The discussion about Jeff Leve’s wonderful The Wine Cellar Insider had me thinking about what other wine-related websites people find useful for tasting notes and information. To some extent, I’d include WB and Cellartracker as among the very best at this, but I was thinking particularly about websites that have a singular voice.
Honorable Mention: Fine Wine Geek (The Prof is knowledgeable as heck when it comes to Piedmont and SQN, but I wish the site was a bit more user friendly) The Wine Pundit (Tim Heaton’s Italian wine site is very good; I haven’t explored much because I only recently found out about it, but his notes on Cellartracker have been invaluable) The Prince of Pinot (he tends to like a pretty broad range of styles)
I know most of us use it for prices etc. but if you click on the producer, appellation or specific vineyard it takes you to other pages full of information. The current Volnay thread prompted me to look up Clos de la Chappel and with two clicks I could look at every producer making wines from there, history, region etc.
Jamie Goode’s wineanorak site probably ought to be in there, though I don’t personally use it.
A personal favourite is Geoff Kelly’s NZ site, someone who shares a love of properly mature wines (over-mature some might say), is not afraid to be controversial, but doesn’t overdo it for effect. Mainly focused around tasting events, at which he’s generally very good at putting an alternative benchmark / ringer or two in, mainly to avoid the risk of parochial attitudes creeping in, or to put a couple of similar Kiwi wines up against a tasting of a European region’s wines. http://www.geoffkellywinereviews.co.nz/
[EDIT] One more, though the volume of tasting notes has dipped over recent years. I still really like the style (very much influenced by Broadbent’s writing style / scoring system, and in a similar way conveys a lot about the wine with few words. http://www.finewinediary.com/ (Toby and Richard Bailey). The website design was home-made I believe, and looks wonderfully dated now, but I’d rather they didn’t try to update as it’s nicely ‘familiar’.
Following up on Ian’s post, there is Christer Byklum’s http://mywinesandmore.blogspot.co.uk/ which has quite a lot of interesting tasting notes (more than 25000 in total, though a number are a little perfunctory). Also, few can equal François http://www.academiedesvinsanciens.org when it comes to depth and detail on older vintages, with an invaluable image gallery to boot.
Claude Kolm’s The Fine Wine Review? I consult it from time to time; I often find him deeply experienced about Burgundy and sometimes quite helpful. It doesn’t seem to be behind a paywall?
Wine Berserkers 