May 6, 2011
Wine judging sounds like a great job, right? Getting paid to taste a wide array of wines from all over the world – nice one. But wine competition judges open themselves up to a lot of criticism, given the tricky subjectivity related to their job. Reading Christian Eedes’ article on what it takes to be a wine judge and taking into account all of the controversy that has been stirred up on the...
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Wine judges and competition PR
Mar 1, 2011
Last week I posted a few thoughts about the role of wine competitions. Subsequently, I saw that Neil Pendock made mention of the costs of purchasing the familiar blingy stickers that adorn winning bottles of wine. These are familiar adornments, created by all competitions in an attempt to shout out to consumers from the wine shelves. Many wineries add them to their winning bottles and it seems that the...
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Are the costs of wine competition stickers fair?
Feb 24, 2011
Wine competitions are not charities
People may call the South African wine industry all manner of things, but you could never accuse it of being boring! At least not within the small circle of seriaaas winos, writers and industry players. But the past week has seen something of quiet spell between the publishers of pixels and controllers of column inches who seem to quite enjoy taking the mickey out of each other. Instead it’s been... read more
Aug 3, 2010
Music and wine – you be the judge
Most people would acknowledge that there are a large number of physical influences that can affect our perception of wine. This can include simple things like the temperature of the wines, the style of the glass (I hate the word stemware), the weather, what you had to eat during the day, the perfume or cologne that people are wearing around you and many others. However many would not readily acknowledge... read more
