Its the question that has all waiting with bated breath. The outcome may well make grown men cry, women scream, babies clutch for the mothers’ breast and Aussie wine aficionados run screaming into the night. Nah, it won’t be that dramatic but it will be interesting. One month ago Shiraz posted on Australian Wine - The Critics Web Sites. That post garnered quite a few comments mainly from Gary Walsh of the redesigned The Wine Front. Gary was quite concerned that I hadn’t looked deeply enough into the fine cyberspace tuning that The Wine Front had received. After all the site would now be putting up a hundred or more new-release wine reviews each month. That would be more than any other site and certainly more than James Halliday’s online Wine Companion site. Well OK, that’s great. I still don’t like the search capability of the new site but if it is notes on current wines that drinkers of Australian wines need then go for it.
The zeros and ones had only just settled themselves after the thrust and parry of the comments to that post when I received the monthly update from the Halliday's Wine Companion site. The big news? You get no prize for guessing. “Starting in September, James will be adding 100 new tasting notes to winecompanion.com.au every month. These tasting notes will not appear in the Australian Wine Companion and are only available online to winecompanion.com.au members.” The 100 tasting notes are easily searched as the list is a simple alphabetical one of the wines. Click on any wine name and it opens the tasting note. The only problem is that I can’t find a link to those tasting notes on the site itself, you have to click the link in the subscriber email. Back to you Campbell and Gary.
And it didn’t take long. October 1st saw an email from Campbell Mattinson to subscribers of The Wine Front.
Dear subscribers, I think you're going to like this. From now on Gary Walsh and I will be putting out The Wine Front Hot 50 each month - as a pdf document. To grab your copy just click the link below. We looked at the fact that we are now reviewing several hundred wines each month, which means that unless you're visiting the site almost daily, it's easy for a good number of really good wines to pass you by. This publication should help fix that - it distills the best down to the Hot 50. Beat that James.
Halliday’s response? Well all was quiet, except for a post on SHIRAZ on October 7th from the online Wine Companion viz. ”With an increasing number of great wine resources available online, a review of a few of them was worthy of a blog post. Your overview of winecompanion.com.au accurately reflects the feedback we have received directly for our users. The feedback is partly why, as of last month we are now adding 100 new tasting notes every month (Septembers - http://winecompanion.com.au/wine_search.cfm?latest=1). Also stay turned for the Vintage Search, its on its way. *whip cracked*”
It’s the last sentence that is the interesting bit. As I look over the site now I see quite a few changes to the search capability. True, its still not close to the search capability of Parker’s online The Wine Advocate, but now the “Search Wineries” pull down allows you to click on a state of Australia and it opens up with a map showing you the location of the major regions and you can click on any one (or the text list of regions) and you get an alphabetical list of wineries. That is useful if you want to know where different regions lie in respect to each other and the wineries they contain. The aficionados may already know that but your interested wine drinker, especially those outside Oz will find it very helpful. The “Wine Tasting Notes” pull down has also been ungraded so that you can now pick a variety (Shiraz) and a region (McLaren Vale) and the page will open to a list of wineries and the ability to sort them by Name, Vintage, Rating, Price, Drink By, and Date Tasted. This is certainly more helpful than in the (recent) past. It still can’t do a search that will reduce the number of wines by adding additional search terms so that I can get only the 2002 Shiraz wines from Barossa with ratings above 90. But maybe if the whip is cracked often enough that might just happen. But did this whip crack have any sting in it for The Wine Front?
I guess it did because a week later Campbell was sending out another email to subscribers.
Dear Subscriber,
It's been a gentler past week at The Wine Front - only just shy of 50 new reviews in the past seven days - but you'd hardly know it, with all the comments and new information going onto the site. If you're not visiting the site regularly - you should be.
BEST VALUE: But if you don't visit often, a really nifty way of getting the best out of the site is via the categories and tags. For instance, if you want to see all the BEST VALUE wines we've tasted recently, go to the Best Value tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/top-value/
BIODYNAMIC: Or you want to see the Biodynamic wines we've reviewed recently go to the Biodynamic tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/biodynamic/
IMPORTS: Or maybe the imports? See all our most recent Import reviews at: http://www.winefront.com.au/category/import/
We've also got our CALENDAR up and running now - it's on the bottom right of the screen. Check it out - there are some good events coming up - and let us know of any events we should have in there.
In other words, lots happening on the site every day.
cheers,
Campbell Mattinson
So I wandered over to the site. To be honest I’m not a big fan of the way the categories and tags are used on the site. But hey, if that is what works for subscribers then who am I to complain. The Hot 50 is there as a PDF with an alphabetical listing of the wines reviewed in September and their scores as well. But the PDF is 33 pages long and there is no listing of the Top 50 that allows you to click on the name of the wine and skip straight to the review; Halliday wins that round. The Wine Calendar is a different matter. Those looking for wine events are likely to find this quite useful. For the Aussie scene its probably more useful than something like the Local Wine Events site as its more national than international and likely to be of great use to event organizers and retailers looking to attract those with a serious interest in wine.
Will the Wine Companion respond? Probably not, they don’t really need a wine calendar. They should keep sprucing up those search capabilities because as much as I’d like to back the young turks the smart money is still going for Halliday.
The zeros and ones had only just settled themselves after the thrust and parry of the comments to that post when I received the monthly update from the Halliday's Wine Companion site. The big news? You get no prize for guessing. “Starting in September, James will be adding 100 new tasting notes to winecompanion.com.au every month. These tasting notes will not appear in the Australian Wine Companion and are only available online to winecompanion.com.au members.” The 100 tasting notes are easily searched as the list is a simple alphabetical one of the wines. Click on any wine name and it opens the tasting note. The only problem is that I can’t find a link to those tasting notes on the site itself, you have to click the link in the subscriber email. Back to you Campbell and Gary.
And it didn’t take long. October 1st saw an email from Campbell Mattinson to subscribers of The Wine Front.
Dear subscribers, I think you're going to like this. From now on Gary Walsh and I will be putting out The Wine Front Hot 50 each month - as a pdf document. To grab your copy just click the link below. We looked at the fact that we are now reviewing several hundred wines each month, which means that unless you're visiting the site almost daily, it's easy for a good number of really good wines to pass you by. This publication should help fix that - it distills the best down to the Hot 50. Beat that James.
Halliday’s response? Well all was quiet, except for a post on SHIRAZ on October 7th from the online Wine Companion viz. ”With an increasing number of great wine resources available online, a review of a few of them was worthy of a blog post. Your overview of winecompanion.com.au accurately reflects the feedback we have received directly for our users. The feedback is partly why, as of last month we are now adding 100 new tasting notes every month (Septembers - http://winecompanion.com.au/wine_search.cfm?latest=1). Also stay turned for the Vintage Search, its on its way. *whip cracked*”
It’s the last sentence that is the interesting bit. As I look over the site now I see quite a few changes to the search capability. True, its still not close to the search capability of Parker’s online The Wine Advocate, but now the “Search Wineries” pull down allows you to click on a state of Australia and it opens up with a map showing you the location of the major regions and you can click on any one (or the text list of regions) and you get an alphabetical list of wineries. That is useful if you want to know where different regions lie in respect to each other and the wineries they contain. The aficionados may already know that but your interested wine drinker, especially those outside Oz will find it very helpful. The “Wine Tasting Notes” pull down has also been ungraded so that you can now pick a variety (Shiraz) and a region (McLaren Vale) and the page will open to a list of wineries and the ability to sort them by Name, Vintage, Rating, Price, Drink By, and Date Tasted. This is certainly more helpful than in the (recent) past. It still can’t do a search that will reduce the number of wines by adding additional search terms so that I can get only the 2002 Shiraz wines from Barossa with ratings above 90. But maybe if the whip is cracked often enough that might just happen. But did this whip crack have any sting in it for The Wine Front?
I guess it did because a week later Campbell was sending out another email to subscribers.
Dear Subscriber,
It's been a gentler past week at The Wine Front - only just shy of 50 new reviews in the past seven days - but you'd hardly know it, with all the comments and new information going onto the site. If you're not visiting the site regularly - you should be.
BEST VALUE: But if you don't visit often, a really nifty way of getting the best out of the site is via the categories and tags. For instance, if you want to see all the BEST VALUE wines we've tasted recently, go to the Best Value tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/top-value/
BIODYNAMIC: Or you want to see the Biodynamic wines we've reviewed recently go to the Biodynamic tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/biodynamic/
IMPORTS: Or maybe the imports? See all our most recent Import reviews at: http://www.winefront.com.au/category/import/
We've also got our CALENDAR up and running now - it's on the bottom right of the screen. Check it out - there are some good events coming up - and let us know of any events we should have in there.
In other words, lots happening on the site every day.
cheers,
Campbell Mattinson
So I wandered over to the site. To be honest I’m not a big fan of the way the categories and tags are used on the site. But hey, if that is what works for subscribers then who am I to complain. The Hot 50 is there as a PDF with an alphabetical listing of the wines reviewed in September and their scores as well. But the PDF is 33 pages long and there is no listing of the Top 50 that allows you to click on the name of the wine and skip straight to the review; Halliday wins that round. The Wine Calendar is a different matter. Those looking for wine events are likely to find this quite useful. For the Aussie scene its probably more useful than something like the Local Wine Events site as its more national than international and likely to be of great use to event organizers and retailers looking to attract those with a serious interest in wine.
Will the Wine Companion respond? Probably not, they don’t really need a wine calendar. They should keep sprucing up those search capabilities because as much as I’d like to back the young turks the smart money is still going for Halliday.
