Things I Missed in May

I checked out for four weeks and I missed a lot of stuff. Rather than subject you to posts one after another that you may have no interest in, or have already seen, especially if you keep up with the world of wine, I'll compile them here for my benefit and for anyone else who may have missed these items.

Shortly after I left, the 2005 James Beard Journalism Award Winners were announced. Wine related winners include:

Internet writing: Jennifer Rosen for "When Corks Attack " They Do It With TCA" on Vinchotzi.com 2/8/04

Magazine Column: Lettie Teague for her column Wine Matters, and specifically the columns "Educating Peter", "Educating Peter: Geography Class", and "Educating Peter: The Rules of Pairing" 9/04, 10/04, 11/04.

Magazine Writing: Natalie MacLean for "Waiter, There's a Flaw in My Wine" in Ottawa City Magazine 12/04

Internet Newsletter: Pinot Report by Gregory S. Walter

Newspaper Writing: Allie Johnson for "Wine Makes Us Wet" in The Pitch, Kansas City, MO 9/30/04

Congratulations to all the winners.

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Vinography was mentioned in the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper briefly among a few other blogs.

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Andy over at Spittoon picked up a story about (dubious if you ask me) new technology to turn corked wine into perfectly good wine. If only they had given it some 1950's home appliance name like "TCA-be-gone."

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And just in case it's not economically feasible for you to open that $1200 bottle of Screaming Eagle to figure out whether it's corked, there's now a wine scanner that will basically give your bottle an MRI and pronounce what kind of shape it's in. The catch is that the machine costs $50,000. Whether someone will create a scanning service with it remains to be seen.

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Shafer winery in Napa became the first winery in the USA to be exclusively solar powered.

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An announced partnership between Amazon.Com and Wine.Com was billed as revolutionizing the wine sales business in the same way that Amazon.Com revolutionized the book sales business. Yet Amazon is only simply redirecting people to Wine.Com -- it's just one big traffic referral program.

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Wine Blogging Wednesday #9: Think Pink was held in May, and participants ended up reviewing 39 rose wines, many of which looked fantastic. Look out for the 10th installment of this virtual tasting event on June 8th.

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Of course, I also missed Hospice Du Rhone, THE wine event for Rhone varietals in the US. Keica over at This Heaven Gives Me Migraine has a fairly detailed report of her experience.

Posted by: Alder on May 26, 2005 9:22 AM: Tweet; Share this post elsewhere: Digg it! - Add to del.icio.us - Add to Stumbleupon - Add to Reddit; Filed under: Ramblings and Rants , Wine News

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Comments (6)

Geoff Smith wrote:

05.26.05 at 10:36 AM

One event you may have missed which was truly "awesome" was the 'Return to Terroir' tasting of biodynamic wines at San Francisco (Golden Gate Club, The Presidio) on 16 May. An incredible event! Cheers, Geoff

Alder wrote:

05.26.05 at 11:00 AM

Geoff,

Yes, that and the Cabernet Society tasting as well. But I didn't find any press coverage of either that was worth mentioning. If you know of anything that I could share with other readers, let me know.

sam wrote:

05.26.05 at 7:58 PM

You missed lots of things, Alder, but we just missed you. There is still time for you to review a pink wine if you like, I can still add you to the list.
I hope you had a truly fantastic wedding and honeymoon. Good to have you back, I can start clicking on your page again.

sam

sam wrote:

05.26.05 at 10:57 PM

Come to think of it, did you plan your wedding for May just so that you could get out of drinking pink wine?! I mean, Derrick fled to Germany and Fatemeh made herself ill just contemplating it, so I wouldn't be surprised at the lengths some people go to.

Fatemeh wrote:

05.27.05 at 8:29 PM

Aw, Sam, now that's not it at all. Believe me, I would have MUCH preferred sipping a sexy rose to being miserable in bed... I still haven't kicked the cough, and now speculate it might be allergiess.

Sam wrote:

05.31.05 at 12:19 PM

I was only kidding - and don't forget we have a date some time with a bottle of Billercart Salmon to make up for it!