In order for “your say” to work on safari, you have to uncheck the “prevent cross-site tracking” option:
Settings > Safari > Preferences > Privacy
Uncheck Web Tracking: Prevent cross-site tracking
Or use Firefox or Chrome as your browser when accessing Vinous. A fix has been in the works since April or earlier, but fixes happen slowly since they use an outside vendor for their site.
Damn it. For a moment I thought Klapp was back and the world would be better. Sadly just an online mirage.
I’m using chrome so was surprised I don’t see it. I sent a note to support.
Are the forum’s active on the site ?
At the risk of dating myself, I have worked through a number of crises. Long Term Capital, tech bubble meltdown, 9/11, mutual fund trading scandal, quant fund blip, subprime etc. We are obviously in uncharted waters with the current pandemic. These are extraordinarily challenging times for all small businesses. Moreover, the emotional toll of what we are going through now will be deeply felt by many, for years to come. Our NYC office has been closed since March. My house, like that of all our writers, looks more like a warehouse these days.
We made the decision in the spring to prioritize the things that matter most to our readers: 1) timeliness and thoroughness of reviews and 2) engagement. I don’t think we have missed a beat on coverage, notwithstanding significant challenges to do that. We created a whole series of free webinars (Vinous Live) which you can view on our YouTube channel and Vinous Learn, a program of private virtual tastings. Our team has been working literally around the clock these last five months or so.
The issue with our forum is that Safari changed a long-time default setting that created a problem for Safari users. The forum provider took some time to fix their code. In the meantime, we actioned other work streams. That code was recently fixed. We are now updating some of the code that runs the Vinous site. Once we are done on our side, we can update the forum code. This only impact Safari.
There is another thread here about critics’ palates etc. There are, IMO, very few critics left. We have tried to hire most of them 
. A critic, IMO, is someone who takes all the information that is available to them and then from that articulates an original point of view with real depth and insight. I don’t see much of that today. There are plenty of people who write tasting notes, some of them very well, but so often what you see is very clearly taken from winery fact sheets and marketing material. Since I have been doing this professionally, the timeliness required for reviews to have value has changed dramatically, as has the number of worthwhile wines that deserve coverage - in every region. Being able to publish an article that is timely with many hundreds of reviews is not easy.
What I look for in the people I read and follow is trustworthiness. Speaking now just for myself, I can’t promise you I will get every wine right. I can’t promise you I will write the best or most in-depth tasting notes. That is my aim, but I am not perfect. However, I promise you one thing 100% of the time, and that is that I will always tell you what I think about a wine or a producer, irrespective of their pedigree. My track shows that: Giacosa, G. Mascarello & Figlio, Araujo Estate, Casanova di Neri etc. These are all examples of wines/producers that I critiqued when I felt the wines weren’t up to par, knowing full well what the result would be- nasty emails, being banned from estates, producers not sending samples, etc - but I did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. My colleagues? Maybe someone here would like to post some comparison scores.
I hope you will all check out Vinous. If you are a Cellar Tracker user, we have 2 month coupon for complimentary access, or just send us an email at info@vinous.com and we will turn it on for you.
well following up after Antonio has posted feels a bit silly, but I do want to throw out that this year is my first year of a vinous subscription and I’m gonna be renewing it. Ive enjoyed it and the Vinous Lives (even though those are available without subscription) have been exactly what I needed during quarantine. more than anything else thats important though, I think that my palate is pretty in line with Antonio’s and thats what I want in a subscription more than just about anything else. doesn’t help if the person is prolific and has millions of notes if you disagree with most of what’s in the notes!
but Vinous has a good suite of offering from the lives to the learns and maps and good regional coverage with knowledgable voices.
Vinous is the only one that I actually trust, and know that it will be consistent month in and month out. And, I can tell by their notes whether I will probably like the wine or not. To me, Vinous/Antonio are what Parker used to be. You may, or may not agree with the “score” of the wine, but you get a very good idea what “you” might like or dislike about the wine, because the notes tell you what you need to know, if you just “listen” to what he/they say.
Antonio- thanks so much for taking the time to provide an update and insight into Vinous. I can say to anyone considering a subscription that the 2 month CT trial is terrific and my subscription more than paid for itself based on my 2015/16 Barolo and 2017 Oregon purchases. The content and user experience is very good.
cheers
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I wish this board had a like feature. Posts like Galloni’s are valuable and helpful. A way to articulate that (And search for it) would be helpful.
I joined a few months ago and really enjoy it. Great articles, frequent content updates, and the integration with CellarTracker is invaluable.
I started subscribing to Vinous when Neal Martin moved there in January 2018. I like it a lot. The format is good, the content is plentiful and arrives every week, the writers are excellent. Vinous’ reaction to Covid was exemplary, as described above. The forum is well-frequented, with interesting discussions, always polite, and allows feedback with the writers, who all participate actively and who reply to queries almost immediately. There has even been recent coverage of - shock horror - the Loire! Basically, as a subscriber you get the impression that Vinous actually cares what you think.
Compared to previous experiences with TWA for example - well there is no comparison, notwithstanding the presence of WK. I took advantage of TWA’s free 3 month offer during lockdown so was able to really see the difference. The quality and frequency of coverage at TWA depends on the region (some excellent, some average, some awful), feedback is very limited and in some cases, nonexistent. Pondering whether or not to continue with TWA, I asked Stephan Reinhardt two months ago if he had any plans to renew Loire coverage (the last report being in 2014) - I’m still waiting for a reply.
So I highly recommend Vinous and suggest giving it a try.
Nothing against Vinous, Galloni, Martin etc. Really good tasters.
My opinion after being a wine lover for 40 years: Look what style of wine you like. And then taste as many wines as possible from that regions. With some time you will find producers and wines you like. With some luck you find producers under the radar or newcomers and you get top quality to a fair price.
The disadvantage of top critics is: When they start to write glowing reviews the price for the wine explodes most of the time. Within a short time you have to pay a significant premium. But I learned that very often there are alternatives to a way better price. For instance: I found a Chianti recently I never heard of with superb wines to a fantastic QPR. I even found a Sangiovese outside of Tuscany that blew me away. Needless to say that this wine can also be had to a fraction of the Riservas from Felsina or Fontodi. But in my book these recently discovered wines are equal. (I will not say their names for obvious reasons – even if I am a nobody).
So everyone has his choice. Wander with the mainstream or go your own way. If you are a wine lover and not a label drinker or a speculator the latter is better. IMO.
I’ve been a Vinous subscriber the past couple years, and questioning whether I continue. German wine coverage has been falling behind. I use it mainly for the Your Say discussion forum, but given Galloni’s history with the Piedmont Report it’s no surprised a majority of the topics actively discussed are on Italian wines.
I would second Brian’s point that the most valuable part of Vinous is the discussion forum “Your Say”. I already have plenty of wine, so I’m not buying so much, and don’t really need new release reviews so much. But the really nice part of the forum is that the writers/reviewers pretty routinely participate, and will respond to questions about their reviews, or even start their own threads about topics of interest to them. Yes, some areas get too much attention (Italy, CALIFORNIA, and probably Bordeaux), and others not enough, but that is going to happen on any site. If there is not enough attention given to an area of interest, you can lobby for coverage (as we did with the Loire) and sometimes eventually get results, or start your own long running thread mining the board’s pretty extensive experience in a specific area (there are are ongoing german wine threads, a few on Burgundy (burgundy with age–which for some reason has my name on it, affordable burgundies, off the beaten track burgs, etc), and several others that aren’t coming to mind at the moment.
Any user forum is shaped by its participants. So if there are topics you want to see discussed on Your Say the best approach is to start a thread. See what happens…
I’m also a Vinous subscriber, but rarely make use of “Your Say.” If I have something I’d like to post about it, I’m more likely to do it here because of the large audience and variety of responses. I’m curious as to what you see as the advantage of “Your Say” relative to a Berserkers post?
I think there’s a lot more discussion of Italian wines, especially Piedmont, on Vinous. I think that’s the #1 strength area of both the actual Vinous content and the forum. To me, Piedmont is all I care about so Vinous is perfect. There’s a lot more content on Wineberserkers than “Your Say” but a higher % of the content on Your Say is wines I care about, personally.
I’ve looked into a like button - definitely possible, not sure how to really get a search option other than the built-in search function that is atop every screen ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Each board has it’s own strengths, so I often post both places. Not infrequently I’ll get zero response on one board, and thirty posts on the other–often hard to predict which board will be the one interested. The strength of Vinous “your say” I was trying to point out is if a reviewer does an article–say Josh on Oregon, or say Stephen with a vertical of Dauvissat, I can ask a question of them on the forum, and get an answer or an ongoing discussion, or they may flip the question back to the estate and come back with an answer.
The boards also have slightly different personalities, but I value both.
Thanks Todd! And by search I mean to find top-liked posts. I personally use the search extensively (and the unread posts page is my go to homepage).