A  few questions have come in about the Wine of the Week (WOTW) that runs with the weekly column in the Taste section. Seems like a good time to share some thoughts on that:

*Most of the correspondence has been about where to find the recommended wine. Each week, I track down and call the local distributor, seeking assurance that the wine is widely distributed. No wine — not even Yellow Tail — is in every single store, but it’s important that any WOTW be in more than a handful of stores.

Some newspapers list a couple of major stores where a wine can be found, and believe me, they hear from other merchants carrying that wine. Our previous wine columnist listed the distributor’s phone number, but that didn’t find favor with readers or distributors. There seems to be no approach that combines fairness with optimum utility, but I’m open to suggestions …

*The WOTWs so far have been fairly monolithic, all wines, and mostly in the $12-$20 range. A lot more variety is ahead, both in terms of price points and the Liquid Asset itself; I’ll be writing about beer and booze from time to time, and that week’s pick will likely be from that field.

Two other FYIs: The aim is that most weeks, the WOTW will have a connection to the story alongside it. And in the core paper, I’m writing for a more general audience. Here at the blog, there will be more looks at higher-end and esoteric stuff. 

*I gave a lot of thought to the organization. In my experience, most folks find tasting notes that proffer a half-dozen elements in the bouquet and 5-10 more on the palate to be numbing and, for lack of a better word, dumbing (i.e., making the reader feel inadequate). I’ve also found that wine consumers are generally very interested in food pairings and almost always love to learn a little bit about the winery.

So I came up with a more (pardon the expression) holistic approach, including three categories: Experience (what the wine smells and tastes like), Setting (what to pair with it, and where to best enjoy it — at a picnic, by the fireplace, as an aperitif, etc.) and Backstory (some nuggets I dig up about the places and people from whence it came).

*Americans love numbers, but in the wine world, ratings are useful only to a point (pun intended). Profound wines deserve the highest ratings, but most of us get just as excited when we discover a yummy $8 or $15 wine that we can enjoy on a more regular basis. A lot of people smarter than me have tried to come up with a system that combines quality and price point to place a tangible number on a wine, to little good effect. 

The WOTWs, then, are wines that I recommend as not only worthwhile but also very good values for the price, whatever that may be.

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