Archive for the ‘Mr. Grumpy’ Category
Are American Wine Experts Killing American Wine Culture?
February 23rd, 2010 by Tom Johnson
I’ve got a theory. My theory is: all the stuff wine people do to make wine more accessible to non-wine drinkers paradoxically makes wine seem more complicated. I mean, if it weren’t complicated, you wouldn’t have to simplify it, right?
Maybe all the advice columns, the helpful taste descriptions, the food-and-wine pairing formulae and admonitions to [...]
Tags: wine
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Think About This Next Time You Trust a Wine Review
February 22nd, 2010 by Tom Johnson
I’ll get to a bigger round-up of the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers tonight after I get my life back in some sort of order. But for now, there is one thing that’s really sticking with me.
In one breakout session, we had a blind tasting. There were maybe ten people in the group, and the [...]
Tags: 100 Point Scales
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Contemplating a Work of Fiction
February 19th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
After three days with an impressive group of professional wine writers, I come away not only with notes about food and wine, but also with the plot outline of a terrific murder mystery. I got the title from a cooking demonstration at the Culinary Institute of America: The Taste of the Caper.
One of the wonderful [...]
Posted in Mr. Grumpy, Not Particularly Anything | Comments (1)
1 Wine Grammarian
February 16th, 2010 by Tom Johnson
1 Wine Dude lets his inner grammar nerd run free:
I give up trying to convince everyone to use the words variety and varietal properly. From now on, just do whatever the hell you want. GO AHEAD. Even though it doesn’t mean the same as “variety…” Even though its primary definition is as an adjective, not a noun (unless it’s [...]
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We Do This To Ourselves
February 2nd, 2010 by Tom Johnson
People — me, for example — who bemoan government’s tendency to treat wine more as a drug than a food, need to be more careful how we speak of our beverage of choice. This is from a press release on a Valentine’s Day Dinner:
Alcohol, tax and gratuity are additional.
It would have been too much trouble [...]
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