Galloni Reviews on Vinous

I’m a recent subscriber to Galloni’s Vinous. I also subsribe to WA. Two things about WA that I like are the fact that you know when his reviews (issues) are going to be published, and also when you do an advanced search on WA, you can search for all reviews from a particular issue, and don’t need a keyword.

Does anyone know if Galloni publishes his reviews on certain dates or times of the month? Also, is there a way to search his reviews by article or publication (i.e. I want to see all Napa reviews from his October publication)?

Thanks,

Alex

I don’t know the answer (and maybe someone here does), but did you try going straight to the source? I would think an email to AG would elicit a response.

First and foremost, we are buyers and consumers of wine. We want to read about the wines we like more than once or twice a year, we want to read about them all the time.

When we created Vinous, the idea was to launch a platform that was always on, like MTV and ESPN were for music and sports 30 years ago, or what Bloomberg and CNN are for news. Essentially a channel that would bring together the best and brightest voices.

Personally, I believe the idea of an ‘issue’ is past. There are just too many wines, regions and things happening for that model to work. That is our view. Of course, people are free to agree or disagree, but we believe in continually streamed content.

Each Sunday, we post the contents of the following week on Your Say, our user forum. In a normal week we will publish one or more major articles. These can be reviews of new releases, verticals, retrospectives etc. The exact date and time of publication varies. We also have a number of other features; Vinous Table features restaurants, usually in wine destinations or wine themed dinners, Vinous Favorites are our top under $25 picks, in Cellar Favorites we highlight rarer, more collectible wines and we usually have new video content every week.

The search function allows you to read each article by producer, rather than searching wine by wine. You also have the ability to search for a specific wine within a specific article, something I don’t think any other site can do. For example, rather than wading through hundreds of reviews in a Tuscany article, you can just type Sassicaia to see the review of that wine(s) only within the current article.

To search for Napa, go to Archive, then California and you will see everything we have published in CA wines. I am sure we will be making improvements as the new team comes onboard, so if you have suggestions and comments, just let us know.

A huge +1 on this.

Antonio, do you provide any kind of courtesy trial period to sample the site? I can probably find the answer on your site, which I will look for later, but since I’m here right now . . . . Back to the office for now, but I’ll check later.

Antonio,

Thank you so much for taking time to respond to my post. I know that you must be incredibly busy at the moment with your big announcement, and your response was greatly appreciated. I just took a look at the Your Say section and that is a great idea that I had not yet noticed. I will definitely spend some more time getting to know your site and your various search functions. I do agree that the idea of an “Issue” is a little passé and the more organic flow of your site is much more geared to our younger generation.

I really enjoyed your video with the MacDonald brothers. I am a big fan of their wine. You made mention in the video of tasting a number of their wines earlier this month, and maybe you could let us know when you plan on posting those reviews?

Best Regards,

Alex Offutt

+1… would love to poke around for a week or two and see if the value is there for ongoing subscription…

Thanks - this is helpful, and it helped me clarify my own thinking a little. I don’t care about issues, but I do care about articles. For example, I don’t care if “2013 Red Burgundies” and “Current NV Champagne releases” come out on the same day or at a particular time of the month, but I do want to be able to read an article on 2013 red Burgundies that pulls together and overview and notes on the major wines, not 16 2013s one week, none the next because something else came up, 2 the following, etc. Do the notes come in clusters with accompanying articles, or do they dribble out? I think you’re saying that it’s the former, but I can’t get into the site yet to see.

+2… I have never subscribed to a wine review publication or website, but I might be enticed to do so in this case if I could “kick the tires” before buying.

Automatic +1.

So if i am a current subscriber to IWC do i now have access to Vinous?

Not yet, but the unexpired portion of your IWC subscription is supposed to be converted to a Vinous subscription.

Within the next 7-10 days we will begin sending out emails to existing IWC subscribers with temporary logons and instructions on how to set up Vinous accounts. We are slightly slowed down by the Thanksgiving holiday, but I am hoping we can come in at the shorter end of that window. At the same time, the entire IWC archive will become available and we will start posting new articles from Steve’s team, which is essentially the material that would have been published as IWC Issue 177. My next articles are Champagne, Affordable Piedmont and Napa Valley, FYI.

From there, we will start to have some fun with the site, taking down the paywall at specific intervals to give readers a chance to look at the site in depth.

I certainly understand the rationale here, and maybe it’ll just take some getting used to. The fact remains that vintages only happen once a year, and generally speaking, all producers in any given region of the world release the same vintage in any given year (of course there are exceptions). The value of the ‘issue’, in the past anyway, was to help shape my spend for a given year, although it seems both the WA and WS have some how slipped a vintage behind in the last few years (RP’s Napa report released last week for example covers the '12 vintage, which is already largely sold through, and in many cases, I’ve already received and tasted these wines myself.)

Like most who have been at this for a while, I have my core producers that I’ll buy from regardless of scores or vintage, but to keep things fun, I like to keep some budget available for discovery. The ‘issue’ concept was of great value when they arrived prior to release of a particular vintage. Honestly, if I’ve already bought a wine and can taste it for myself, a critics opinion on said wine is of little value.

If releasing notes as a steady stream of content means getting ahead of winery releases, then that is a real value add.

+1