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[LONGish] AFW FAQ draft

Here is a very preliminary, incomplete draft of an AFW FAQ. I thought that I'd solicit comments now on what I've got (mostly culled from posts to AFW) as well to ask for volunteers to write missing sections. Also, suggestions of additiona sections are welcome, but be forewarned that it'll probably mean that you'll be asked to write them, too.

------ Begin C&P -------- Alt.food.wine FAQ - Version 0.1

Welcome to the FAQ for alt.food.wine! In this document, we have tried to compile a list of questions that have frequently been asked on this newsgroup. Alt.food.wine welcomes all questions relating to wine, though questions concerning winemaking might get more responses in the related newsgroup rec.crafts.winemaking.

Table of Contents

  1. I have just found a bottle of wine in my parents' cupboard and... 1a. I want to know how much it's worth 1b. I want to know whether it's OK to drink
  2. I just had an incredible bottle of wine. Where I find some of it to buy?
  3. What wineries should I visit in... 3a. Napa? 3b. Sonoma? 3c. Paso Robles? 3d. Amador County? 3e. Santa Barbara County? 3f. Burgundy? 3g. The Rhone Valley? 3h. Bordeaux?
  4. What is the best way to preserve an opened bottle of wine? How long will it last?
  5. Are those expensive Riedel glasses worth the money?
  6. What causes red wine headaches? How can I prevent them?

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  1. I have just found a bottle of wine in my parents' cupboard and...
1a. I want to know how much it's worth

First of all, an all-important question with any wine that's been stored for any length of time is what the storage conditions were like. It is generally agreed that wine prefers to be stored in cool, moist locations, free of light and significant temperature variation. If you can't guarantee such storage conditions, you're unlikely to get full price for your wine. If it was found in a kitchen cupboard or garage, it probably wouldn't sell for much at all. It's also important to realize that most wine, maybe 99% of it, is intended for near-term consumption. If your wine is one of those, it probably won't be worth much unless it's got some sentimental or historical value. With those two caveats out of the way, there are several ways you can get an idea of how much your wine might be worth. You can look for its retail value on the website

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If it's being sold today, you can find what they're asking for it. However, don't expect to get retail value for your wine. The easiest way to sell it is at auction, where you'd get perhaps 80% of the retail price (in a best case analysis). To find out what that wine has fetched at auction, you can use a database search tool provided by the Chicago Wine Company
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If you do want to sell your wine, there are several online auction sites that you can use:
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(probably the best for single bottles)
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In some countries, you may be able to sell your wine on Ebay. Additionally, in certain states of the United States, you may be able to sell your wine on consignment through a retailer. Since each state has different alcohol laws, you'd have to check with a local retailer to be sure.

1b. I want to know whether it's OK to drink The two caveats to the previous section apply equally to this question. However, no wine will harm you, no matter how poorly it's been stored nor how old it is. Also, old wine rarely if ever turns to vinegar. The only real question is whether it'll be enjoyable to drink, and one of the best ways to answer that is to open the bottle to see. However, you can do some research on "drinking windows" proposed by critics and other wine drinkers. Because most of the published information is only available by subscription, you won't be able to find Robert Parker's or the Wine Spectator's advice on the Web. However, a decent resource is the website
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which is an online cellar database for wine lovers. There is a search function on their homepage that'll give you Cellartracker's customers' comments on the wine in question, usually with a "recommended drinking window" included. Of course, asking for advice on the newsgroup might get some good advice, too. Be aware, however, that any such drinking window is highly subjective and based on an assumption of ideal storage conditions. Take such recommendations with a good deal of skepticism, and open the bottle earlier than recommended if there are questions about storage. If you have any doubts about its storage, it's a good idea to open it up with a backup bottle at hand in case the older wine turns out to not be to your liking.

  1. I just had an incredible bottle of wine. Where can I find some of it to buy? First of all, make sure that you know exactly what the wine is. That means knowing the producer, the region it was made in, the vineyard name (if there was any) and the year. Because there are lots of similar-sounding names, you want to be sure that you're getting the same thing you had. If you're not sure of those details and had the wine at a restaurant, you can call them for a complete description of the wine. If you had it at some other event, try to track down someone who would know to ask them. Once you've got all the details, go to
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    and look up who sells it on the Internet. Although you won't get all the listings without buying the Professional version, you'll usually get enough information to help anyway. If you can't find it for sale using wine-searcher and it's a recent vintage (i.e., the year on the bottle is no earlier than 2-4 years ago) you might try the winery's website or call them to see if: a) they'll sell directly to you or b) they can tell you who distributes their wine in your area. (You can then get ahold of the distributor to find out who sells it near to you.

  2. What wineries should I visit in... What follows is a compendium of recommendations made in alt.food.wine over the past 5 years or so. Since they were made without knowledge of your tastes, they may or may not be useful to you. If you can define your tastes, you might get better advice asking the newsgroup after describing your tastes to us.

3a. Napa? Napa is known primarily for its Cabernet Sauvignon, but Chardonnay, Zinfandel and Pinot Noir (in the region known as Carneros) also grow there. Most wineries will charge a tasting fee, and many of them will charge extra to taste their more expensive wines. To avoid heavy crowding, you should avoid weekends, holidays, the Summer and Hwy 29 by taking the Silverado Trail instead.

Here are the recommended wineries with any special features in parentheses (asterisks indicate appointment needed):

Robert Mondavi Winery (tour) Beringer Winery (tour and history) Milat Sawyer Vincent Arroyo Prager Port Works Stony Hill* Storybook Mountain*

Reply to
Mark Lipton
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Great start Mark.

For the "What wineries should I visit in..." section I suggest linking to other resources in addtion to having AFW-specific suggestions. One that springs to mind is

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There must be others

Reply to
Steve Slatcher
1c. Will it taste good? One of the things about wine is that it evolves even after you open it. Often an old wine will taste harsh when first opened, but don't give up on it. Let it sit in the glass for a while and "breathe" for a while. Over the course of a meal it may "open up" and begin to reveal its more subtle flavors. Sometimes, recorked and tried the next day, older wines can be seen to improve. Sometimes not. But don't judge it based on your first sip.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

I don't see anything objectionable or in need of improvement. Of course, Google seems to have truncated -I only can see through part of section 3.

You might add winezap.com as an alternative to winesearcher (I strongly prefer winesearcher, but might be nice to offer an alternative to listing one commercial venture)

Would you like me to try and pull together a food-wine matching list? I'd try to depend less on my opinions than as much consensus as can be found at that (contentious) subject.

I also think a link to the new users newsgroup, or a basic netiquette site, should be part of a FAQ.

thanks for all your work

Reply to
DaleW

Good stuff so far.

For #3, would be glad to contribute with pieces on the Hunter Valley and Central Otago. Am also planning a trip to the Yarra Valley in December (either before or after the Boxing Day test in Melbourne), so will probably be able to add in something after I get back early in the New Year.

Salil

Reply to
Salil

Nope, that's just all I've got at the moment. Google is innocent of any wrongdoing here.

OK

Sounds great to me! Have at it, old boy.

New users newsgroup? Huh?

NP

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Good idea. I'll also include links to regional producers' associations websites for maps, hours, listings, etc.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Good idea.

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

news.newusers.questions

Reply to
DaleW

I have put your FAQs on a test web page to see how it might work. See at

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.

The colors and placement of text can be changed very easily, since a style sheet is used. I made the text fairly large and the colors very bright to make it easy for me to see while debugging. If you have a modern browser such as a recent Firefox, Netscape, or Opera, the page is served as true xhtml 1.1, the latest version of html. For outmoded browsers such as IE6 (and apparently for IE7 also!) which can not handle true xhtml 1.1 served as xhtml + xml, then the page is served as html 4.01 strict. This is the reason for a php page, since some of the code is in a php script on the server that can not be viewed by the user.

You might want to see if the page works for you. If not, the name of the computer, the operating system used(such as Windows XP), and the browser used and version number for it would be useful. I have not attempted to support really old browsers, such as the Netscape 4 series, that are now all but gone.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

"cwdjrxyz" wrote in news:1158600049.171902.175110 @i3g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

I strongly prefer a light background and dark font, I find the opposite hard to read. If it's just for testing purposes, that's okay.

Firefox 1.5.0.7 & Mozilla 1.7.13

Here is a handy, vanilla FAQ, for reference' sake:

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d.

Reply to
enoavidh

Dark on light is easier to read than light on dark. Red on blue is hard to read.

The page resizes nicely. Great job on that! (I know, it's mostly a matter of

-not- doing stuff to mess that up, but many designers do just that!)

It just turns out that way, or there's a reason to keep the user from reading the code?

They're not gone, and I see little reason for any advanced stuff for what is essentially a text file. (For an example of crud gone wild, look at accuweather.com, which now takes three minutes to load on my machine when it used to come up in about five or ten seconds. Nothing changed in the content, they just decided to do it "the new way".)

I'm using Netscape 7.2 on Windows 98.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

The page has been changed to a light background and the colors have been darkened somewhat to read well on it.

-not- doing stuff to mess that up, but many designers do just that!)

This is just how php works, being a server side script. It has a conversation with the viewing browser to see if it will support xhtml

1.1. If not, it rewrites the code to html 4.01 strict. Look at the page code on a recent Firefox, Opera, or Netscape browser and you will see xhtml 1.1 code. Look at the page code on IE6, and you will see html 4.01 strict code. This is what the php does.

Even in Dec 2004, the w3schools sites report only 0.2 % of Netscape 4 series were being used. They do not even report them since that. Anyone who uses this old relic on the web these days on many of the most important sites is going to have many problems and can not get into some finance and other high security sites at all. The NN4 has poor support of CSS which is nearly universal these days for new pages. It is not being updated. It also is a security risk. However, even the hackers seem to have lost interest in it. A NN4 hacker these days likely would get as much respect from IE6 hackers as a bubble gum machine thief would get from bank robbers.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

Many thanks!

I think that the font size and color scheme look fine, but I would suggest that the main entries in the Table of Contents should be left justified, not centered, and the subtopics could be indented by a tab stop or so. I like the overall organization as well as the use of links. Perhaps when the main TOC entries are used in the body, we should lose the numbers that precede them? That's a judgement call IMO.

Thanks again, Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

I've seen far more bad CSS than good CSS. Despite the ills of "tables for layout", it's simple and browsers know how to do it.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

Much improved over the light on dark. Why not leave the background white though? Better contrast and easier to read. Light grey doesn't add anything IMHO.

Agreed.

I find the numbers useful. They may be a pain to maintain, should a topic be inserted later on.

Jose

Reply to
Jose
  1. What is the best way to preserve an opened bottle of wine? How long will it last?

The primary enemy of wine is oxygen (even though proper aging of wine requires it). Once wine is opened, it starts changing due to its interaction with the air. In some cases this is good (a wine "opening up" in flavor over the course of the meal, or even overnight in the case of some older reds), but it will always end badly if enough time elapses.

If you haven't finished a bottle and want to save it for later consumption, the best thing to do is to retard its reaction with oxygen. Putting it in the refrigerator slows down the reactions, so this is a good idea even for reds. (they should be warmed up again before serving). Just corked back up, whites could go for a day or three (depending on the kind and quality of the wine, the amount left in the bottle, and your own palate), reds might last a week that way.

There are several systems on the market to reduce the wine's exposure to oxygen.

One is a hand pump and rubber stopper arrangement which reduces the pressure in the bottle. They are marketed under various names, including Vac-U-Vin. Follow the directions and do not pump the wine down too much, or the volitiles will also evaporate, leaving a wine "dead". Proper use can extend the wine's life by a factor of two, allowing a red wine to be stored for two weeks in the refrigerator under some circumstances before it becomes less than interesting.

Another is a gas displacement system. Typically the gas is Nitrogen or Argon; it is introduced into the bottle, displacing the air that was there before, and then the bottle is resealed. [someone with experience here should finish this part of the answer.]

A third method is to rebottle the wine in a smaller bottle (such as a split whose bottle you saved), allowing very little air between the top and the cork. (that area is called the "ullage"). When inserting the cork, put the end of a paper clip, or a nail, or a wire, partially into the neck of the bottle as you insert the cork as a spacer, allowing air to escape (so that pressure doesn't build up). Then remove the object, allowing the cork to spring back. Tilt the bottle to wet the cork, but then store upright for some time (to give the cork a chance to fully spring back. Be sure to label the bottle! Some say that wine rebottled this way could be put back in the cellar and left there another year.

Jose

Reply to
Jose

The page at

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has been modified as you suggested to see how it looks. These changes in style are quite easy to make because they are done in the CSS style sheet at the top of the page. Large sites often use an external style sheet that controls many pages. Then changes made in this external CSS style sheet modifies the style of even hundreds of pages on a site without having to change each one.

I have no strong feeling on this, one way or the other. However, I suggest that we leave the numbers in until the page is more complete. The reason is that the numbers help me find what needs to be modified rapidly. It will then be easy to remove the numbers in the body at any time if one wants to. However it would be much more work to remove them and then have to put them back in.

Reply to
cwdjrxyz

whose bottle you saved), allowing very little air between the top and the cork. (that area is called the "ullage"). When inserting the cork, put the end of a paper clip, or a nail, or a wire, partially into the neck of the bottle as you insert the cork as a spacer, allowing air to escape (so that pressure doesn't build up). Then remove the object, allowing the cork to spring back. Tilt the bottle to wet the cork, but then store upright for some time (to give the cork a chance to fully spring back. Be sure to label the bottle! Some say that wine rebottled this way could be put back in the cellar and left there another year.

Jose, nice writeup. 2 thoughts: 1) technically a split is a 187 ml. Most people might be using a half (375 ml), but maybe a term like "smaller bottle" is way to ease confusion. 2) Even better than reinserting cork is to save any small (187 or 375) screwcap bottles.

Reply to
DaleW

Yes, excellent!

the past 5 years or so. Since they were made without knowledge of your tastes, they may or may not be useful to you. If you can define your tastes, you might get better advice asking the newsgroup after describing your tastes to us.

Since this is an answer to a question, it should be in the "answer" font, and not the "question" font.

What does the "go" button look like on a browser that has images disabled? I disabled them in Netscape and see "go button". Maybe it should say "go there" instead?

Jose

Reply to
Jose

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