Archive-name: wine-faq/part1
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Copyright: (c) 1995 Bradford S. Brown (see Notices & Disclaimers in pt. 10)
Last-modified: 1996/07/26




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                   INTERNET GUIDE TO WINE

           (Frequently Asked Questions and More)

                             by


                     Bradford S. Brown
                       with Dri Brown


============================================================

All portions of this guide, whether contained in one
document or in part are:

Copyright 1995 Bradford S. Brown
1995 Bradford S. Brown

PLEASE READ THE COPYRIGHT INFORMATION AND DISCLAIMERS AT THE
END OF THIS GUIDE.

This version is date 26 July 1995, though it has been updated with more
recent versions of Dean Tudor's List (see Appendix).

To all who have sent me suggestions, please note many are not yet
contained in this version.  There's a lot more to come. Thanks for your
help.  If I have included your work and forgotten to give you credit,
please send me a note. 

Posted updates occur approximately every four months or so.  This
is because there is a lot more involved in creating this document
beyond the sheer typing.  In order to create the Index and Table
of Contents in a way which is suitable for use on the Internet,
as opposed to being printed by page in a book, it must undergo
some homegrown programs which produce those items.  Also, the
HTML version gets created in the same way.  All of that isn't as
easy as I would like it to be (maybe someday when there is time).
Fortunately, at this point, a LOT of the "frequently asked
questions" are already in the FAQ and I'm working on the finer
details now.

The authors may currently be reached at bradb@netcom.com

A complete copy of this FAQ can be obtained by dropping us a
note or through the WWW at:

(US) http://www.speakeasy.org/~winepage/cellar/cellar.html (Thanks to
Jarrett Paschel.)

(UK) http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su3ws/wine-faq/wine-faq.html


---------
PREFACE
---------


Drinking wine is an experience.  To drink for the purposes of
becoming drunk is not what drinking wine as an experience is all
about.  Wine is food.  Just like the delight which comes from
eating your most favorite food, wine, as food can provide similar
enchantment.

But drinking wine has somehow also entered into the realm of
snobbery.  This is a shame for it can (and does) prevent many
from getting in on the enjoyment of this marvelous product of
nature.  For that reason, I have undertaken to prepare this
guide, not as a wine expert (which I am most assuredly NOT), but
as an average drinker of relatively good wine.  My aim here is to
try and explain about wine in a way that is understandable but, I
hope, not forbidding.  With this intent, I may offend some
sensibilities or make some outright mistakes.  Remember, I am
relying on a little bit of knowledge, and everyone knows what
happens with a little bit of knowledge.  If I'm wrong about the
facts, please let me know.  If I get carried away and the tone
gets too pompous, pretentious, or downright haughty, also let me
know.

Because of the sheer volume of information, I am not following
the question and answer FAQ format.  A Table of Contents and a
comprehensive Index are provided instead.  The choice of what to
include was made up from the questions I had about wine (and
still do), suggestions from others, and from watching the Usenet
groups on the subject.  Suggestions, comments, criticism and
whatever are welcome.  While this already seems like a book to
me, I've actually tried to cut down on the verbiage.  It will
probably get longer through time.

Living in Southern California means that I get to enjoy the huge
diversity of the West Coast of the United States at, perhaps, a
somewhat reduced cost.  It also means that I can visit the
wineries and winemakers that produce these wines from time to
time.  That is good.  Unfortunately it also means that I have
virtually no knowledge of the wonderful (and to me, much more
expensive) wines of Europe and most of the rest of the world.
This guide is a compilation of information, and can grow, through
time, through all of your assistance.  Please send me comments,
information, or anything else you think belongs here.  I don't
expect early versions to be earthshaking, merely distributed
worldwide.  What all this means is that if I have the chutzpah to
prepare a wine guide as a relative novice, newcomers to wine can
realize that they need not be put off by the sometimes arcane
world of wine and can join it without fear!

Since the making, drinking and enjoyment of wine is a huge
subject (and I certainly don't know all the answers), I've been
necessarily superficial in my answers (though perhaps longer,
than in many FAQS!).  This can lead to argument about the
validity of what I have had to say.  Since this isn't meant to be
an encyclopedia, some sort of brevity is important.  Actually, I
have received comments that say some of the portions are too
long, considering the relevance of particular topic in global
terms.  The discussion about the University of Davis is a case in
point.  However, this being in nature a FAQ, topics which
generate repeated questions or a great amount of replies deserve,
in my humble opinion, more attention.  Electronic "paper" is
relatively cheap.

Many feel that specific great wines of the world have been
overlooked.  This is true, not just because this--so far--isn't a
book, but because I have made a conscious decision to not go too
far out on a limb in incorporating information about things about
which I truly know NOTHING can't adequately satisfy for myself
that the information sent to me is correct.  They say that more
information is published on the Internet in one week than is set
to paper in a year.  They don't say how much of it (including, of
course, this FAQ) is correct.  With this as with everything,
caveat emptor--"Let the buyer beware."

In any event, everyone is urged to buy a book or two on the
subject and read away.  More importantly, drink away and have a
good time.

****PLEASE NOTE:

This is a WORK-IN-PROGRESS.  Some, but not all, of the mistakes
pointed out to me have been incorporated in this version.  I'm
still working on fixing the errors and will then move on to
incorporating new sections that have clearly been areas of
discussion in the Usenet groups I have monitored.  In order to
get the current, more corrected version out, I haven't done the
BEST job of proofreading.  I decided to leave that for the next
version.  The prior version of this FAQ was a "rough draft."
This is a little less rough, so I guess I'm calling it version 1.
But there is a lot more material to add and I'll clean the entire
document up as I go on with the additions.  If you have read this
FAQ before, you will not find THAT many additions.  This
represents more of a corrected version from the past.

One final note on the drinking of wine vis-a-vis the information
in this Guide.  What YOU like is the best rule of thumb.  The
experiences of others are a handy guide but these experiences
often get shrouded in the myths, mysteries and ritual.  This is
off-putting and shouldn't be.  In some parts of the world, wine
is drunk daily as a part of the meal.  There's no big conundrum
about what glass to serve it in or how long to age the wine
(since most is drunk young).  In other parts of the world, the
United States, for example, wine often is a restaurant's marked-
up profit center and the "rituals" of wine are haggled over
incessantly.  Since this Guide is somewhat of a rulebook by
virtue of its existence, I would like to lay to rest the idea
that this is what I have in mind in creating it.  Use this Guide
to get into wine, if that is your goal.  After that, just have
fun.


I would like to acknowledge those who have provided special assistance,
and please forgive me (and e-mail me) for anyone I have forgotten!  A lot
of mail has been received and not all of it has been sifted through, yet. 
So far, thanks to John Bailin, Mike Christensen, Peter Curran, Thomas
Hill, Mark Levesque, Jim Karegeannes, Sandra Kidd, Daniel Harris Lapin,
Gloria Mercado-Martin, Matthew Mitchell, David Murphy, Marcelo Portnoy,
Bill Rohwer, David Tan, John Thorngate, Roy Wilkinson. Some merely sent me
small notes with little additions, others provided large amounts of
material.  All of it was necessary and appreciated! 

A very special thanks to Paul S. Winalski who clearly spent a
great deal of time pointing out and providing changes for a
number of specific areas of the FAQ.  His knowledge of wine and
willingness to consistently help out the Internet community is
appreciated and I thank him for myself and on behalf of all those
who have learned from him.
Also special thanks to Jarrett Paschel who has made the FAQ
available on the World Wide Web (see URL above) and converted the
ASCII version to HTML format (links will come at some point in
the future).


Cheers!

Bradford Brown
July 21, 1995

                           * * * * * *


FORMATTING NOTE:  This document was written in Microsoft Word 5.0
and saved in ASCII format.  I used 1 inch left and right margins
(except for the formatted WWW links information which has 0
margins).  While aesthetically I like to hyphenate, it has been
pointed out that in an electronic medium this can cause problems.
So for the moment, ragged edges remain.

To do the subject of wine justice, I just wasn't able to come up
with a decent way to do the "question and answer" format of most
FAQs.  I THINK the way I have gone about it is more readable.

Instead I have provided a table of contents keyed to the chapter
headings.  Set your search function (make sure it is set to
"whole word" or the equivalent) to the paragraph level, preceded
by an asterisk (for example *2.1.2) and you can move directly to
that subject.

Because it IS such a large subject, I have also provided an index
of terms.  Generally speaking, items in CAPS should also be
contained in the Table of Contents.  The Index is keyed in the
same manner as the table of contents (see above).

This is the first version that has a Table of Contents, so I'm
still working on it.  I can already see changes in the chapter
structure that I will implement in the future.  And by the way,
if anyone knows if you can  use Word in such a way as to
automatically key the index terms to table levels instead of
pages, I would be very grateful for the knowledge!  The current
index was created through a routine written in Visual Basic for
Dos which analyzes the Word document and creates the index list.

FOR WORLD WIDE WEB BROWSERS:  You may be reading this with proper
fonts thanks to Jarrett Paschel.  I'm playing with HTML now for
the first time and hope to have links to the chapter headings in
the more or less near future.

                      TABLE OF CONTENTS


1. WHAT IS WINE?
2. HOW IS WINE MADE?
   2.1 GROWING GRAPES
       2.1.1 PHYLLOXERA VASTRATRIX
       2.1.2 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
       2.1.3 A GRADUATE'S OPINION OF DAVIS
   2.2 HARVEST
   2.3 INITIAL PROCESSING OF THE GRAPE JUICE
   2.4 TURNING GRAPE JUICE INTO ALCOHOL
   2.5 MALOLACTIC FERMENTATION
   2.6 FILTERING AND FINING
   2.7 BARREL AGING
   2.8 BLENDING WINE
   2.9 BOTTLING WINE
3. AGING WINE
4. STORING WINE
   4.1 REFRIGERATORS AND AIR CONDITIONERS
   4.2 BUILDING YOUR OWN CELLAR
   4.3 CELLAR SOFTWARE
5. DRINKING WINE
   5.1 TEMPERATURE TO DRINK AT
   5.2 OPENING THE BOTTLE
       5.2.1 CORKS
       5.2.2 CORK SCREWS
       5.2.3 NOW THAT THE BOTTLE IS OPEN
   5.3 DECANTING
   5.4 WINE FLAWS
   5.5 DESCRIBING THE WINE
   5.6 THE RITUALISTIC ART OF WINE IN A RESTAURANT
       5.6.1 RESTAURANT WINE PRICING
   5.7 GLASSES
   5.8 STORING WINE AFTER IT'S OPENED
       5.8.1 FREEZING WINE AFTER IT'S OPENED
6. BUYING WINE
   6.1 WHAT WINE DO I BUY?
   6.2 WHERE TO BUY WINE
   6.3 WHAT'S ITS WORTH?
       6.3.1 OPUS ONE
7. SPECIFIC WINES
   7.1 GRAPES
       7.1.1 RED WINE GRAPES
       7.1.2 WHITE WINE GRAPES
   7.2 WHAT'S IN A NAME?
   7.3 MERITAGE
   7.4 CHAMPAGNE
   7.5 PORT
       7.5.1 VINTAGE PORT
       7.5.2 WOOD PORT
             7.5.2.1 RUBY PORT
             7.5.2.2 TAWNY PORT
             7.5.2.3 WHITE PORT
       7.5.3 DECANTING PORT
   7.6 DESSERT WINES
       7.6.1 BOTRYTIS
       7.6.2 EISWEIN A.K.A. ICEWINE
       7.6.3 OTHER SWEET WINES
8. WINES AROUND THE WORLD
   8.1 ARGENTINA
9. FOOD AND WINE
   9.1 FOOD COMBINATIONS PEOPLE HAVE LIKED
       9.1.1 WINE AND CHOCOLATE
       9.1.2 WINE AND DUCK
10. LEARNING ABOUT WINE
    10.1 HOW TO START OUT:  A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
    10.2 HOW TO START OUT:  GENERAL IDEAS
    10.3 INTERNET SOURCES
         10.3.1 USENET GROUPS
                10.3.1.1 A SUGGESTION ABOUT POSTING TO USENET
         10.3.2 LISTSERVS
         10.3.3 SITES, INCLUDING WWW AND GOPHER
                10.3.3.1 ANNOTATED INTERNET SITES
                10.3.3.2 FORMATTED INTERNET SITES
    10.4 BOOKS
    10.5 MAGAZINES AND NEWSLETTERS
    10.6 ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
    10.7 COURSES ON WINE
    10.8 WINERIES
    10.9 WINE TASTINGS
    10.10 WINE CRITICS
11. MEDICAL NOTES ABOUT WINE
    11.1 ALLERGIC REACTIONS TO WINE
    11.2 CALORIES IN WINE
    11.3 PREGNANCY AND WINE;
    11.4 WINE AS A SLEEPING AID
    11.5 LEAD IN WINE
12. TOURING
    12.1 CALIFORNIA
         12.1.1 NAPA
         12.1.2 SONOMA
    12.2 CANADA
         12.2.1 NIAGARA PENINSULA
    12.3 FRANCE
13. MISCELLANY
    13.1 KOSHER WINE
    13.2 IMPORTING
    13.3 PAN-GALACTIC GARGLE BLASTER
    13.4 SHIPPING
    13.5 REMOVING LABELS FROM BOTTLES
    13.6 MY SIGNIFICANT OTHER DOESN'T LIKE RED WINE
    13.7 RECIPES
         13.7.1 WINE COOLERS
    13.8 MAKING YOUR OWN WINE
14. APPENDIX A.  FORMATTED WEB SITES

-- 
 
