Sunday, February 21, 2010

Bad Bloggers

If you think wine writers make me grumpy, some bloggers are worse. At least wine writers have copy editors to keep their facts straight. None of this is required for bloggers. In fact, most blogger lack rudimentary writing skills.

But wait, I can live with poor writing, but poor knowledge of wine is unforgivable - if you are writing about wine.

For example, this blog appeared on Cellar Tracker. "Tasted by pnwsun on 1/17/2010: was looking for a buttery chard; this wasn't it. the description mentioned a buttery taste but we didn't notice it. nice wine but tasted more like a sauvignon blanc. a mineral aspect with slight fruit at the finish. (62 views)"

Anyone that would confuse this wine with a Sauvignon Blanc does not know much about Sauvignon Blanc. Since the wine in question is oak aged and 100% malolactic, it would even be hard to confuse it with a Fume Blanc. The bottle screams chardonnay. Yes, Chardonnay can have a minerality, but not this one. What I really suspect is that this bottle was corked and this blogger does not recognize TCA. A corked wine will have diminished fruit. This wine is bottled with a technical cork (Twin Top) which has less incidence of TCA than natural cork, but we still get about 1 in 500 with TCA.

Then there is the picture of the label. It shows Bonair's old 'Reserve' label which hasn't been used since 2005. The wine in question is the Yakima Valley label, not the 'Reserve', and retails for $9.99.

The 'Reserve' label was replaced in 2006 by the Rattlesnake Hills Estate Bottled label. The wine commented on is not the replacement for the old 'Reserve' Chardonnay. The Rattlesnake Hills Estate Bottled Chardonnay retails for $20. This wine is barrel-fermented in Burgundian (Bill Gates' spell-check thinks these should be Burundian Barrels, but I think Microsoft is wrong. Bill Gates can drink Burundian wine, I'll stick to Burgundian.) barrels imported for Burgundy each year made from the forests of Vosges. This wine most nearly resembles the great Meursaults of any non-French wine.

With the internet, everyone can be an expert. But that doesn't make them right.

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