Monday, March 19, 2012

Does wine need haikus?


Wine people keep themselves amused with all sorts of notions, most of which make little or no sense to outsiders.

Latest among these I suspect is the #7wordwinereview championed by @vim and @BvdV on Twitter. Apparently some 200 of these have been posted (including one I was cajoled into offering and efforts from Brane Cantenac and Simon Staples of Berry Bros).

Setting aside the question of whether fruit and veg descriptions have any real resonance with many consumers, there is the more fundamental one of whether or not the brief review should include a mark of any kind. The philosophy behind it seems to be firmly against any such inclusion and that I believe will be a fatal handicap. At least outside the goldfish bowl of "wine people".

Just think for a second of the question most wuggles (the wine world's equivalent of JK Rowling's people who "lack any sort of magical ability and was not born into the magical world" (of wine), tend to ask us. "What is the best wine you've ever tasted?". They never seem to want to know whether Chateau X is more cherryish than Chateau Y; they simply want guidance on which bottle to look out for - or lust after.

So, my prediction is that #7wordwinereview will either wither on the vine - or evolve into #7wordwinereviewandmark.

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6 comments:

  1. Not identical, but combining a short twitter-length note with a mark out of ten is the approach www.tweetawine.com (mainly French but some English notes) tries to do using the hashtag #wnote for twitter.

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  2. or use it thru the webapp: http://app.tweetawine.com

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  3. I once went through a Wine Advocate and found many TN's that fit the traditional Haiku format. Utterly useless.

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  4. I'm with you on this Ryan - as you can see.

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  5. I don't think that Vim or Bart expect 7 word wine review to take over the traditional way of describing a wine. It peaks your interest to find out more about the wine, which is the purpose right? I have found it a great way to introduce people to the great world of wine.

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  6. I'm glad they work for you Nubian. I'll still bet that they will gain a limited following and - more importantly - that (most) consumers will still look for a mark or rating of some kind, rather than simply a set of words.

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