Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Wines task force/Archive 9

Importance rating discussion

At Talk:Precision viticulture. Outside opinion would be welcomed. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:30, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I have a feeling such issues would be put in a different light if the "importance rating" itself had a different, maybe more precise name with other connotations. Could there be an alternate name that would do the same job? My sense is that "priority" explains better the scale range from dictionary-'must have' core topics to peripheral knowledge, though maybe another term, such as "scope", or something else, could be more ideal. Anyone else feel there might be something to wording this differently? MURGH ^disc. 08:26, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

While there is some difference how the scale is applied between projects (some projects don't use the importance parameter at all), I suppose this is more a discussion for Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, since the terminology and the scale is out of the projects' hands. Tomas e (talk) 13:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

New Portal, Drinks

I have created a new portal for the beverage community. While the Beer and Wine projects have their own specialized portals, the rest of the Drink WikiProjects do not have their own portal to call their own.

It is here. Please be warned, it is still a work in progress and is not fully populated.

I would gladly welcome the assistance of the members of this project in getting it up and running.

Also, please check out the new WikiProject Spirits which is for distilled alcoholic beverages such as vodka and whiskey.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 07:24, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

A related project for spirits

I noticed that since a few days, a related project by the name Wikipedia:WikiProject Spirits exists. Tomas e (talk) 21:57, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Good, maybe they can take over the rice wine article and other articles about alcoholic drinks that consist of something other than fermented fruit juice. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:15, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

An editor to keep an eye on

While I'm sure this editor has the best of intentions, I am a little concern that he may be a tad "zealous" when it comes to his nationalistic pride in Italian wines as demonstrated by his efforts on the Sparkling wine and Spumante redirect. He also seems to have difficulties understanding WP:DUE as evidence by his view experienced on the talk page of another editor. Perhaps I need to make better use of "kid gloves" because I don't want to discourage his passion for improving Wikipedia's content on Italian wines, but I am nervous about his ability to keep that passion in check WP:NPOV wise and not let his love for Italian wines get the better of his editor. Any neutral and uninvolved thoughts are welcomed. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:36, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

We may need a few more eyes on the Spumante‎ redirect. Despite repeated attempts to engage him in dialog, he seems content to keep trying to do his own thing under the misguided view that somehow Spumante warrants just as much coverage as Champagne does in the history of wine. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:42, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

That's too bad. Seems there might be a significant language barrier to prevent clear channels. Maybe if a fluent Italian speaker is at hand..? MURGH ^disc. 17:52, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps....but he seems to be escalating with apparent disregard for WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE. See Talk:Sparkling wine. I think he sincerely believes that Spumante is "more important" than Champagne, Cava, Sekt and Cremant and that somehow our coverage is slighting Spumante if it doesn't have it own separate, largely unreferenced, article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 17:55, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

So the chances of reasoning with him that "spumante" simply means "sparkling", and that his energy might be better spent improving the highly valued articles of Franciacorta, Prosecco, Asti Spumante etc is seeming very unlikely? I wish I spoke Italian. :( MURGH ^disc. 18:03, 2 January 2009 (UTC):

Well he seems to have taken his "spumante" article to his talk page. I would like to encourage him to work on referencing and see what can be incorporated into the Spumante section in Sparkling wine or into a sparkling section in the Italian wine article. But I have to admit that my good faith is starting to wear thin and I wonder if he is deliberately being POV-nationalistic or is so biased that he may not be able to edit constructively. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:56, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Seems hard to tell so far, I can't see among his edits yet any offering of RS. At least on the talk^[1] there is a declaration of intention, but I'm just not sure how it smelts into the Italian "sparking" section. I sniff a problem with a long list of producer ELs and declaring a new "progenitor of sparkling wine" ahead of Perignon..

I admit I know very little about the doctor Fabriano Francesco Scacchi and his 1622 treatise De salubri potu dissertatio, since English descriptions online are so few, but those I see^[2] describe a "strong disapproval" text of "preparation and consumption" of sparkling wines, but gets no mention by Stevenson, whose very clear "The only reference that is of any relevance to the fizz detective is one that describes unambiguously a repeatable process deliberately employed to render a wine sparkling, and the earliest such reference discovered so far is in the paper presented to the royal Society by one of its founding members, Christopher Merret, in 1662" leaves little doubt. It would surely be OR to trump that with a more dubious source which doesn't mention Merret or to what degree Scacchi describes the sparkling wine process. I guess we'll see how it goes.. MURGH ^disc. 11:00, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

He's exceeded WP:3RR. He's now been warned. He can be blocked if he reverts again. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:09, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Jewell Towne Vineyards

I am a little concern about the notability of this winery. The nice sounding claim of winning nearly a 100 medals at International competition falls hollow when you actually look at their medal list. These are far from international competition and the proliferation of bronze and silver medals is nothing to brag about. My amateur winemaker roommate has over a dozen silver and bronzes from the "Indy" for her homemade wine. There are numerous reliable sources about the gimmicks and marketing ploys of these medal factory competition. Do you think that Wikipedia's notability standards and WP:CORP should give much weight to a winery whose only claim of notability is entering a lot of medal farm competitions and winning silver & bronze? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 20:48, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

To me, medals count for almost nothing. So many generic wines win medals from organizations with little or no merit or "authority". I think Decanter magazine awards different wines, as does WS and medals from there might merit something; but hardly notability on an encyclopædic scale. It's the same with wines that are awarded points by Parker or Tanzer. While it may matter to wine-buffs it's not enough to gain particular notability. Besides, most wines that really deserves medals or awards (not mass-produced stickers), are notable on their own merit and while the awards may reflect this notability they, the awards, do not merit notability on their own.--Nwinther (talk) 22:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you're absolutely right about the notability level of these medals. At first gaze this article appears lucky to have avoided an AFD so far (since 2005..), with the cozy first name text and only a small local paper (the Hampton Union) for source, not to mention the unchallenged claim of "oldest winery" in NH when founded in 82! But RS actually exists.^[3] Between the Appellationamerica in-depth interview^[4] and Boston Globe^[5] I think the winery's right to an article is in its position as first in its state, and diverse variety cultivation in an unlikely location seems well enough documented. The "silverware galore" really needs to be reigned in to a brief and concrete, sourced mention. I can give it a swipe when I'm done with Château Latour.. MURGH ^disc. 00:36, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I can see the notability of being first in the state. But it certainly needs some clean up. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:07, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's a stretch to assume notability for being first in the state. Why is that relevant? How about the first computer-programmer in the state? Or potato-chip producer? Why shouldn't he (or she) have an article? After all, wine producing in itself isn't an exceptional accomplishment compared to hundreds of other occupations/crops.--Nwinther (talk) 10:41, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

While I can agree with you on the comparison, vineyard plantation and production of reasonable quality wine is very much tied to local viticultural conditions. Therefore, this pioneering role can be something of a local/regional "trailblazer" which reasonably adds to the notability. (More provided that there were followers than that there were minor bronze medals.) The conditions for potato chip production is probably easier to predict, and vary less with location (as long as you don't pick a potato-free state, if such a thing exists). I guess at the first computer programmer in Silicon Valley would definitely merit an article. Tomas e (talk) 11:22, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

The growing of potatoes, while it may seem trivial, can in fact be a challenging undertaking - there are dozens if not hundreds of different potato-variants and cultivation can be just as diverse as that of wine. The location, NH, is after all not very extreme. The first computer programmer in SV would indeed merit an article, as SV is a centre of computer programming and IT development. The first to plant vines in Bordeaux would also merit an article but that knowledge of course, has disappeared in the haze of history. And that is exactly the criteria for being the first of something, somewhere important: Historic value. But since NH isn't a prominent place of wine-producing, nor has it a long tradition for doing so, I don't think one could compare it with the first programmer in SV. It's not that I'm against an article - even on those conditions. But we do risk stepping up on a slippery slope, where being either the first of something in a certain place or doing something in a slightly unlikely place or a combination of those, merits an article. The first Ostrich farmer in Denmark could be a comparison.--Nwinther (talk) 12:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

If the first ostrich farmer of Denmark received solid RS documentation, we couldn't refuse an article on it, could we? MURGH ^disc. 15:24, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes; if the subject isn't of any particular notability. I have no problem with JTV getting an article. I just think the basis is brittle no matter the RS. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nwinther (talk • contribs) 17:52, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

My inclination is usually to tag any winery article for deletion unless they are truly notable enough for the rest of the world to care. I suggest proposing it for AfD anyway and see what the larger community thinks. If the consensus is to keep or delete, so be it. I'll prod it for now. If someone removes the prod, I'll propose it for AfD. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I would say the prod is not appropriate as the sources all meet the standards of WP:RS, WP:V and WP:PSTS making conform to WP:Note. If you feel it is not a notable article, than an AFD would be the better course of action. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 00:38, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Done; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jewell Towne Vineyards. While the sources meet the bare minimum requirements, they are local-interest sources that, like the medals, don't confer notability outside their local region. We should have higher standards than that for winery articles in a global encyclopedia. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Seemed a bit too rushed to me. Those refs I slapped in the other day was just "at first look", not really imagining there was any hurry. At any rate, I do think it's notable, and took a second pass at the refs. But that is just my interpretation of WP:N, we ought to be in touch with the WP-wide consensus so an AFD could be healthy. MURGH ^disc. 01:43, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I proposed the AfD to generate a wider discussion. I have no problem if consensus is to keep, or if there is no consensus (which will result in a keep). My personal threshold for winery articles is pretty high, however, in keeping with the WP:IINFO policy, which is why you won't see an article on the winery I'm associated with. Unless the winery gains national or international recognition, its article is ripe for deletion. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:53, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure we'll inevitably have differing ideas of how big we want this dictionary to be. Let me just say that I also have a discriminating threshold, but I do feel that producing multiple RS trumps my personal feelings of what ought to be included and what not. The attention of media is very much unfair however, and place, crowdedness and other conditions come heavily into play with who gets lauded in one place and ignored in another. JTV is a minnow in a tiny pond, but it's enough to be very visible. Here In my small country that goes for nearly any field that draws attention, and national media are quick to jump, easily justifying WP:N but ridiculously lightweight compared to counterparts in the competitive world. MURGH ^disc. 16:39, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate an old view of mine. While we certainly shouldn't consider every hobby winery as worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia, on balance, I'm much more concerned about how winery articles are written. So I guess I'm somewhat of an inclusionist in that regard, although I wouldn't consider myself as a radical bomb-throwing one. :-) I consider advertisements, POV and non-encyclopedic information for notable wineries more of a problem than short NPOV articles on marginally notable wineries. For a case in point, see what I wrote on the phrase "ultra premium" below. Tomas e (talk) 11:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Featured portal review - Wine

Portal:Wine has been nominated for a featured portal review. Portals are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the portal to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, portals are moved onto the Featured Portal Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the portal from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 20:50, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

The discussion is transwiki'd here, below. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:58, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

---

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review). No further edits should be made to this page.

This portal is kept. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:13, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Wine

Notified WP:WINE and WP:FOOD.

• The portal is not maintained, per 1d. No one has updated the articles and sub-pages in a year; the only update has been me when I fixed a broken link. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 20:44, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I have done some structural changes to the portal and its sub pages, but I have not updated any of the pages themselves. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 05:22, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• I have always felt that the wine portal was a bit too ambitious for the editors participating in WikiProject Wine, most of whom are probably (like me) busy professionals who find it more important to spend our scarce available time improving the wine articles than maintaining this portal. A good portal, in my view, shouldn't need frequent maintenance. I have no objection to removing the "featured" status from this portal, and reconfigure the page into a useful static directory that needs only occasional maintenance. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:56, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
• Amatulic sums up my view as well. I'm much more concerned with the quality of our wine articles than a portal that gets a mere fraction of the page views in contrast to some of the most pressing wine articles in need of improvement like French wine, Italian wine, Wine tasting, etc. Featured or not doesn't really matter much to our readers and thusly doesn't concern me. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:41, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
• I didn't even know a portal could be featured. I concur with Amatulic and Agne.--Nwinther (talk) 09:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

If you give me the articles, I will maintain the portal. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 08:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

With the proper bots in place, this portal could maintain itself. There's already a template that shows a random quote every time the page is viewed. I'm thinking a bot similar to the auto-archive bot could cycle through all the Category:GA-Class Wine articles and Category:FA-Class Wine articles, say one per week, and include their lead sections on the portal page. Similar things could be done with the Selected Winery and Selected Person sections, but I personally think we're better off without those. The "news" section could disappear, too. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I know about the templates, I created them... Bot would be good. --Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 20:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

Glossary of wine terms

This article has been needing some work and I wonder what folks think about the best way to go about this. I love the value of the article as a type of "wine dictionary" for terms that do not warrant their own article. However to truly utilize the potential value I think we will need to carve out some splinter articles and maybe turn this main page into a type of disambig page. (Something like List of faux pas) The splinter article would cover terms specific to a category of wine like-Glossary of viticultural terms, Glossary of winemaking terms, List of French wine terms, List of German wine terms, and a revamping of Wine tasting descriptors etc. What do you guys think? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:49, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I'd prefer having one big glossary in one place. Each entry can include a parenthetical note such as (winemaking) or (viticulture) or (French wine). The problem with splitting the article is that when I go to look up a term, I may not know beforehand the category of the term, so I wouldn't know which article to look in. I would instead advocate merging Glossary of viticultural terms and Glossary of winemaking terms into a single article. 66.159.220.134 (talk) 06:18, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Well per WP:SIZE, the splinting is more ideal. Like my example of the faux pas articles, having everything in a single page would be cumbersome and not very helpful. In regards to your concerns about not knowing what "category" a term falls into, I don't think you will have much problem. I assume you are going to be typing in whatever term you're interested in the search box and that will automatically take you to either A.) the article itself which explains the term of B.) be a redirect to the appropriate glossary page (viticulture, winemaking, etc). Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:23, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems a good idea to me if it has overgrown its ideal size. The faux pas model looks like a good solution. MURGH ^disc. 09:02, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

• Update- I've split the viticulture and winemaking terms out and am not working on gradually expanding those list. For now, I've been adding French, German, Spanish/Portuguese terms to the general glossary of wine terms but will eventually split those out and do a thorough clean up of the general article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:10, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

As a side note, a future plan for these glossaries will be include creating redirect for terms that do not currently have an article and directing them to the glossary--such as body (wine). Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

"Ultra premium"?

I just removed the word "ultra" from the phrase "ultra premium" in the first sentence of Ridge Vineyards, since it looked like marketing-speak (i.e. POV) to me. I then searched for other instances of this sentences I found that there are a few in other wine(ry) articles. Before I remove them all I just wanted to make sure that there is no widely accepted definition of "ultra premium" that I have missed? I guess you really know you're reading an encyclopedia when you read that Quixote Winery "is noted not only for ultra-premium organic red wine but for unique, eclectic architecture and label design" and (outside the wine world) that Patrón "has introduced a new high-end ultra premium tequila". Unfortunately it "is currently only available at certain high-end restaurants and establishments" so I guess there's no chance of them letting in mere Wikipedians to verify its mindboggling ultra-super-duper qualities. :-) Tomas e (talk) 11:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not aware either that "ultra-premium" has become normal wine-patois. The bursting embellishment-excitement of the term is briefly amusing, but I'd think any occurrence could be snipped at sight. MURGH ^disc. 12:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The term "premium wine" is common but "ultra-premium" is just puffery. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:09, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

But what sort of requirement is needed to label a product "premium"? Premium wine as opposed to bad wine or mediocre wine? Are there standards or parameters? I understand it to be a term like "superior quality" (superior to what?) but unless it is an industry term, connotating a certain elevated price range bracket (in which case it could be sourced) wouldn't it be considered a peacock term? MURGH ^disc. 21:32, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Premium just refers to anywine above the category of everyday, quaffing wines. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:09, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree with Agne. I would also say that almost any wine which gets the attention of wine critics could be called a premium wine. (On the other hand, despite the text Grand vin de Bordeaux, the 2,99 euro Bordeaux wines I find in the local supermarket could hardly be called premium.) Tomas e (talk) 09:10, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I had a wine the other night (chilean producer Indomita) which stated "Ultra Premium" on the lable. I don't know their reason for doing so (other than give a good impression). But what to do, if a wine actually states those words on the lable? Just kidding. Thought it was a funny coincidence.--Nwinther (talk) 11:50, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Mrs. Robinson mentions (disapprovingly) use of the term range: "premium" -basic stuff, "super premium" -more ambitiously priced, and "icon wines"-outrageously priced.^[6] MURGH ^disc. 12:16, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

(Enter wine snob mode)

Bah. From a consumer point of view, "premium" is a highly subjective marketing term. My "everyday quaffing" wines are all high quality. And none of them say "premium" on the label.

From a winemaker's point of view, "premium" is also a subjective marketing term. If a winemaker makes something s/he considers truly premium, the wine would be labeled "reserve" or "96 points" or similar designation. I can't see a serious winemaker using that term. To me, slapping the word "premium" on a bottle of wine means it's an everyday quaffing wine that's trying to stand out on a store shelf. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Name conformity guidelines

I was wondering if we could state some concensus about WP:NAME and WP:DAB, maybe place our own line in Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Other specific conventions. I so far haven't seen a wine-related line on it, but ask forgiveness if there already is one.

Just to propose the obvious convention: "In the first instance, use (wine)." There are quite a few instances where the disambiguating is somewhat more precise than necessary, such as Hugh Johnson (wine writer) James Halliday (wine critic), Len Evans (wine columnist) or John Radford (writer and broadcaster), that I wouldn't mind having a cleaning round with. It would also be nice to discuss a hierarchy of DABS. Some terms that pop up in parenthesis seem very logical such as (wine region) or disambiguating place names, but cases such as: (DO) and (DOQ) AVA, AOC, DOC etc are always suffix it seems, (winery), (vineyard), and other anomalies ie Lees (fermentation). There are a few more naming conventions it would be nice to have consensus on, such as Champagne estates and defaultsort-ignoring words like domaine, château, clos, etc. if there is mood for it.. MURGH ^disc. 12:40, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed the mismatch between AOCs and DOs, and it would be good to have them in a common format. For the French AOCs it wouldn't really matter if it is with or without parantheses, because the original format is Appellation ... contrôlée, sometimes written as AOC ... so the AOC suffix isn't any original format anyway. When it comes to people, I'm not too sure about having "(wine)" as an suffix, because to me that looks like an article actually on a wine, such as Dom Pérignon (wine). Tomas e (talk) 14:07, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Well that is a point, are cases when the DAB specifics need to be tightened and a set structure is in place. Dom Pérignon too works well for me, as (wine) and (person) clearly distinguishes between subjects. But with people of the same name, I'd think that Hugh Johnson, James Halliday, Len Evans suffixed by (wine), would signify "in the field of wine"? I could be wrong and people will find confusion in the possibility that these are wine brands.. Would (wine writer) be the best DAB for these then? MURGH ^disc. 15:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer the short and simple (wine) DAB since it makes linking to those articles so much easier. Dom Perignon is the very rare exception that would require a distinction between the person & the wine named after the person. Most other articles would probably talk about the wine in the context of the winery's article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I went and did the DABs and the subsequent dull cleanup after, so we'll see if there comes confusion. I also inserted a line at Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Wine and viticulture, so there is a start to that. MURGH ^disc. 00:14, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

There is no difficulty linking to articles that have long-form titles. That's why we have redirects.

Plenty of articles have titles that nobody would ever type in by hand. This is acceptable, especially for titles with diacritics such as the articles on Brač and Über, and articles with a hyphenated title such as Eye–hand coordination, for which Wikipedia:Manual of style (dashes) requires an n-dash.

It is also acceptable for the article title to have a descriptive parenthetical note such as "John Doe (wine writer)" but have a redirect link for shortened forms liks "John Doe (wine)".

Our article titles should be accurate and as long as they need to be, not abbreviated. Abbreviated titles should be handled by redirects. Therefore, I object to the recent change of Paul Draper (winemaker) to Paul Draper (wine). The more accurate and descriptive title should be the article title; everything else can be a redirect link. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:19, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The parenthetical addition of (wine) for DAB purpose does nothing to diminish the accuracy or descriptiveness of the title. To use your example, anyone looking for Paul Draper the winemaker will look at the disambig page of Paul Draper or see a title of Paul Draper (wine) and know instantly who it is. Why? Because the title accurately describes that this particular Paul Draper is someone notable for his involvement with wine. How much further descriptiveness do you need? It is not like we have a small army of notable Paul Drapers in the wine industry such as a Paul Draper (negociant), Paul Draper (wine critic), Paul Draper (viticulturist), Paul Draper (wine writer), Paul Draper (Ridge winemaker), Paul Draper (Bordeaux winemaker), etc. If we had a case where we had multiple notable individuals with the same name then of course we should expand the descriptiveness of the title to distinguish between those individuals. But if we have only one Paul Draper notable for his involvement in wine, then the KISS title of Paul Draper (wine) is perfectly accurate and descriptive. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Ironically my perception of 'why we have redirects' is exactly the opposite to that of Amatulić: we can have as many infinitely accurate redirects as we please. Clearly I strongly agree with the topic simplicity principle. In my view the need for further precision arises when (wine) is insufficient, or it becomes inaccurate: obviously (grape), (wine region) and (viticulture), will sometimes be the more correct choice, and I'm sure there are other cases. Maybe (winemaker) is one such term, but when it becomes our job to make a judgement call on the role of an article subject individual of the wine industry and sometimes overlapping and vaguely defined roles (vineyard manager), (winery owner), (consultant oenologist)/(consultant enologist) etc. begin to bleed into each other, we are vastly better served by just declaring what topic the subject pertains to. MURGH ^disc. 12:02, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Muscatel Wine

I read a lot of detective novels written in the 50's and 60's wherein "muscatel" is often the wine of choice for winos and teenagers. Muscatel is described as very cheap and very sweet. Out of curiosity, I went to both a local supermarket and liquor store to try and find this "muscatel." I couldn't find any. Does anyone know if this wine still even exists? I thank you in advance.

regards GrayStoner (talk) 00:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

In which locations are these novels set? The Muscat family of grape varieties has members of varying reputation (and different names and spellings) that is used to produce a wide range of wine styles. A rather common style is sweet, fortified white wine produced in several Mediterranean countries, under many different labels and designations (Moscatel, Samos...). I also think that they have also been exported to many countries in northern Europe even when wine-drinking was much less common there than it is today. The simpler of these wines are rather cheap. Cheap, sweet (i.e. easy to drink) and strong - that sounds like something that could be fit the profile you mention. Tomas e (talk) 19:26, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Muscatel is a semi-generic name in the U.S. for wines which taste like Muscatel. See 27 CFR 4.21 iv (3) Semi-generics are usually cheap wines. Rmhermen (talk) 18:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Citizendium's wine articles

After 2+ years, it is seems that this "expert driven" project has the development of wine articles as a very low priority. Perhaps there are no wine experts willing to donate their time and effort to the project? Conversely over the same 2+ years, I think the quality of Wikipedia's wine coverage has increased dramatically thanks to the hard work of everyone here and other fly by editors. It is an interesting read to take a look at some of the Citizendium's wine articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:31, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

• Wine
• Port
• De Bortoli Wines
• Champagne
• Georgian wine
• Sherry

That's surprising, I would have thought Citz articles would have more in common with WP. Well, except the Georgian wine article. But there doesn't seem to be scores of wine nerds involved. MURGH ^disc. 22:54, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Just to note - Citizendium claims to get 400 total edits a day. Wikipedia got that many in the last 2 minutes. Rmhermen (talk) 18:10, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Moldovan wine producers

Oh boy, this article needs some work! I'm not sure if it should be merged into Moldovan wine or fashioned like List of Champagne producers. Thoughts? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 06:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like this one has a lot more (bluelinks) to offer more than the producers section of Moldovan wine, so wouldn't a merge be just fine? A list would need a pretty firm idea from good sources which producers meet the crieria. Do we have such sources? MURGH ^disc. 09:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Alexander Mountain Estate

Does anyone think this article is salvageable? The COI is pretty evident and I'm not too keen on the fact that the main "source" of this article is a blog that supposedly gave permission for its info to be copied. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Wow. The bird-life & critter description is rich. It would seem to need severe carving. "Licensed" or not, that can't possibly legitimize copy-pasting a huge text!? MURGH ^disc. 04:02, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm wondering how much of this a Kendall Jackson PR ploy since it seems that have been trying to get Alexander Mountain designated as an AVA with their Stonestreet winery set to capitalize on their virtual monopoly of the area. Is it any coincidence that redirect Alexander Mountain not only goes to this article written by someone named User:Stonestreeta1a but also that their sources seem connected to the Jackson's as well? Seems a little fishy and certainly not encyclopedic. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, the article is gone now. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Issues with the portal and project pages

Hello, your friendly neighborhood maintenance man here: I need some help with some issues on the Portal and Project pages:

1. The Wine improvement drive has not been updated in 18 months. Is the project still on this or is it dead? If it is dead, I will look into removing it for you.
2. I need images that are in the public domain for the selected wineries section here. Any help would be appreciated! Either actual images or links to said images
3. I have finished revamping the Portal and most of the Project pages. If anyone has suggestions or needs for the page, please ask!
4. I need suggestions for the February update: article, winery, person, grape, DYK, picture and quote.

Remember, any help you give me can help you by bringing attention to the subject of Wine and new members to your project.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 21:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm personally uneasy about highlighting a winery in the portal. It's like a newspaper doing a restaurant review: it gives the restaurant exposure and typically drives business to the establishment. I think it's sufficient that we highlight a quality article on the portal, regardless of the content as long as it's wine-related. We have several B-class and above articles that the portal could cycle through every week or so. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:52, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Amatulic and, relatively speaking, the quality of our winery articles are rather poor. As for your other concerns--Yes, the WID is inactive at the moment however I wouldn't remove it since we may revive it if project activity increases. Also, where did the DYK go? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 21:58, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

In reply:

• The DYK is on the portal page to eliminate duplication, it is located on the right hand side below the quote section. The older stuff has been archived on the Portal:Wine/Did you know/Archive 1 page.
• The wineries section of the portal was already there to begin with and I did not create it, only tweaked it to use the random portal generator template. If you feel that its inclusions is inappropriate, I would suggest an RfC about the subject as not to offend anyone by just deleting it.
• That is no problem, I will not that the WID is currently inactive on its page if you do not mind, just to let people know.

--Jeremy ( Blah blah...) 22:34, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

We don't need an RFD to remove a section of the portal. Just be bold and do it! If someone objects and reverts, then we can have a discussion. The basic portal template just includes a space for a selected article. If you look through the edit history, the page was eventually expanded to include selected wineries. What may have seemed like a good idea at the time, in retrospect, doesn't seem workable in light of the poor quality and quantity of winery articles. I see one editor removed that section as promotional, but it was restored during what looks like regular maintenance.

I think it's enough to have a selected article. We don't need separate sections on a selected winery, selected wine, selected region, selected grape, seleted winemaker, etc. The portal looks better if it's a convenient directory of resources without getting too huge by featuring multiple wine-related articles simultaneously. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Feb Wine Blogging Wednesday-Piedmont

The new Wine Blogging Wednesday topic has been announced as Piedmont wines. As in the past, we can expect a fair amount of traffic on our Piedmont wine related articles leading up to the Feb 18th event. If anyone is feeling industrious, here are some Piedmont related articles that could use some love and tidying up. Feel free to add more articles to the list and strike through any that has been sufficiently improved. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 05:10, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

• Stubs
  

Cortese di Gavi, Cortese, Arneis, Moscato d’Asti, Grignolino, Brachetto, Gattinara (wine), Favorita (grape), Bonarda Piemontese, Croatina, Erbaluce, Malvasia Nera, Vespolina, Dolcetto di Dogliani

• Starts
  

Nebbiolo, Freisa, Asti Spumante, Barbera d'Asti, Ruché, Malvasia di Castelnuovo Don Bosco

• C class
  

Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Dolcetto, Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains

• New articles
  

Brachetto d'Acqui, Asti DOCG (or perhaps Asti wine and merge all the relevant DOC/G), Dogliani DOCG (or perhaps Dogliani wine, Roero DOCG, Pelaverga, Barbera d'Alba (or perhaps Alba wine), Quagliano

Something to keep an eye on

Someone is offering money for an article on Wine preservation because apparently their first attempt was deleted for not having references. I didn't see this article before it was deleted but I suspect there was probably more going on than just lack of referencing--like maybe some copy vios or blatant adverts for a company selling wine preservation equipment. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 07:22, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, not just the offer of payment but the term "web promotion" in the "ad's" footer could be some indication. Tomas e (talk) 18:37, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The person who posted the request looks dishonest, based on his other requests, asking for the creation of illustrated blog sites and "50,000 new gmail accounts". Based on his other contributions, I'd say he's lying about the article having been deleted before.

And sure enough, if you try to create an article that was previously deleted, you will be informed that the article was previously deleted in the information box above the edting box, and there would be a link to the deletion log. That isn't the case here. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:02, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually I think he started with the improper capitalization of Wine Preservation. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:03, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Date format

The discussion over at Talk:Wine#Article date format may eventually become a contender for Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars. But it brings up a valid point: I have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that historical dates in wine articles should follow the contemporary BCE/CE format rather than BC/AD format, in those cases where it's appropriate to designate an era. One editor correctly pointed out that there is no such consensus on WikiProject Wine.

There is no policy governing date format, only the WP:DATE sub-guideline of WP:MOS that says either one is fine and changing from one format to another is discouraged. WP:MOS does allow for common-sense exceptions; one of which might be consensus of a WikiProject to have consistency among articles. Feel free to weigh in with your views. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:53, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm partial to using BC/AD but mostly because of habit. I really don't think it is of dreadful concern what way it is formatted and it is certainly not worth the effort to wage an edit war over. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 01:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I do the same out of habit too, but try to make an effort to use the more contemporary format on Wikipedia for articles that have no religious context. I wouldn't say there's an edit war right now, just some heated discussion over policy after a brief flurry of reverts. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:18, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to write BC and BCE when doing original research. But when I'm editing wikipedia or just interpreting/citing work, I usually forget and just repeat whatever is written (typically AD/BC). If we were going to promote one intentionally, I'd promote BC/BCE. But I don't think the wine project declaring one to be better than the other really affects the overall quality of wikipedia.

--mroconnell (talk) 13:43, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Notability of wine "games"

While not on par with some of the games listed on the drinking games article, I was surprised to stumble across Wine Teasers Wine Game. Besides the obvious WP:COI with the article creator, this game strikes me as distinct non-notable despite the few external links it has. Does anyone know the notability standards for games? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 09:12, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

It looks like a "how to" guide in violation of WP:NOTHOWTO so I prodded it. It does make claims of notability, but those endorsements and reviews are unverifiable. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Article has been deleted. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:19, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

International competitions

Reading the chilean wine article I came across the "international competitions" section that talks about chilean wines performing at (more or less) arbitrary "competitions". This made me wonder "is this really encyclopaedic information?"

If the section is relevant on Chilean Wine, it is certainly relevant in French Wine, Spanish Wine, Californian Wine, Australian Wine etc. etc. To me that's one huge wasps nest of wine-"nationalism". It is also an ever-changeing section, as most competitions aren't on par with "judgement at Paris" etc. and will inevitably become irrelevant. I know (think?) there existed stubs on some competitions that were deleted due to lack of notability, but I think that this sort of information belongs on such a page, rather than in each countrys article - if at all. After all these "competitions" lie awfully close to RP or WS ratings. Any thoughts?--Nwinther (talk) 09:40, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I would say no and would prefer not to have such a section since it can be a spam magnet as it looks like the Chilean wine section is becoming. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 09:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, international competitions, with entries from several countries, carry more weight than local or regional ones. From a notability standpoint, the section seems justified if the competitions are truly international. From a maintenance standpoint, it's a nightmare, and I'd remove it on that basis. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe the solution is to decide "is the competition notable"? If it is, give it its own article with a section on results. If the results of certain International competitions are noted in verifiable sources as favoring certain countries, than it might be something you'd feel more comfortable adding to articles all over the place (as is the case with the Judgment of Paris). But if nobody writes about the competition itself, you might want to limit the competition results to the article devoted to the competition. Make sense?

--mroconnell (talk) 13:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Bold closure change

If you could take a look at the changes that have happened to Closure (bottle) and comment on it. User:Rlsheehan initially edited the page to define the term as synonymous to screw cap [7], which I reverted since it was both very inaccurate and deleted a reference. Rlsheehan's response, either in good faith or by WP:POINT was to move the page to Closure (wine bottle) (Reflects desire by some editors to limit to wine industry), and retain the closure (bottle) namespace as a redirect to Screw cap. Per right now there have been no change to the DAB Closure which only points to the new redirect. Thoughts on how this is best handled? MURGH ^disc. 18:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmm....well I'm not terribly annoyed at his response. Closure (bottle) should be more generic in scope. Truth be told, I don't see why we can't expand Alternative wine closure and have just that article and some more wine related content on Cork (material). Do we really need a third article? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 18:30, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a problem in letting "closure (bottle)" leave the wine context, but it is completely ridiculous to redirect it to screwcap! Since when is a crown cap not a bottle closure? Or a cork or a tear-off film or...? This redirect should not be allowed to stand! Tomas e (talk) 19:24, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

No probably not. I'm sure the information could be collected in a more ideal way. I guess my objection is concerning the language accuracy, that a term for all things sealing a bottle redirects to screw cap is inherently wrong. Then it would be better to have Closure (bottle) as a disambiguation page, but yes, it does make more sense, if "Alternative wine closure" was adapted to "closure (bottle)". I agree it has a wider scope than the wine context . MURGH ^disc. 19:33, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd argue for the merging of the lot of 'em – Screw cap, Crown cap, Closure (wine bottle), Stopper (plug) and not forgetting Bung – into one decent article called Closure (bottle) by renaming Screw cap accordingly and making it more generic and inclusive. A lot of the solid info there belongs in Alternative wine closures anyway, which would leave a sketchy article crying out for content.
I must say articles like "Closure (bottle)", "Bottle cap" and "Screw cap" should never have been written as wine articles in the first place and this seems to be the source of the problem, however the recent reaction the other way is plainly OTT. I'd remove the use of Closures in the lead sentence as it's plain wrong on several counts (WP:MOS, specifically the bolding and capitalisation) in both "Screw cap" and "Bottle cap". The biggest problem now is that, whereas the term "closure" should be wikilinked in the opening sentence of these articles, for "Screw cap" the link is circular, which is both absurd and a little more complex than the simple reversion it's crying out for...
Incidentally, I noticed a lot of the info on screw capping as far as wine is concerned seems a bit out of date, though I can't be sure... it just appears to be a lot more widespread than our articles suggest. Or maybe I just drink too much New World stuff these days :-/ mikaul^talk 05:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, as far as I understand, some (New World) producers bottle the same wine under cork and screwcap and offer their importers a choice, since the acceptance of "alternative closures" varies between markets. So perhaps you live in a more stelvinised and less conservative country... :-) But I agree with your points. Tomas e (talk) 10:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Closures of various types are common on many bottles, jars, and tubes. Most of the WK articles on these relate to the package form rather than to a specific type of contents (eg wine). It was clear that you did not want this article opened to consider other types of contents: the only other path left was to properly limit the title to wine bottles. This seems to be an acceptable solution and, yes, it was a good faith edit. Rlsheehan (talk) 04:34, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I am glad it was good faith, but as far as "it was clear that you did not want this article opened to consider other types of contents", I reverted this because it deleted a reference and limited the definition of closure to "screw cap" under the edsum "improve" — certainly not because I didn't want to consider other types.. WP is not so spent for spot cites that the deletion of WP:RS is automatically taken as a good faith act. MURGH ^disc. 11:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Apologies for not addressing your comment directly; the old edit conflict, I'm afraid. Hope you find my comments above constructive, anyway. mikaul^talk 05:15, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 07:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Sources and inspiration

This may have been adressed earlier in here, but the feature only came to my attention today: Google Books. Did a search on Wine + France and came up with a rather serious book on the subject. While only limited reading is allowed, I figure we could draw both inspiration and sources from there.--Nwinther (talk) 10:25, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

New article bot as an additional project tool?

There are some other Wikipedia projects around that use a bot (User:AlexNewArtBot) to automatically create lists of new articles that could be relevant for the project. For an example, see User:AlexNewArtBot/PlantsSearchResult. The lists are created by comparing new articles against project-specific search criteria, basically keywords. Perhaps this could be something for us? Until today, my gut feeling has been that almost all of the relevant articles already were tagged for this project, as project membership seems to include most people who write wine-related articles, and many of the project's members actually tag and assess articles. However, today I stumbled across a couple of untagged articles at the same time, including an article on a Bordeaux wine (Baron de Lestac) created already in December 2007 and which some of you may wish to scrutinise keeping WP:WINEGUIDE in mind. This left me with a suspicion that there may be more untagged wine-related articles than I first thought. Of course, a new article bot does nothing for a possibly existing backlog of articles, but it does help in not adding to it. Any thoughts? Tomas e (talk) 15:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be useful in tagging and organizational. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Capitalization revisited

A good faith editor recently changed the capitalization of secondary names ("blanc", "gris", etc) on Template:Wines based on information from a site that apparently relies heavily on the Wikipedia Variety (Botany) and Cultivar pages which are both mostly unsourced (hence unreliable) and except for Tomas' brief edit, neither really tackle the issue from a viticultural perspective. I know we've had previous discussions here about capitalization guidelines but I've haven't dug through the archives yet to find it. I figure it would be healthy to revisit the conversation to reaffirm or change previous consensus. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 19:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Bon soir! In an odd quirk of fate (given that this is a pet thing of mine), on one of my very irregular trips to wikipedia, I decided to see what was happening over here. The answer is that most wine 'varietals' are actually 'cultivars', so far so good. But some wine cultivars, such as Sauvignon and Pinot come in different colours, which are differentiated with descriptors, which are not capitalised. Hence Cabernet Sauvignon, but Sauvignon blanc. Happy drinking! --Limegreen (talk) 11:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense, although I note that the Random House dictionary of the English Language capitalizes even the color, as in Pinot Noir. I have left those alone, but I have re-capitalized Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon in the template, because (a) that's how the articles are titled, and (b) I see zero sources, including dictionaries, that spell them lowercase. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:04, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, this will be a little long. :-) I can find the following three previous WPWine discussions on the subject, and it seems all have been non-conclusive:

• Talk:List of grape varieties#Case, 2005 - an article talk page, but still the longest discussion I've found.
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Archive 3#Capitalisation, 2007 - Limegreen saying basically the same as above.
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Archive 8#Capitalized grape names or not, 2008 - me reacting to something the Vayniacs wrote about Wikipedia.

The possible ways that grape varieties could be capitalised would seem to be:

1. Not at all: chardonnnay, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon
2. Only the first word: Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Cabernet sauvignon
3. Don't capitalise second word "botanical descriptors", but capitalise all other words: Chardonnay, Pinot noir, Cabernet Sauvignon
4. Capitalise every word: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon

Since the names of grape varieties are proper names, it seems #1 is definitely wrong, and I've never seen anyone advocate #2. The choice seems to be between #3 and #4.

So, why treat some words, like "blanc" and "noir" differently from others? It seems to be a habit of some in the "industry", but I've never really seen anyone come up with a WP:RS why this is so or exactly specify this convention. Since viticulturalists have botanical training, it could simply be an inspiration from the binomial nomenclature used to name species. In that case, the inspiration was partial, because all second words in binominal names are written in lowercase. An example is the beetle Agathidium bushi, named after a certain Bush. A complication is that grape varieties' names do not really conform to a narrow norm. They can have one word (Chardonnay, Riesling), two words where one is a colour descriptor (Auxerrois Blanc, Grüner Veltliner), two other words (Cabernet Sauvignon, Touriga Nacional) or sometimes more words (Refosco dal Pedunculo Rosso). Since these names come from different languages, they can have the "adjective(s)" before the "root", as in Grüner Veltliner or Blauer Spätburgunder (typical for Germanic languages), or after the root as in Auxerrois Blanc and Pinot Noir Precocé (typical for Romance languages). However, since they are proper names that we use in an English context, consistency must take precedence over conventions borrowed separately from the respective "source languages". Using lowercase for Romance adjectives, because they are at the end, but Uppercase for Germanic adjectives, seems inconsistent to me. Because surely noone would recommend "grüner Veltliner"?

It was also interesting to see Cultivar#Cultivar names, although not fully referenced, claim that ICNCP recommends full capitalisation for cultivars, because this is also what The Oxford Companion to Wine uses for grape varieties.

By the way, Limegreen's assertions (above and in 2007) about certain grape varieties status as cultivars or not do not seem correct to me. They are not in line with the article cultivar or the entries of the Vitis International Variety Catalogue listing existing grape cultivars.

So, I arrive at the personal conclusion that if we want to have a guideline we should probably go for #4, full capitalisation. If it's good enough for OCW and ICNCP, then it's good enough for me, it's a simple rule and it allows for consistent handling of names from different languages. Let the objections begin. :-) Tomas e (talk) 21:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a few points in response. Your own OCW quote on one of those pages includes "even though ‘Pinot noir’ may be botanically more correct than ‘Pinot Noir’". There is a botanically correct capitalisation standard. The language of origin is a red herring. A german botanist would presumably refer to Pinot gris at work, but buy Blau Burgunder at the supermarket. One is the actual botanical name, the other is the local name for it. This UC Davis database uses the technically correct but idiosyncratic capitalisation [8].

I would assume in their technical writing that botanists would obey their own rules. I don't read botany, but I do read sensory science (from whence I came across this strange technicality), however, those journals are inconsistent (and I'm aware of authors arguing with production editors over this).

I'm not unhappy with full capitalisation. In a lay work such as this, inevitably the vast majority will see the lowercase as a typo.

And finally, your question as to whether I'm right about things being the same cultivar is again a botanical academic point. Pinot noir and Pinot gris are enormously similar, except in some subtle differences in flavour imparted from their berries. The Pinot gris article itself refers to it as a "mutant clone" of Pinot noir, or elsewhere as a "white variant clone" of Pinot noir[9].--Limegreen (talk) 11:55, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:52, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Are you having trouble setting this up or are you simply choosing to not set it up?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:54, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The Italian DOCG mystery

Anyone feel like taking a whack at List of Italian DOCG wines? A blogger has gone through an impressive list of sources, including ours, to try and find a definitive list for the number and identity of Italian DOCG. A mystery just begging for a Wiki-detective to crack the case. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 08:03, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

If the Italian bureaucrats have fulfilled their duties to their EU colleagues, this list from the European Commission should be complete per February 10, 2009, and will presumably continue to be updated on a regular basis. Italian DOCGs are found on pages 39-40 and DOCs on page 25-38, including date of issue of the regulations and additional designations that can be used together with the DOC(G)s, per region. As far as I understand, this document is meant to be the EU's "master list" of all exisiting QWpsr. I found it quite useful when I did some additions to the List of AOC wines some time ago. Tomas e (talk) 18:41, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Wine Blogging Wednesday-Kosher wines

April's Wine Blogging Wednesday has been announced as Kosher wines. This will be a great opportunity to work on the Kosher wine article (currently C-class with major referencing issues) as well as other related articles like Vegetarianism and wine, Israeli wine, Royal Wine Company, Manischewitz, Finings, Flash pasteurization, In vino veritas and Sacramental wine. Alcohol in the Bible is another related article that went through the FA process in May and could use a little help responding to the FAC comments. These are articles that are certain to see increase traffic and readership as we get closer to the April 15th WBW date. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 00:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Wino (slang term)

While poking about I noticed that Wino (slang term) was redirecting Alcoholism. I was interested in getting other thoughts on whether this was the best location for this redirect. I know there is historical usage to the "bum wino" but in recent years (at least in the US) the term has taken on more positive connotation along the line of wine geek. However I have no knowledge or reliable sources talking about its use outside the US. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 03:24, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

In the UK a wino is an alcoholic, ususally a tramp (ie a 'bum' or 'homeless person' as you call them in the US) and most definitely does not have any positive connotations. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm. My first response was to look up the biggest dictionary I have to hand, which has two definitions. 1. =excessive cheap wine drinker or alco 2. "a wine lover or wine expert" (no further definitions).

I then headed out to the OED (the one that was 26 volumes when it was still in print). It only has the alcoholic definition, but I've actually started to be unimpressed with its coverage of modern definitions recently; although it is fascinating that the original 1915 spelling was "wineoe", and that it is from pacific coast california, thence through Kerouac, and thence into more common use.

This does suggest that the scope of the term is changing, or perhaps becoming 'owned' by people that like wine.--Limegreen (talk) 10:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks to me that the redirect was created simply as a placeholder for an article that doesn't yet exist. The disambiguation page wino implies that this is the case. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Häpe

I was wondering if someone could tell me what the English word is for this tool. I know it's either for gardening or winemaking, or both. Link: http://www.feiner.at/grafiken/f_grafik/120_g.gif

Found the answer at the Plants WikiProject. It's a billhook. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:28, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:COI editor referencing dispute

I need to disengage myself from a situation on Mount Pleasant Winery and my talk page before I start to become uncivil. I'm taking the page off my watchlist but I wanted to let the wine project members be aware of the situation. Basically an editor who admits to being the winery's owner wanted to put a listing of their designer "port" labels on their article "by customer request". I noticed an edit by an IP referencing a TTB document with a long reference number that didn't look like any of the TTB refs I've seen before. A relative of mine who works with TTB was online and at work so I shot him a quick IM with the number to see if anything came up. He ran it through his work computer's search file and said the number was invalid so I reverted the edit thinking it was potentially a hoax with someone making up a TTB number. I cut and paste exactly what was in the article so if there is a number or digit missing it is what the IP typed out. Anyways, the IP returned again and added the information and after searching through other sources on Mount Pleasant, I realized that while this might not be a hoax, it was certainly not something encyclopedic and more fitting on an advertisement for the winery. Looking at available online and book references with information about Mount Pleasant, there is nothing mentioning the designer port line as anything special or unique about the winery-certainly nothing on par with the reliable sources talking about the Mouton labels or even the Chateau Ste Michelle artist series wines, etc.

Despite trying to point the user (now registered) to the relevant policies on verification and encyclopedic relevance as well as trying to encourage him to edit articles that he doesn't have a personal vested interest in, he seems determined to try and reinsert this advert list because, as he noted on the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, he was "approached by customers" to add this information. Regardless of the outcome of whether or not we can get a reliable, verifiable source for the advert list of labels, we still shouldn't have a winery owner editing the article on his winery. A neutral, outside editor should be involved but I'm going to disengage myself before my patience wears thin. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:54, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Agne, yes, I've been following the 'situation' at Mount Pleasant. It seems pretty obvious that the owner is just advertising his winery. Congratulations on your civility and politness under the difficult circumstances. I was most impressed when I read your latest reply to him.

Is anyone going to deal with this? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:24, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you on his response, very classy. I would suggest an ANI report as this behavior is a gross violation of the COI rules. The owner may need a block placed on his account or IP address if he continues this. --Jeremy (blah blah) 14:11, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys. While I was able to maintain civility so far, I could sense that my temper flaring especially as he seemed to doubt my sincerity about checking referencing. He was making a big deal about the "11 minutes" between when he did his edit and I reverted him. That's just because I happened to be online and looking at my watchlist when he made the edit. Truth be told I could have done it in about 4 minutes since that was the true length of time that it took me to send an instant message to my uncle to with a cut & paste of the TTB number to run a quick check for me. The other 7 minutes was spent asking him how my Aunt's sewing competition went before I went back to editing. Anyways, I don't think the article should be deleted, as is being suggested on the reliable sources board. After Stone Hill Winery, Mount Pleasant is one of the most notable wineries in Missouri with a long history in the state. I have some reliable sources that establish notability that I could add if/when the situation ever diffuses. Some irony in this is that I'm a Missouri native whose has been to Mount Pleasant many times (I probably meet MowineGuy! My uncle too....) with the lead info box picture being one that I took a couple years ago on a visit. I'm obviously not out to "get them" and ruin the article. I'm just want the article up to encyclopedic standards. Despite his behavior, I do sense that eventually MowineGuy will get it. Right now, like all newbies were at one point, he doesn't understand what Wikipedia's is about. I hope that by removing myself from the situation as "the bad guy", that other outside editors will be able to gently prod him in the right direction and help him understand why somethings are not appropriate for the article. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:30, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Hopefully enough of us have now weighed in on the article's talk page for this editor to understand why his wine label verbage isn't appropriate. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Another Case of Self-promotion?

Captûre Wines.

What do you all think? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:34, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a possible conflict of interest to me. At least the article isn't spammy, but I don't see anything particularly notable about this tiny boutique winery. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:40, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Possibly a COI, but the sources meet WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NPOV and WP:PSTS. So while there appears to be a COI issue, it looks like the article was done properly according to standards of WP:COI.--Jeremy (blah blah) 18:27, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the article is reasonably well written with decent sources. However, the winery seems to fail on notability, which is why I have prodded it for deletion. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

COI is not, I think, a good reason for "prod". It seems from the above that the article is not "uncontroversially a deletion candidate". I suggest you remove the "prod" tag and take it to AfD. --Bduke (Discussion) 23:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I would lean against the prod, the five articles in independent publication provide WP:N. --Jeremy (blah blah) 02:26, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. The winery seems completely unnotable. A quick Google search (for "Captûre Wines") brought up almost nothing (just entries in a few wine portals). Perhaps the only saving point is the fact that one of the vineyards that Capure now owns (Tin Cross) was one of the first to be planted in Somona valley in 1855? But apart from that, there must be 100,000's of similar wineries in the world.

2. There is evidently a COI, as stated on the talkpage of the article; the writer works for the winery and appears to promoting the winery

3. The references: 2 of them are the company's own websites, and one is ApellationsAmerica which just gives bare data. That leaves 3: 2 are internet wine portals and one is a biz journal each carrying an article for the new startup

4. Yes, the article is well-written and complies with a lot of wiki guidelines

I think the main issue here is to decide whether the article meets the notability requirements, as per WP:N, the other issues being secondary. Personally, I think the winery doesn't make the grade for notability. A burst of articles in internet wine portals and biz journals (even though they are reliable and independent) covering a launch is not enough. Any business startup would receive that kind of coverage. Apart from the news of the launch/purchase/new owners, there is no other news at all, as far as I can see. All things considered, I would delete it (unless something notable can be shown). --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Bodegas. A new local pizza chain could get the same level of coverage but you would never see an article about them here. What makes wineries any different? But a prod is not the way to go. This should be sent to AfD. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Agne, when an article is written in good faith, as this was, a prod is the way to go. I have deleted other wine-related articles that way. It's less complex than AfD, it gives the author a chance to address deficiencies.

The author has not tried to hide his COI, either. I think he's acting in good faith.

For all I knew at the time I prodded the article, the winery might be notable in some way that hasn't been stated. Now that the author has begun a deletion discussion on Talk:Captûre Wines, and I have investigated the sources more closely, I am convinced this winery is too new for inclusion. If he removes the prod, it will go to AfD. This isn't an urgent thing; the world won't end because a deletable article exists for a few extra days. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Amatulic for referring me to the discussion here.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 22:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I am the author of the article in question and I now understand the argument being posed. Amatulic put it well on Talk:Captûre Wines both that the winery has received articles regarding how it is full of potential and how the winemaking team has connections to relevant-Wiki entries from past positions, however there is nothing citing critical review of the winery's wines or potential accomplished. This is due to the fact all 4 wines in the current portfolio have yet to officially launch, 2 of which will not launch until Winter 2010. It will take time before the notability of the winery's wines can be brought into question by sources of critical review (and added for expansion). And, this information can be added in time. However, I still would appreciate an explanation of how this isn't notable along the lines of WikiWine Project, where the scope of the group clearly states, "This WikiProject aims to compile thorough and accurate information on different vineyards, wineries and varieties of wines, including but not limited to their qualities, origins, and uses."

Everyone above seems to agree that the article was thorough and accurate given the third-party sources used. No where does it say in the scope that wineries/vineyards have to be established with Kendall-Jackson status or best-sellers (SIDE NOTE: of course, if that is the point of this group, that should addressed within the scope to avoid future confusion). I imagine the reason a correlation to a newly launched pizza shop wouldn't work in this case is because there aren't Wikipedia groups dedicated to mapping out all the pizza shops in a given area. Based on the current scope of this Wiki project, does it make sense to delete this article until all the reviews are out? Or, put differently, does this article in some way harm the integrity of Wikipedia or WikiWine Project? If the answer to that questions is "no," then is it not possible to let this article exist as a contribution to WikiWine Project and expand on its details as it gains the critical mass of additional third-party sources? I hope my questions are better able to define the scope of this project as well as determine the existence of this article.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 22:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The scope of this Wikipedia project has conentrated historically on articles pertaining to wine varieties and wine regions. There aren't many articles on wineries. The aim of this project isn't dedicated to mapping out all the wineries in any area; I am not sure where you got that impression. "thorough and accurate information on different vineyards, wineries and varieties" is still subject to Wikipedia's inclusion criteria.

In answer to your last question, on whether it's possible to retain this article and expand it as the winery gains notability: the answer is "no". This isn't a wine guide, nor is it a winery guide. We don't have articles on wineries that are potentially notable. Once the winery has achieved notability, then the article would be welcome. Right now, it's too soon.

I recommend moving the article to a sub-page of your own user page and maintain it there. I can do this for you if you want. That way, the article is in your user space, and you can get it ready for publication when the winery meets the inclusion criteria for articles.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I have stricter personal interpretation of inclusion criteria than other members of this project. Others have disagreed with me about whether a winery article should be deleted or kept. However, so far, the consensus for this article seems to be to delete. In fact I am surprised to find myself defending my decision to "prod" your article (an informal deletion discussion) versus creating a full-blown formal deletion proposal as advocated by others. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not surprised by that at all Amatulic--you seem to be a very understanding and helpful individual. At the very least this provided a new user with an informative process to learn from and I appreciate the route of a "prod" to see the conduct of discussion on Wikipedia as well as assert my own thought process. If the group consensus is still deletion I would very much appreciate your help in moving the article to a sub-page in the way you offered.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 02:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Jumping in with my 2¢: I ran into this article about a week ago because it was a new addition to Category:Sonoma County wineries. I gave it a heavy edit, but afterwards, I wasn't actually convinced of its notability.

RonaldMcWendys, here's how I think of it: if the company drops out of sight next week and never releases a single bottle of wine, would it still be considered notable? If yes, for what? The impression I have is that the 3 articles, however valid they are as sources, are a combination of PR and a "keep an eye out for what these guys might do in the future." And while that can make an interesting article, it doesn't say anything about the winery's current notability. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 07:39, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, it seems we have a consensus. I'd like to say thanks to all the participants in this debate. It was the first time I contributed to a debate, and it's been a learning experience for me. I think I know and understand all those wiki-guidelines a little better now. To Amatulic for expressing a complex issue so clearly; and to RonaldMcWendys for being a model of politeness, respect, understanding while in a difficult position. I hope you understand about the notability, and harbour no hard feelings. I would also love to write an article about my own wine project, but like Amatulic's family's and yours, it's just not notable. (Yet!) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:22, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Jeannie Cho Lee

A wine bio to keep an eye on. The subject is notable but looking at the article's history, I suspect that it has been heavily edited either by the subject themselves or someone close due to the unreferenced "fluff" material about schools, being married, having kids etc. The article was in incredibly bad shape with embedded links, major POV and tons of unsourced material with quite a bit simply not appropriate for a WP:BIO encyclopedic entry. The article has had a number of different account and IPs edit the article so I'm not sure if there is a particular user to keep an eye on. But some extra eyes on this article would be helpful. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 15:44, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like she has some fans. The last slew of anonymous IP edits came from Queensland, Australia.

Biographies of living people have stricter standards than other articles, so we need to keep watch with the WP:BLP policy in mind. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Capture Wines Again

I think that the prod tag (is that what it's called?) has been removed from the Capture Wines article. I suppose that means it goes to AfD? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 19:34, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I didn't remove it. I'm still waiting on Amatulic's offered help to move this article to a sub-page of my user page. I'm not quite sure how this works.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 13:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Update. I looked at the history of the page, apparently (talk) removed the prod.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I have moved the page to User:RonaldMcWendys/Captûre Wines. The original links Captûre Wines as well as Capture Wines both redirect there. RondaldMcWendys, you can continue working on the article there.

At such time when the winery achieves notability, finish up the article and notify the Wikipedia Wine project to look at it. If it looks good to the participants here, you can move the article back to the main space. To do this, click on the "Move" tab that appears in the top row of tabs (I'm not sure if new users get this tab for moving articles, but it shows up for me). If you have trouble moving it back because the Captûre Wines redirect link already exists, just replace the content with the tag {{db-empty}} and an administrator will delete it so you can move your article over it. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

For history's sake:

• The prod was added on 20 April 2009 by User:Amatulic with a description of "Notability of this low-volume boutique winery has not been established."
• The prod was deleted on 22 April 2009 by User:JulesH with a description of "Plenty of coverage in reliable sources, hence meets WP:N. Notability is clearly established."

It appears we have consensus about the article being deleted, so the absolute simplest method is to userfy the page to RonaldMcWendys's user space and then for RonaldMcWendys to tag the article (i.e., the resulting redirect page) for {{db-author}} deletion.

User:Amatulic did the move (to User:RonaldMcWendys/Captûre Wines), so all that's left is the {{db-author}} tag. I think that that's a much cleaner approach than just indefinitely leaving a redirect to user space (which isn't a good idea, in general). RonaldMcWendys, if you need help with that, just ask. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 22:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, please, Dori. Is it just a matter of putting the tag {{db-author}} on the discussion page of the article?RonaldMcWendys (talk) 22:12, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, just replace the content of Captûre Wines and Capture Wines with {{db-author}}. That's all there is to it; an administrator will come along and delete them. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Alternately, if you aren't comfortable tagging an article for deletion you can just blank those two redirect pages, and then any of us can add the {{db-author}} tags. So long as you remove the content, administrators shouldn't have issues with the deletions. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 04:05, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Eh... RonaldMcWendys, it looks like you tried to tag one of the redirect pages, but it "redirected" you to your new subpage and you tagged that instead. The result was that NawlinWiki came along and deleted it, instead of deleting the redirects. I have posted a request on User talk:NawlinWiki to restore it. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, NawlinWiki fixed it, restored your subpage and deleted the redirects. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:02, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Wine Blogging Wednesday-California wines

The May 13th Wine Blogging Wednesday is going to focus on California wines in honor of the 1 year anniversary of Robert Mondavi's death. There is a lot of fodder for article improvement here. While the San Fran Bay project has the Mondavi article listed as a "B" class--it really could use a lot of work (and a POV scan or two). The History of California wine needs a lot of referencing work and there are more than enough stubs in the American_Viticultural_Area#List_of_California_AVAs section. Some of the more glaring California AVA stubs include Central Coast AVA, Monterey AVA, Santa Lucia Highlands AVA, Anderson Valley AVA, Howell Mountain AVA, Mendocino AVA, Mt. Veeder AVA, Rutherford AVA, St. Helena AVA, Stags Leap District AVA and Yountville AVA. The larger scale regional articles could also use quite a bit of work from start class or non-existent such as North Coast AVA, Southern California wine (South Coast region), Central Valley wine (California) (as opposed to the Central Valley (Chile) which will someday get a wine article), Napa Valley AVA (Again, a very sub-par article despite its "B" assessment by another project) and Sierra Foothills AVA. So if anyone has a hankering for some California wines, there is a lot to drink up. :) Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:54, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Wine and Wines

Hello, sorry to disturb you, I'm from French Wikipedia where i tak care of interwikis, and I noticed that you have Category:French wines and Category:French wine, both are linked to fr:Catégorie:Vin français, so, are they different categories which can't be match to French terms, or same categories ? I suppose is the same, but maybe in English, there is a slight difference between wine and wines . So before start any work, I would like be sure. Thanks --Sisyph (talk) 10:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

You have a valid point. These dual categories exist for several countries, and I've never seen the point. Unfortunately, I've never gotten around to propose to merge them, since that would also call for bot work that I don't know how to do, but I would like that to happen eventually. (There are also other parts of our wine-related category tree which would need revising, such as the biographical articles.) If you were to try to find a difference, it would be that French wine could be a category for "the subject of French wine in general" while French wines could be a category for "individual French wines". However, we seldom have articles on individual wines as such, on the "lower level" it more tends to be articles on wine producers (such as châteaux), also covering the wines they produce, or on appellations, also covering the wines produced under that AOC. I would consider French wine the main category of these two. So I would recommend to primarily link to that category, and link back from both these. Tomas e (talk) 11:14, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for you answer, well, I'm preparing a category tree, but it seems be complicated beetween vin/vignoble and vineyard/winery/wine. I will contact French wikiproject. Sisyph (talk) 13:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yet more spam at Alternative wine closures

First Zork now Nomacorc. Man this article is a spam magnet. I cleaned up this most recent attempt but it is something to keep an eye on. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 12:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

And fascinating to see people add their spam first in the article, even before the lead. At least the Zork has a funnier name. :-) Tomas e (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Spanish Denominaciones de Origen (DOs)

Hooray!!! At last, I've finished creating articles for all 67 (or so) Spanish DOs. No more red links on the Spanish wine region page Spanish wine regions. However, some are Stubs, some lack good references, and some need to be wikified a bit! Anyway, what a relief - it's been bugging me for months!!! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 14:07, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Good job! I whipped up a navbox template for the pages similar to {{German wine regions}} to accompany the pages in that category, it is {{Spanish wine regions}}. It still needs to be populated. --Jeremy (blah blah) 14:16, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Where are the navboxes supposed to go? How are they used? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 14:34, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

These are most often put at the bottom of an article, right after the external links section, and before the categories and interlanguage links. I did one for you at Calatayud (DO). As the navbox is expanded and improved, the improved version will appear in all articles that include it. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Second that! Obviously an important milestone. A lot of stubs or not - now when all DO articles exist, then the structure is in place, and adds to the credibility of Wikipedia in this area. Don't forget to uncork something really good to celebrate! :-) Tomas e (talk) 21:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

¡mecachisenlamar! I spoke too soon! I've just checked through all the DO links and 3 of them point to the geographical region or town of the same name, not the DO!!! I'll create them on Monday and then uncork a little something :) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 22:09, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

re the navboxes: I've just seen the one at Calatayud (DO). But what is it for? I see a big empty box with aa map of the DO's on the right. Does it have to be filled in with information or something? Am i missing something here? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 22:09, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I will fill it up soon, I had to head off to work earlier... --Jeremy (blah blah) 00:25, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Nice work Bodegas! Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:05, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I have started to populate it, so here is what {{Spanish wine regions}} will give you:

--Jeremy (blah blah) 08:35, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Major Spanish wine regions

I think we should separate the major regions-Catalonia, Rioja, Cava, Ribera del Duero, Galicia, Priorat, Sherry, Navarra and Rueda. Those are going to be the ones that most people will be searching for so it seems like they should have a separate section at the top of the template. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I broke this down using the {{navbox subgroup}} template to make moving the sections around easier. Please give me a list of exactly how you would like me to break that first line down. I will add the line now. --Jeremy (blah blah) 23:37, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Well probably a heading of Major regions and an alphabetical listing of the regions I noted above should be fine. Anybody else have any thoughts? Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:13, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

How about including Penedès as a major region? It's well known abroad (in the UK at least!). I was surprised to Navarra in the list. Is it renowned abroad? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 16:03, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey, top marks for the sterling work, Bodegas! Wish I could get more free time to chip in on these things like the old days :/ I thought I'd weigh in and support the idea of Penedès being up there as a major region. I'm also not clear why Rueda should be up there and not, say, La Mancha..? In a way it's tempting to to for size over reputation, but if, as Agne points out, the idea is to highlight regions most likely to be sought out, maybe it might be better to make some subjective choices based on popularity. For example, I'd definitely remove Catalonia in favour of Cava and Penedès - these two (and Priorat!) lie within that region anyway. Also up & coming smaller regions like Bierzo (DO) are much more likely to be in the news; I'd favour removing Galicia in favour of that and/or say, Rias Baixas. Just my 2¢. --mikaul^talk 06:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi everybody, I'd like to make a couple of comments regarding that table. Galicia and Catalonia are nor exactly wine regions. They are autonomous communities where wine is produced, as it happens to be the case in all the Spanish autonomous communities. Aranda de Duero is not a wine region either, it is the name of a town outside La Rioja Autonomous Community which produces Rioja wine. Same goes for Cava, as any Spanish sparkling wine can potenally be labelled as cava, regardless of where is made. Therefore, the cava region would be the whole of Spain. Also, the DO de Pago wines are wines that come from a single vinyard, so the term region is not very apropriate.

The other thing is that selecting a few wine regions and labelling them as major in my opinion would be something like making original research, unless you find a source which identifies those as the major Spanish wine regions. Maybe you can leave that section for the regions that have Denominación de Origen Calificada as opposed to the ones that have Denominación de Origen only.

One last thing, Murcia and the Basque Country are missing from the table. Cheers! --Té y kriptonita (talk) 12:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

When Catalonia is talked about it is perhaps Catalunya (DO) that is mentioned. Regarding Cava, I believe you are wrong. Since Cava is a DO, and DO is a part of the EU QWpsr rules, it can only come from (a) graphically delimited region(s). In the case of Cava, this area is spread out over much of Spain, but it is indeed delimited. Tomas e (talk) 21:09, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

In that case the term Catalonia needs to be changed to Catalunya in order to avoid confusion.

You are right about cava, what I meant is that any producer of sparkling wine, regardless of its location can apply for Cava DO, which would not be possible for other DOs, where the zone of production is limited to a geographic region. For example, a producer of wine in Extremadura cannot apply for Catalunya DO. The word cava is not used to designate any particular place in Spain other than in wine terms. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 08:34, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a stretch to call Cava a region, to be fair (region or regions, it's a major DO) but then (for the purposes of this table) probably not so big a deal that it needs to be changed to "major denominations" or something equally awkward. Really, it's much more important that the big supra-regions like Catalonia and Galicia aren't included just because of their size. They're Autonomous Communities first & foremost (and as pointed out, Galicia isn't even a DO in that respect) plus, if size is the qualifying factor, then Priorat is definitely out! I must say it's hardly OR to include Penedès and remove Catalonia, and this isn't exactly a good place to add inline refs... I'd suggest Rioja, Cava, Sherry, Penedès, Ribera del Duero, Priorat for starters, only adding others which seem odd not being there. --mikaul^talk 20:16, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the last response. I've been traveling (and doing some wine tasting of course ;p). The reason why I originally included Catalonia and Galicia was because we have regional articles that can link to the DOs and DOQs within them. Under a category of major regions, it doesn't matter if they are DOs or not. That was just my original thinking. I think a future project will be to make regional articles of all the Spanish regions similar to how each US state have their own articles. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I understand now. I got confused as they are mixed with DO regions. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 09:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Spanish DO's finished at last

OK, now they're done! I will duly celebrate tonight with a glass of my own young white (100% Airen variety). If any of you would like to join me in celebrating, I'll send you all a bottle through the mail :) I suspect that I'm suffering from a bout of temporary irrational happiness! Send me your names and addresses to bodegasambite@hotmail.com and I'll ship off a bottle asap. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 11:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I guess my next task will be to upgrade the Stubs to Starts and maybe make the different formats consistent, or look for nice photos. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 11:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

What changes, if any, do you require me to make for the template? Please make a bulleted list 'cause I am not as familiar with the topic as you wine guys. --Jeremy (blah blah) 16:15, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

List of Portuguese wine regions

Hi, I have started to translate portuguese wine regions articles from en.wiki to es.wiki but I found out that some of the information given in the en.wiki doesn't match the information of the Institute of vines and wines website of the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. I think your articles may be outdated, as some of the regions seem to have been upgraded from IPR to DOC while others have been united into a single DOC.

According to this site:

• Borba DOC, Evora IPR, Granja Amareleja IPR, Moura IPR, Portalegre DOC, Redondo DOC, Reguengos DOC & Vidigueira DOC are now subregions of Alentejo DOC.

• Chaves IPR, Planalto Mirandes IPR & Valpaços IPR are subregions of Trás-os-Montes DO (No idea why this is called DO instead of DOC)

• Alcobaça IPR is a subregion of Encostas de Aire DOC

• Almeirim IPR, Cartaxo IPR, Chamusca IPR, Coruche IPR, Santarém IPR & Tomar IPR are subregions of Ribatejo DOC

• Arrabida IPR, Encostas da Nave IPR dont seem to exist any longer, as they are not even mentioned. The Távora-Varosa DOC occupies the same area than Encostas da Nave and Varosa IPR, although they are not listed as subregions.

• Arruda IPR, Óbidos IPR, Palmela IPR & Torres Vedras IPR have been upgraded to DOC.

• Castelo Rodrigo IPR, Cova de Beira IPR & Pinhel IPR are subregions of Beira Interior DOC.

• Alentejo VR, Ribatejo VR, Rios do Minho VR & Tras-os-Montes VR are called Alentejano, Ribatejano, Minho and Transmontano VR respectively.

• There is also Duriense VR, Terras Madeirenses VR, Açores VR and Madeirense DO. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 13:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It was Agne who compiled the list in September last year using the Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia in its 2005 edition. A very commendable effort, but unfortunately, it seems that a lot of changes must have happened around the time this 2005 book was edited and went into press, or just after. The Oxford Companion to Wine in its 2006 edition, just one year younger, seems to agree more with the version found on IVV's webpage, and indicated above. OCW's entry on IPR (which doesn't feature a list) says "...a candidate for promotion to DOC. Most had made the grade by the mid 2000s (comment: presumably equal to "around 2005" rather than "around 2050" or "around 2500") and a number of smaller neighbouring IPRs have merged into one DOC." This last statement could probably explain the "lost" IPRs. So obviously some of our information in this area is outdated by a couple of years and there is a need for revision by someone. Tomas e (talk) 14:09, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The site also includes the legal documents that established theses changes. --Té y kriptonita (talk) 14:39, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

While it would be surprising for Sotheby to so outdated so quickly, I would give more weight to a current source in country's language's as accurate so I support Té y kriptonita's effort's to update our articles. Of course this makes me wander how useful Sotheby will be if I ever get around to using it for other countries' lists. :/ Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Remember "The Italian DOCG mystery" a couple of months ago? I will make the same recommendation as that time; if it is a country within EU, this list from the European Commission should always list all QWpsr regions, should never be more than a couple of months out of date, and can be easier to digest than original documentation in other languages. Tomas e (talk) 16:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Template

I created a navbox template for this subject, {{Portuguese wine regions}}. It is currently empty but is easily filled. --Jeremy (blah blah) 15:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Winery Stubs

Does anyone fancy working together to go through the (250) winery stubs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Winery_stubs) with a view to deleting any spammy, non-notable, self-promotion, etc type ones, and/or expanding any interesting ones to Starts? I'd be quite into doing that but the criteria behind the options of 'speedy deletion', 'prodding', AfD, etc I find a bit complex to do it on my own. If no-one wants to do that, 'no problemo'! I'll carry on with the Spanish wine articles :) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, winery articles are a very low priority for me. Especially since we have so many Category:Top-importance Wine articles and Category:High-importance Wine articles that need improving. If any of these winery articles get sent to AfD, I will chim in with my view though. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:10, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Note: I left a comment on the talk pages of a couple of articles that have been de-prodded that should probably go to AfD. In violation of Wikipedia policy, these articles make no attempt at claiming or supporting their notability. The minuscule third party coverage, if any, is very trivial and is nothing more than what your local pizzeria or sub shop could get. You can make a compelling case along those lines at AfD. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:17, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Tnanks, Agne, I saw your comments. To tell the truth, it's low priority for me too; it's just that i need a break from creating articles/fixing red links!!! I think the Spanish wine regions are OK for the time being, as there's now a Srart article for all DOs (excepta a few) and a Stub for all Vino de la Tierra regions. (which is not the case for the French, Italian and Portuguese regions!). I'd like to learn how to 'take an article to AfD' but am unsure how to do it, even though i've read all the stuff! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 19:17, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You've certainly done an excellent job with our Spanish wine articles. If you want to continue in that area maybe take a look at the List of grape varieties for any Spanish grape stubs that could use some love. As for AfDs, I have to follow the step by step Wikipedia:AFD#How_to_list_pages_for_deletion every time because I can't remember it. It'll take a good 5-7 minutes to set up but eventually you get it working. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 04:12, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, those red links for Spanish grape varieties have been annoying me a lot! and in fact I'm going to make that my next task :) But I'm going to look into the AfD process first. Like I said, I need to get away from creating articles for a while (or I'll burn out!!!) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:13, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?

Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 02:31, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Possible wineries for AfD

Hi everyone, I've started looking through the winery stubs for candidates for AfD, and I've come up with these ones so far. If anyone has the time and inclination, please take a look to see if I'm mistaken and if the article could be expanded. In the meantime I'm going to search more thoroughly to see if I can find any notability. Here's the list ("A" through "C" except for the "Chateau de...")

• Belgravia Vineyard
• Bent Creek Winery
• Berryville Vineyards
• Bonny Doon Vineyard
• Branesti (winery)
• Buena Vista Winery
• Bully Hill Vineyards
• Champagne Jean Pernet
• Champagne Pernet-Lebrun
• Cimislia (winery)
• Cojusna (winery)
• Colio Estate Wines
• Coriole
• Călăraşi (winery)

They all have notability tags attached (some by me today, some already attached). --BodegasAmbite (talk) 12:49, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Right off the bat, I know that Bonny Doon and Buena Vista are certainly notable. (Though their articles do a poor job of conveying that) Those two would probably be Speedy Keep at an AfD. The others are significantly less notable. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:56, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not the right person to judge the notability of US wineries, but I would say that since I immediately recognise the name Bonny Doon, they must clearly be notable. :-) Because of Champagne's fairly high "profile" and business structure (a very small proportion of total grape growers produce Champagne under their own name/brand), I would usually caution against AfD such articles, but I guess in this case the articles contain too little information for me to have a very strong option. Tomas e (talk) 17:36, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Bonny Doon is notable. The first one on the list (Belgravia) is just... big. One could argue that it be kept based on land area, maybe.

I felt that the following deserved a prod for deletion, and have prodded them: Berryville Vineyards, Coriole.

I felt that the following met criteria for speedy deletion, and have tagged accordingly: Branesti (winery), Cimislia (winery), Călăraşi (winery).

~Amatulić (talk) 20:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Amatulic, I see that user Jon513 removed your speedy tags. I've done a bit of research and tend to think that Cimislia (winery) and Călăraşi (winery) are completely un-notable, whereas Branesti (winery) could be notable, if only for having 60 km of underground tunnels, but I can't find any reliable sources. I've found another 10 Moldovan winery stubs, of which only 2 are probably notable! What to do?. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe that all articles on Moldovan wineries were created by one and the same user, Serhio (talk · contribs), in a short time in 2008. In what looked like an attack of enthusiasm, he even created a Project Molodovan Wine on the spot, which led an existence for a couple of days before being inactivated. If you plan to AfD these articles en masse it might perhaps be polite to give him some advance warning? Perhaps he could be interested in providing info that would establish the notability of at least some of these articles. Tomas e (talk) 19:47, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes I saw that they were all by Serhio (talk · contribs). I'm not planning to prod/AfD them all en masse, as I've been surfing/searching for info on all these Moldovan wineries and Moldovan wine in general. Very interesting and there's scope there for some good articles. I'm going to leave 3 or 4 of them and prod the rest. I'll contact Serhio (talk · contribs) and encourage him to expand the articles. Maybe (if he's Moldovan) he'll have better luck than I did in finding sources! Cheers! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:39, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

More wineries for deletion

I've attached WP:N tags to these wineries. Could you all have a quick look and see if they are infact notable or if they merit a Prod or an AfD, as I'm still learning the difference!

• David Bruce Winery
• Delamere Vineyard
• Domain Day
• Domaine Fournier
• Domaine Lamarche
• Duplin Winery
• Fantesca Estate & Winery
• Fiddlehead Cellars
• Franzia
• FromVineyardsDirect I also tagged this one for speedy deletion. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:26, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Well the two that jump out as notable is David Bruce and Franzia. They have a bit of non-trivial third party coverage that could be incorporated into the article. The others I would try prodding and see what happens. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Fournier and Lamarche both ring a bell, so I would not see them as totally unnotable. But neither probably belong to the obvious "core" wineries of their region or subregion. So it is sort of "weak keep" for me. Tomas e (talk) 19:53, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Another one with questions

What do you guys think of Passion Pop? Despite the flattery and "iconic" self promotion, I'm not seeing much here. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:35, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I was underwhelmed! As it stands it reads like self-promotion / advert, so I suppose it could be rewritten to make it more encyclopedic and just informative. (I'd never heard of the drink before) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:44, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Wineries at AfD and Prod

I hope this is the right place to mention this!

I've sent these two to AfD:

• Belgravia Vineyard
• Bent Creek Winery

And I've prodded these ones:

• Cimislia (winery)
• Cojusna (winery)
• Colio Estate Wines
• Coriole
• Delamere Vineyard
• Domain Day
• Duplin Winery
• Fantesca Estate & Winery
• Fiddlehead Cellars

The rest (in A-F) are possibly notable and could be improved (maybe, by someone!). I wrote to Serhio (talk · contribs), who created about 15 Moldovan winery stubs (only 3 or 4 of which may be notable), to encourage him to improve them. If he doesn't repond I'll prod the unnotable ones. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:32, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I nominated another three for AfD today:

• Griffith Park Wine This one has been Speedy Deleted already!
• J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines
• Markham Vineyards

--BodegasAmbite (talk) 16:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Your hardwork in digging through all these wineries stubs is very much appreciated Bodegas! Be sure to include the AfDs on the front page in the "Article for Deletion" section so that we can have the AfD discussion all transcluded into one page. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:28, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

"Reaction" section on Gary Vaynerchuk

It is sounding a little too "POVish" to me, even though it's sourced. It has been edited pretty heavily by anons (perhaps COI-Gary's assistants?) and I suspects any attempts to trim some of the splashy fat will be met with resistance. I think we need to have consensus of what would be more NPOV and appropriate since they did make an effort to source the section, they just let the flattery get a little too out of hand. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 00:27, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I did some minor cleanup of that section per Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms. It doesn't matter if peacock terms are sourced, such terms convey no useful information and should be avoided. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:38, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Criteria for notability of a winery

Do we have any actual specific criteria for notability of a winery? (I mean apart from WP:N, WP:CORP, etc). I've just been basing myself on 'common knowledge/common sense' and Google searches!

Also, if such criteria do exist (or if we decide on some, if they don't yet exist) would they be applicable equally strictly to all wineries in any country? If too strict, then minor countries would not have any notable wineries, and major ones would have thousands! For example, if a winery is registered with its DO, DOC, AOC, AVA, etc, would that alone make it elegible for an article? What if the winery is a registered 'historic building'? What if it just produces XXX cases/year?, etc, etc. Also, what about the issue of awards and medals received at wine fairs? Also, what about the pages and pages of Google hits that are online wine retailers/ blogs/wine portals, etc?

Just some thoughts I had as I've been Prodding and AfD-ing over the last few days!!! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 12:29, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

For me it all about reliable sources and the "Pizzeria test". If non-local, 3rd party sources write up more than a trivial mention or wine review then chances are the winery is notable. Any local mom and pop pizzeria can get a review and writes in local papers, that is not special and neither would a winery with only write ups in local papers. As an encyclopedia dedicated to covering the world of wine, I think it is vital to keep this global perspective because "ideally" we want to strive for "globally notable" wineries. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I basically agree with Agne. We should also remember that the wine industry, classification systems and many other things vary greatly between countries, and even between regions in some countries. It is therefore difficult to tailor very specific criteria (part of classification, membership of an organisation, a certain size...) that suit all countries/regions without being completely weird in other places. A certain amount of common sense probably has to be applied. And here I go again: I'm more worried about winery articles written like advertisements than those that are borderline cases when it comes to notability. If the article has substance, the information is sourced and it is written in a NPOV way, I see it as less of a problem than a combined sales pitch and tourism promotion for a clearly notable winery. Tomas e (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 16:25, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

The above sounds good to me! "Pizzeria test + Common Sense" is what I shall use from now on.

It seems that apart from a few blantant adverts, the remaining wineries really are notable or borderline. In any case not a very high priority task (but I've learnt loads recently, esp about Speedy, Prod and AfD, so I'm glad I did it). In fact, I suspect the opposite may be the case, ie that there are not enough winery articles! Only 8 notable wineries for Italy?? and only 5 for Spain?? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

So there are actually notable winieries in Spain??? Just kidding! :-) In the "old world", we really only have a somewhat decent coverage of Bordeaux wineries and Champagne houses, apparently thanks to a very small number of enthuasists interested in those regions. Staying in France, we have a handful in Burgundy (and many of the key ones missing), none of the big names in Rhône or Loire, none at all in Alsace... Continuing to the east, there are articles on four producers in Germany and zero in Austria. And so on. Isn't it comforting to know that we won't run out of work anytime soon... :-) Tomas e (talk) 17:07, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

True....but personally I would like to ensure that our coverage on the Grapes/Wine Regions/Winemaking/Viticulture topics are up to snuff before I break a sweat on wineries. To me, focusing on wineries is like getting the icing ready before you've even bought the ingredients for the cake. Agne^Cheese/^Wine 02:22, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, not the least because it gives a better framework for the other articles. But sometimes you just feel like skipping the multigrain stuff and head directly for dessert... :-) Tomas e (talk) 16:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I suppose you're right Agne, in a way. There's so much to do, a so few people doing it! I suppose, in the end, we just do what we like and what we can, RL permitting, and focus on what we find most interesting at the time. Maybe we could update the 'Tasks' section on the project page, or each one of say what we think ought to be done, importance, priorities, etc.

I'm pretty sure that there's lots of notable wineries in Spain, but (sadly) the Spanish are not very good at marketing themselves in general. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:18, 19 May 2009 (UTC)