves as on their webpages), because the whole point of the article would be to describe the interesting hybrid of wine shop, wine bar and tasting directly at the producer's that to me is the "geniune Enoteca/Vinothek", plus that it is often directed at visitors rather than a more permanent clientel. So - any suggestions on what to call it from anyone who understands English? No Italian Wikipedia article seems to exist, but de:Enoteca + a few other, and de:Vinothek would be my starting point. Tomas e (talk) 15:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Those -teca and -thek suffixes correspond to -theque in English – as in "discotheque" – so the literal choice would be "enotheque". Assuming there's nothing like this wonderful idea in the UK/USA (and if not, why not?!) I guess you're stuck with that clumsy mouthful.. or even "oenotheque", if you wanted to get pedantic about it :o) --mikaultalk 16:28, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, both enotheque and oenotheque do give some wine-related Google hits, though many of them refer to Dom Perignon Oenotheque, the even cheaper :-) late-disgorged version of M&C's bubbly. I saw vinotheque mentioned as a synonym. But how well-recognized are they by native speakers? Would they even be thought as the name of a disco rather than a specific type of wine outlet, as in "At 11 o'clock tonight at The Oenotheque, DJ Gallo & The Mondavis present their latest hits"? So far, it looks like I'm prefering "Enoteca" with redirects from the other forms. Tomas e (talk) 16:52, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I dunno.. the more you typed "oenotheque", the more I liked the sound of it! "I'm just off down the oenotheque, don't wait up." Yep, I could go with that :o) --mikaultalk 17:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmm, that is interesting. It is also a tricky problem because I can see some "overly enthusiastic NPP" wanting to AfD it as a "neologisms" just because of a lack of English sources using the word. It would certainly survive the AfD because sources on the concept exist in other languages but things like that haven't stop some of those "overly enthusiastic" New Page Patrollers from putting a speedy or Afd tag on worthwhile articles before. (Remember Champagne in pop culture? :p) Those concerns shouldn't prevent us from creating the article, we should just be ready for any extra hoops we'll need to jump through. AgneCheese/Wine 01:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Point taken. I'll try to locate some other sources than dewiki or webplaces of specific "oenothques" before I post the article. I'm not sure I'll come up with more than newspaper articles on "oenotheques". The article will however have three interwiki-links from start, if that helps. Tomas e (talk) 01:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I've never heard of a word for the concept in English. The only thing I can think of is "wine bar" but of course that doesn't describe an "Enoteca". Oenotheque or enotheque look and sound quite weird and foreign to me. I'll ask around to other native English speakers and see if I come up with anything. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 13:33, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
The Spanish bodega, a kind of a cross between a UK off-license, a wine bar and a wine cellar, might be a useful variant. They're so ubiquiitous here I was thinking of starting an article but the name isn't English, so I always imagined it would be a no go. Thing is, there is a disambig page called Bodega.. otherwise, I'd agree there's no mileage in an article with a neologistic title. If we can think of a good catch-all title (something better than Wine sampling outlets but along those lines) we could redirect all these other terms there. Are either of these ideas worth trying, d'you think? --mikaultalk 17:15, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm... I thought bodega was something of a Spanish catch-all phrase for a wine cellar (real or more "symbolic"), one used for production or for sales/serving. Since many Spanish wineries are called Bodegas this-or-that, I'm not sure it would be a good choice. BTW, there is actually a Spanish wiki article es:Enoteca! I must say that this turned out to be a more difficult question than I had imagined. Tomas e (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
I think I would tend towards an Enoteca article, with appropriate redirects from Vinothek etc - I certainly associate them most with Italy, and Jancis has a Enoteca entry in the OCW. The trouble is that English-speaking countries have far less of a tradition of the PDO-type of organisation needed to create a "regional" enoteca, it's far more down to individual companies to market themselves - and of course the original English-speaking country has relatively little indigenous wine to serve in an enoteca!! I guess "Maison des Vins" is probably the French equivalent, at least that's what the one in Chateauneuf describes itself as (incidentally their website has lots of good history for the CdP article if you want it). As for neologisms, from a Wikipedia point of view Vinotheque would be less ambiguous than the confusion between British oenotheque and US enotheque, but as I say, I think enoteca is better. (OT, but I've expanded the blush section of the Rosé article, input would be welcome) FlagSteward (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

New article bot?

I've just come across User:AlexNewArtBot, a bot that sweeps new articles for certain phrases and assigns them to Projects according to certain rules. I figured it wouldn't hurt to set it up with phrases such as, ummm, "wine"? Any others? FlagSteward (talk) 02:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I thought about this before but my concern was that "wine" is used in such a broad scope of articles that the bot may tag articles that are very much out, or on the periphery,of our scope-not new but as examples, Alexandria, Virginia, Prince Marko, Trivial name, etc which all contains wiki-links to wine. I love the idea of the bot, but we would need more "buzz words" to limit the potentially large number of false positives. Otherwise we would be adding unneeded workload in removing the tags from articles out of our scope. AgneCheese/Wine 02:26, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Something VERY cool

User:Henrik came up with a tool to measure page views for Wikipedia articles at http://stats.grok.se/. (Village Pump discussion is here) So far it only includes last months and this month but it is really neat. For instance, Wine was viewed over 85,000 times in Dec. Zinfandel was view almost 11,000 times with a highpoint of activity on the Dec 23-24 when it was also featured on DYK. Second wine was a DYK on Dec 19th and featured on the Main page. That day it received almost 2000 views. We can even watch the activity of this page. This is lots of fun and I'll probably find a way to incorporate some of this stuff into the newsletter. AgneCheese/Wine 03:14, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Greenspun illustration project and Wine related images

For those that haven't heard, the Wikimedia Foundation has started a project to try and improve the quality of illustrations on Wikipedia by offering to pay illustrators for their contributions. Examples can be found here. A page has been set up to take requests for needed images. Philip_Greenspun_illustration_project/Requests I think this is a FANTASTIC opportunity for us to get some very valuable assistance in getting wine related images (like a diagram of the structure of a grape or illustration of different styles of trellis, etc). I'd like to compile a rough list of ideas and suggestion for what we should request. At this point they are specifying diagrams and not doing things like maps. For more information just follow the links to Meta. AgneCheese/Wine 13:29, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Diagram requests

Here are some of my thoughts, let me know you think AgneCheese/Wine 13:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

  • Grape - Diagram of the inner components of a grape berry. -Requested
Seems like an excellent idea to have this kind of illustration, it would be my top priority on this list. Tomas e (talk) 01:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Vine training - (Need to create article first apart from Trellis (agriculture)) drawings of things like the Goblet, Guyot, Geneva Double Curtain, etc. If anyone has got a copy of Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia pgs 19-21 is what I have in mind.
  • Wine tasting - The Aroma wheel, like the UC-Davis/Noble one. - No needed, though there is a partial image on the Ann C. Noble article
  • Micro-oxygenation - Diagram of the process
  • Malolactic fermentation - Diagram of the process
  • Sherry - Flow chart diagram of the different styles and how the wine could progress from one style to the next In hindsight, I don't think this is needs to be a request for Project Greenspun. Though I'm certainly not the most tech-savvy person, this seems to be something that we maybe able to come up with in Powerpoint or something. AgneCheese/Wine 01:16, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Fermentation (wine) - Diagram of the process. From the request on the article's talk page - Requested
    • What about good maps of wine regions? Would they "fit" into such a project? Tomas e (talk) 01:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
According to the request page at this stage in the project they are not accepting request for photographs or maps. I know they are desperately needed but maybe they will add that option in the future. AgneCheese/Wine 04:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Update I went ahead and submitted the request for the Grape diagram. Any other ideas, endorsements or request? AgneCheese/Wine 01:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Update #2 Submitted Fermentation request. I wanted to submit the ones of Micro-oxygentaion and Malolactic fermentation but I couldn't find any online published examples of the process to help the artist along. If anyone knows of a link, let me know. AgneCheese/Wine 15:51, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
After reading more about the project it looks like the request for this first round will go through to the beginning of January and be finalized into a list of the 50 most needed/significant request. AgneCheese/Wine 22:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

List of needed wine region maps

While unfortunately, Project Greenspun is not yet working with map production, I have been getting a little bolder in working on maps myself using images from Commons. Some haven't turned out that bad like Image:Nahe wine regions.JPG and Image:Northern Rhone Valley wine regions.JPG. For improvements the Graphics Lab project has been very helpful. It maybe worthwhile to start compiling a list of articles that would be most in need of wine region maps. If/when Project Greenspun expands to maps, we will have the list ready or in the meantime we can see what we can fashion ourselves. AgneCheese/Wine 06:52, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I think they worked out quite OK. Actually, I was a bit surprised to see a Nahe map! I would have thought making a map of that region would not make it to anyone's top 100 or so of wine maps to make... :-) Wine maps like "the location of 5th Crus within the Pauillac appellation", "grape varieties grown on different vineyard plots of Château Pichon Longuville Comtesse de Lalande", or "location of Moët & Chandon's press houses" would have surprised me less. :-) :-)
When it comes to truly great and professional-looking wine maps (no offence intended to Agne...)
  1. There is (was) a German Wikipedia user, de:Benutzer:Domenico-de-ga, who apparently is a cartographer. He made the detailed map featured in our Bordeaux wine article - if you look closely you see some German text in it. (Someone else transferred it from dewiki, he doesn't seem to be a Commons user.) He also made the map in de:Elsass (Weinbaugebiet), but seems to have gone inactive. I tried to contact him without any luck, to hear if it would be possible to translate the text in his wonderful Elsass map to an English-langauge Alsace map. If you know him, please bring him back!!!
  2. There is also a Commons user, Lofo7, who doesn't have a user page or babel box, but there is a fr:Utilisateur:Lofo7 who has used these maps in frwiki wine articles, which could probably be a clue. :-) In a flurry in September(-October) *he uploaded a number of French wine maps in a less detailed style than Domenico's, but quite elegant. I just changed the map for French wine to Lofo7's version. I think I'm going to try to contact him/her on the frwiki user page to encourage the production of more maps (and perhaps map versions with a few words of English instead of French), because I really like them!
So, what I'm trying to say is - not just could we look at the possibilities of drafting users who already concentrate more on contributing maps rather than text, when it comes to maps it should be much simpler to use the output of users from other language versions, if we can't find them on enwiki. If you find other good wine map-makers in any language version, please "out" them here. Tomas e (talk) 17:25, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Oooh, very nice maps indeed. I have say that it is really awesome to have project members that are active in the other wiki-languages. It does enhance the collaborative nature of the project and really opens up new doors. Great work. AgneCheese/Wine 02:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Update: I just discovered that there wasn't even a commons:Category:Wine maps! Amazing! Aren't there any gnomes at Commons, or is it just that they tend to drink more Jolt Cola than wine in their dens? :-) Anyway, now it's created, and so far I've put 20 maps there, although there might be some more. I suppose that category is a good starting point for anyone who wants to starts making missing wine maps. You'll not run out of work anytime soon. Tomas e (talk) 19:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh no offense at all. My maps are very distinctly amateur and mostly intended to be a stop gap solution till that magical day when all the free images we could ever hope for appear. :) The same with my photos. I figure that some visual representation is better than none but if anyone ever finds anything of better quality, by all means replace away. We want the best that we can get for our wine articles, every chance we can. AgneCheese/Wine 01:59, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Zork from the plant Spam

Any extra eyes on the Alternative wine closures article would be appreciated. We have a SPA editor who has been incorporating advert language into the Zork section of the article for many months. A few editors and anons have had issues with this before and I did a dramatic pairing down, it was all unreferenced anyways. I'm sure more info can be said, it was just hard to see it through the spam. I requested that the editor open up a discussion on the talk page about the type of info that he would like in the article so we'll see if that develops. Again, any other eyes or opinion would be appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 06:31, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

It's just Tolmach

OK, this is more of a news thing, but there's some citable meat for the Robert M. Parker, Jr. article :

The Decanter account of the original story in the LA Times is nice because it has comments - including from Adam Tolmach claiming to have been misquoted (a bit), plus other luminaries such as Bob Lindo. The Parker article is one that always seems to need copyediting to a greater or lesser degree, but this controversy is probably notable enough to go in there - it's already in some of the national newspapers in the UK. PS Have people stabilised on the Zinfandel article yet? Think we were still waiting for Amatulic, would be nice to get that on the way to GA and out of the way. Initial comments on GA-ness would be helpful (aside from the California county thing) FlagSteward (talk) 17:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Interesting read. I see that the Robert M. Parker, Jr. article has gone through quite a bit of editing lately. Though overall, it still needs some work. It seems that article is like pendulum going between POV extremes of being overly critical or overly flattering. Right now it seems to be a little too much on the flattering side. While I really wouldn't label it a "controversy", per se, I think the type of criticism that involves a winemaker not really liking his own wines because they are made to appease Parker is certainly notable and worthy of inclusion. As for Zinfandel, I too would like to see the ball get back moving on that. We've got some high hopes with this one. I'm not sure how active it is lately, but you may want to put it up for peer review as well. AgneCheese/Wine 17:40, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Wine & Food Festivals

While searching for other links, I've came across these articles-Tallahassee Wine and Food Festival, Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, Art of Food & Wine Palm Desert, and San Diego Bay Wine & Food Festival and wondered what other wine project members think about these types of article and, more pertinently, if we should tag these and bring them under the project's. On the surface, I think they probably all would basic Wikipedia's policies of basic notability. While I haven't looked too hard, typically any type of festival would have some third party news coverage. But I'm not sure if any is really significant to the "world of wine" that would merit much interest and development from a project standpoint. In general, my personal opinion is that these festivals are more of a "community thing" rather than a wine thing. The only type festival that I think really has any significance to the world of wine is the Hospices de Beaune, only because it seems to have an effect on the prices of Burgundy wine. What do you guys think? AgneCheese/Wine 17:40, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Wine Blogging Wednesday

Hey guys, I have a fun little idea. How about the Wine Project participate in Wine Blogging Wednesday by working on the articles related to that month's theme? For those not familiar with Wine Blogging Wednesday, it is essentially a once a month collaboration of 50+ wine blogs that all blog on the same day about a particular theme. This month it was Petite Sirah which can you read a recap of it over here. I've been reading it for almost two years and it has always been a good read as you get a diverse range of views on wine. I think Wikipedia could contribute a lot to this event by making sure whichever article is related to that month's theme be in great shape by the time the Wine Blogging Wednesday comes around. Alot of these bloggers use Wikipedia as a resource anyway and this is a way of being particularly relevant to them and to their readers who maybe curious to learn more about that month's theme. For anyone that is interested next month's theme is Friuli-Venezia Giulia wine which will be hosted by Fork & Bottle's blog on Jan 16th. Let's see if we can get that article up to a high B status by then. :) AgneCheese/Wine 11:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, in addition to the main Friuli article and any red links that appear we also have several Friuli-Venezia Giulia DOCs and redlink DOCG articles that could be worked on. Another set of articles would be the grapes that are important to the region like Tocai Friulano, Pinot blanc, Malvasia, Ribolla Gialla and Vitovska to name a few. AgneCheese/Wine 12:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Update: The main Friuli wine article has been created and most of the major grape articles have been expanded. Any comments, suggestions or critiques on those articles are always welcomed. The next major focus is all the red links of the DOCs and DOCGs. AgneCheese/Wine 18:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
Update: Well I got the two most significant DOCs done-Colli Orientali del Friuli and Collio Goriziano. Didn't really see any good DYK fodder, but if anyone with a fresh set of eyes see ones. Feel free to nominate. I'm not sure how many good sources that'll be found for the other DOCs to make articles beyond a stub. I'm wondering if the best route is to combine them into a sort of DOCs of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia type article. Any thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 14:55, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Good-Article coordinator/liaison for Wine articles

Howdy guys. As part of the upcoming newsletter, I thew out a flyer idea about a GA-coordinator/liaison (or any better name :P) to help identify and shepherd wine through the GA process. I don't anticipate this being a one-man affair, with wine project members helping to get the article fine tuned and responding to GA reviewers question, but there does probably need to be a point man type person to help focus the project's efforts. I feel like I've got a lot on my plate already which is why I'm not personally volunteering but I will always be ready and willing to help out. Anyone whose is interested, is encouraged to take a stab at it. There is no commitment or bureaucracy. More than one person could fill the role and you can step down anytime you like. And of course anyone is free to work on and nominate a wine article on their own to take through the GAC process. This is just a volunteer position to help coordinate some of the project's effort. AgneCheese/Wine 07:13, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I would be very willing to coordinate with GA and identify articles that are ready. I'm an active GA project member with dozens of reviews to my name, and I know the criteria in and out. I'm also a Wine project member, though I've been somewhat inactive of late. I couldn't be doing any of the reviewing myself unfortunately (of course), but I think I'm a prime candidate to identify articles that either currently ready or how articles can be tailored to pass GA with flying colors. VanTucky talk 19:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Excellent! You're right in that you are a great candidate. I know Flag request a sort of cursory pre-GA review of Zinfandel (outside of the POV tag issue which still needs to be iron out). It would be interesting to see how close that article is to GA. It also seems like we do have a fair amount of Category:B-Class Wine articles that could be close. (And if they are really far away from GA class, they should probably be downgraded to start class). I don't know how much time you can invest but if you see an article that is close but has some "to-do"s, probably posting your review and dropping a notice here on the talk page would probably be enough to get some action on the article. Would you also be interested in giving updates or being interviewed every newsletter about our progress? AgneCheese/Wine 06:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd be happy to pitch in at the newsletter. Right now I'm compiling a list of GA potential candidates that either are ready or nearly ready for nomination. VanTucky 03:50, 15 January 2008 (UTC)