Would happily do it, Yohan, and just tried to, but couldn’t work out how to add the ITB flair as the option didn’t come up… Since my participation here antedates my current employment, I confess it had never occurred to me, though I do cite The Wine Advocate in my signature. And you’re right, I do sometimes address “customer service” questions here, so perhaps Todd or some other kind soul will help me to add the tag.
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Well, I guess we’re in da club then as the yanks say. Cheers
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Johan, I recently subscribed. I was disappointed to find that the site’s ratings are not integrated with CellarTracker like Jen Dunnuck and Vinous are. Are there any plans to add that integration?
Thanks Jim!
Yes indeed. It is something in the pipeline. Hope it will be possible to have finished soon. There has been quite the work load the last year and taken a bit longer than expected.
Awesome, thanks.
I took advantage of the six day trial subscription. I enjoyed it, but unsubscribed–and deleted the bookmark bar reference–after two days. Imagine my surprise when, four days later, I was charged $140 for a year’s subscription. Immediately contacted customer service re my unsubscribe request. No response; so there’s that.
On the other hand, I found it to be a first class publication with exceptional photography and an interesting, reflective approach to evaluating wine.
I unsubscribed only because 90% of my wine buying is Napa/Sonoma.
I wish them well, but would be happy if my unsubscribe request was honored.
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Hi Ray,
Sorry to hear that something went amiss there. We have had quite a nice rate of people staying on with the free trial subscription offer. And then again, some have opted out also. It has not been an issue previously that this has happened with the system not registering cancel request. An opt out is an opt out.
I actually went through my incoming emails forwarded to me last night and saw yours. Did not have time to respond but it will be amended this weekend. It’s a fairly full on candy crush en primeur schedule so let’s blame the Bordelaise for my tardiness.
We are make a huge Napa/Sonoma push this year so I hope to pied piper you back…
Cheers,
Johan
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Hey Guys,
Feel free to give me all the grief you see fit here and I’m sure we can have bumpy ride down this Niagara Falls of a discussion where you happily ignore anything I say.
Cheers,
Johan
Please answer our questions in the relevant thread johan. Thanks!
I don’t have or didn’t realise I had any grief. I like the Wine Independent and I like and encourage what it espouses and promotes. I have no opinion on the Wine Independent taking a particular position (implied or otherwise) on other wine publications and their lack of independence. That is all by the by.
But if it is true that a wine receives a different score, in-bottle, tasted blind, than the same wine, in-bottle, tasted non-blind, and that there is a certain bias to be discovered somewhere to the bigger chateaux and marques especially with regard to such scores, then that is a serious problem, and whether or not that is an issue across the industry or not, it puts the independent notion of the Wine Independent up for debate. Maybe that is my naivety - I can imagine that a truly independent publication would get blacklisted or otherwise be out of favour quite regularly - but then that needs to be caveated.
Maybe I should just be grateful these are not issues I have to contend with on a day to day…
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That will be this one then.
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@Mark_Golodetz and you know, anyone else who’d have interest:
”Ther’s been a lot of talk about this next song. Maybe maybe too much talk. This song is not a rebel song.”
There are different approaches to everything. I believe in one which is to serve the consumer. And I believe again that peoples vision of that differs.
A single hard core blind tasting can and will never in my opinion be the only true test. A wine must show it’s colour and quality over time. If the blind test was done several times with the same result then that would be different.
To advise a consumer on an outlier tasting note is in my view a faulty method.
That will infuriate many on this board who seem to demand that if reports are not produced the way they see fit then the person producing them is a charlatan only out to serve Big Wine. So be it. Not everyone can accept different methods to achieve the same ambition, to serve the consumer.
If a wine shows unexpectedly I would prefer the critic to take time and go confirm that result, be it upwards or downwards. Usually the critic has tasted the wine multiple times with similar results and when it shows unexpectedly that needs to be examined if you are to call yourself a professional wanting to advise consumers.
A consumer buying a wine and expecting only that outlier result is bound to be disappointed and will not return for advise.
I agree that this method can and should be elucidated.
The constant attempts on credibilty would be easy to make on any person having taken part in a tasting like Southwold. Picking isolated data points is a smoke mirror of an argument. In real life a discussion with someone usually goes Oh you do it that way, interesting, I do it the way. On the internet it is quite more a brigade of Gotcha Folks attempting their best Geraldo Rivera imitations. But anyone who was there to wittness his live opening of the Titanic Safe on his special knows that sometimes a safe is just a safe. And sometimes a method is just a method. There is nothing sinister, illogical or menacing about it. It’s just different.
Now, I presume this will cause an avalanche of strongly worded You Sir Are A Fraud and there will be maybe maybe a lot more talk. People often want to see only their preconceived notions confirmed.
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Johan,
it would have been no problem at all if Lisa decided to not publish her scores of this blind tasting. It is not ok to publish corrected scores while stating these were the result of the Southwold blind tasting. This was a deceit. You have to be honest to others and especially as a critic with the attempt of being authentic.
People make mistakes. This was one.
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No one has suggested a hard core blind tasting is the only true test. Please quote and respond to the relevant posts - you have instead answered a complete strawman that you have created.
Johan, it would be very helpful to know how many of Lisa’s Southwold scores were subsequently revised downwards after tastings. Some of the scores she revised upwards were quite extreme; which classed Chateau suffered in the opposite way? If Lisa’s subsequent tastings only revise score upwards, the entire blind tasting is meaningless - if the wine doesn’t perform blind Lisa will simply taste until the Chateau gets the “expected” result, whatever that expected result may be.
In real life discussions the person I am speaking to is generally not trying to sell me a service. If they are, I would certainly question their methodology, yes.
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I’m not trying to pick any sides in the argument, but I think there’s an important point here
— In real life discussions the person I am speaking to is generally not trying to sell me a service. If they are, I would certainly question their methodology, yes.
And, implicitly, the appearance/branding/marketing of being the wine independent, people I think are reasonable to ask questions to conclude how truly independent that is
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Personally, I’m not a massive fan of blind tasting, even if I can see the interest of doing it. It can throw up anomalies like the performance of Pédesclaux, which “beat” a Ist Growth (Latour?) in a Decanter blind tasting of 2005s, a while back. Performances can always vary, especially quite soon after bottling, so adjusting an assessment because one “knows” that Latour had a bad day at the office doesn’t shock me at all.
What is however problematic is not saying what you’re doing when you write the note and give the score. By being transparent, you allow others to understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If one just publishes a note and score as part of a blind tasting, it implies that the wine needed no context whatsoever, that it was just that good. This can in turn lead to suspicion that the critic was just anxious not to offend a winery, which is not what “independence” is about.
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While I agree with you, Johan has protested that it is unfair to use the implications of his publications’ name (or of his and Lisa’s comments about the practices of other wine critics), so I have tried not to reopen the issue.
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Somehow that performance never varies when the tasting is done at the Chateau.
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