User talk:Agne27/Wiki-Winos

Howdy! Thanks for responding to my invitation to be a part of the Wine Project Newsletter's Wiki-Winos feature. Every week, we will select one Wine Project member to feature. Some weeks we get more responses then others so if you've already submitted your questionnaire, Don't worry! You'll see yourself in the newsletter soon enough. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a line on my main talk page.

Lucy456

What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing? I enjoy editing wine articles related to wineries because I live in the Napa Valley.
What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia? I like to read the plots of movies...I've ruined plenty of movies for myself before I have watched them.
What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine? My favorite wine is anything red. My least favorite wine is White Merlot.
What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion? In my opinion I think Merlot is under appreciated thanks to the movie Sideways.
Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it. I was having lunch in the Napa Valley when I overheard someone say, "I think I'm going to scream if I have to taste another Napa Valley Cab."
What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles? I find Wine Spectator (both the magazine and the website) to be impartial while being very knowledgable.
Lucy456 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 23:22, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Previous Wiki-Winos

EvanProdromou

Evan Prodromou has been a Wikipedian since 2002; he's a MediaWiki developer and an admin on en:. He's the founder of Wikitravel, and in 2007 founded a new Open Content wine wiki, Vinismo.

What got you first interested in wine?

My Greek grandfather was a home winemaker, using grapes he'd grown in his own backyard. His wine was pretty awful, but as a kid I thought it was pretty impressive that he could take this fruit from the garden and make it into something to drink at the table.

Since then, I've had a casual interest in wines, but I'd never been much of a connoisseur and had mostly bought by price. I think like a lot of people I'd ceded knowledge of wines to a select priesthood. We don't want to know more about wines because we think you have to be a well-trained expert just to understand wines a little bit.

I think my real passion for wine started when I lived for a while in Geneva in 2002 and Lisbon in 2003. I was completely unaware of the domestic wines available in Switzerland and Portugal. I really loved picking up inexpensive vinho verdes at my local stores, and doing port tours in Porto. And you can get decent wine in the stores in Switzerland for just nothing. Finding out that drinkable, inexpensive table wines were a staple for Europeans was a real eye-opener; it made it seem like a big secret that I now knew about.

I think wine knowledge is something people can pick up iteratively. By which I mean, that you can take some time to study Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand or Merlot from the Central Coast of California, without worrying about every other wine in the world. If you concentrate on some small wine subject, later it can be easier to learn about other wines and regions. You don't have to learn everything all at once in one big gulp -- going from wine bonehead to sommelier in one step.

I also think that when we learn about wines we "accidentally" learn about a lot of other things: geography, toponymy, geology, botany, languages, economies and governments. It's pretty valid to look at the world through a wine glass; there's a lot to see there.

So one of the main reasons I started Vinismo was to give myself a chance to learn more about wines from remote places, and to go into other regions that I thought I knew about already in more depth. I think that's one of the great things about wikis: it gives us a chance to teach each other. And I've learned a lot already in the time that Vinismo's been up and running.

What brought you to Wikipedia?

In the fall of 2002 I was writing a novel and I needed a good way to procrastinate. I'd remembered Everything2, which I'd edited back when it was just "Everything". So I went back and edited some more in 2002. I posted a few stubs on various subjects I was interested in at the time that didn't have articles on E2 -- I remember Paul Auster in particular. Just one- or two-paragraph glosses on each subject.

They were all deleted within 24 hours. On top of that, I got a mean message from an admin, saying something to the effect of, "You obviously underestimate the kind of work needed to write an E2 entry, and you should reconsider contributing here." I was pretty mad; I felt like the something I'd added was better than nothing.

So I started looking around at similar projects, and I found Wikipedia. The first article I started was distributive justice, but within a few months I was working on a lot of longer articles, like Palo Duro Canyon, Arkansas River, First Barbary War, Los Angeles Times, John Cassavetes and Lollapalooza. It was a pretty fun time to be working on Wikipedia; you could pick some pretty important topics and start them from scratch. I also started Wikipedia:Avoid weasel terms and Wikipedia:Avoid peacock terms, which have become important style guidelines.

In 2003 my wife Maj and I took a trip to Thailand and Viet Nam, and we were really frustrated with the accuracy and quality of the printed travel guides we had. Remembering my experience with Wikipedia, I thought that we could do something similar with travel guides: have people who were on the spot edit and update the information in the guides. We started Wikitravel that summer, and it really started taking up all my time.

I became a MediaWiki developer, and I also became a Wikipedia admin, so I guess I've stayed involved with this project, too. I guess at this point I'm pretty committed; I've been to Wikimania twice (in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Taipei) and I'll be in Alexandria this year, too.

What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

Well, most of the editing that I do is on Vinismo, not on Wikipedia. But the type of articles that I find most interesting are geographical ones -- articles for wines of a particular country or region. It might be an American's fascination with the mysterious foreign concept of terroir, but more likely it's a holdover from the immense amount of geographical work I did on Wikitravel.

I also try to add pages on wines and wineries on Vinismo whenever I drink a bottle of wine. Unlike Wikipedia, Vinismo has articles on each and every bottle of wine we can find -- each year of each wine by each winery in the world. So that means that every time I drink a bottle of wine, I've got something new to write. We estimate that there are probably >200K possible articles for Vinismo -- in each language -- and it's good to keep writing them.

What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

I've always loved writing about 19th-century American history and American geography. It's probably been the work that I've enjoyed most out of the encyclopedia. But I think the greatest part of my work here is piecemeal -- I correct grammar, spelling, and clumsy constructions when I see them. A few times I've re-structured an entire messy article, but it's rare that I have the time or courage to do it.

I have spurts of doing admin work, and I continue to work on MediaWiki, although most of my contributions nowadays are as extensions.

What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

Right now I'm trying to learn more about Burgundy, so I'm poking around at, for example, Mercurey. I'm also really into Greek wine, like Naoussa. I think there are a lot of bargains in Greek reds right now. I also am working on Rieslings from Germany and Alsace.

I'm not sure if I have a least-favourite wine. It's probably easy to be "ABC" and kick poor ol' Chardonnay, but I actually enjoy Chardonnay, even when it's really oaked up. I like "easy" wines, if only because they make people think a bit about what they're drinking. I think when people take that first step and say, "I like this wine," that's when they start trusting themselves to learn more about wines.

What is the most under-appreciated wine, in your opinion?

I can't say. I think there are really just giant swathes of land with longtime traditions of making good wines that North Americans and Europeans don't know about because they're made for domestic markets. We see it in places like Spain or even Eastern European countries like Bulgaria.

I'm going to Argentina this week, and I'm looking forward to digging into their domestically available wines. I think there's a whole lot there -- people like to turn up their noses at Argentinian wine, but I think there's lots to discover in that country.

What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

Uh... Hmmm. Again, on Vinismo, I like our article on Yarra Valley, which is our appellation of the month. I also like the start I gave to Spain and Italy, as well as a few others.

Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

I know it's really déclassé, but I really like what the character Maya in the movie Sideways says about wine: I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. It's a nice sentiment.

Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

Here in Quebec, where I live, we have two kinds of wine. The official provincial store, the SAQ, is the exclusive seller of most wines. Except, that is, for wines bottled in Quebec itself, which can be sold in grocery stores and corner stores called dépanneurs. "Dep wine" is typically shipped in in bulk and repackaged here, and it's mediocre at best.

Anyways, my wife brought home a bottle of dep wine late at night when the SAQ was closed, and I got real angry. "We can't have dep wine in the house! C'mon! I'm a wine guy now!" My wife wisely pointed out that she was the only one who'd see the bottle, but I burst out, "What if the neighbours see it in our recycling bin?"

Yeah, it's pretty bad when you get to that point.

What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

I think probably the big thing for me would be to see more collaboration between Vinistos and Wiki Winos. I think that the two projects have a great complementary synergy: because WikiProject Wine is part of Wikipedia, it shares the authority of the project as a whole. But I think that because Vinismo is concentrated solely on wine and wines, we can be a little more focused. Our requirements for notability are nowhere near as high as Wikipedia's; I think that it'd be unlikely to have an article about a single wine in Wikipedia (I could be wrong, though...), but it's de rigeur on Vinismo. And we cover things from more of a wine-drinker's perspective: tasting notes, prices, that kind of thing are pretty important for us.

So, I guess what I'd like to see is more interactions between the two projects. Could we use dual-licensing to make transitioning text and images between the two projects easier? What about more inter-linking? Vinismo uses the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license, which is very similar to the GFDL in spirit but technically incompatible. I think that as those two licenses become compatible, based on Wikimedia Foundation work on the matter, we can hope for easier portability of content between the two projects.

What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

Well, I know that there are about 4-5 right answers on this point in terms of wine books, but I'm going to go out of the way to sing the praises of national and regional wine board Web sites. Although the surface layers usually have empty, promotional language and meaningless Flash videos, I've found some amazingly deep, complex statistics about wine production in different countries on their sites. Once you start digging into the parts of the site that are only for statisticians and wine importers, you can get some real nuggets of data that are very useful.

--ESP (talk) 01:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

VanTucky

File:VanTucky 07.jpg

me

First Agne, thanks for the interview. Second, I'd be really happy to do a GA bit in the newsletter. Remind when it would be due? VanTucky 03:46, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

What got you first interested in wine?

I began to be interested in wine from a young age (for an American). I had some wine with family in my teens, and my elder brother instilled my early wine know-how. I got serious after a dinner when he prepared a lamb shank that was accompanied by a Valpolicella. Most Valpolicella is (in my opinion) pretty thin and uninspiring, but the lamb really brought out the depth in this particular vintage. Nothing is so amazing as how food enhances a great wine (or vice-versa).

What brought you to Wikipedia?

Fast, free and reliable info, of course. Like most Wikipedians, I first used the site in high school, and I began contributing a couple years later. By approximately June of '06, I couldn't bear a day without checking my watchlist.

What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

I most enjoy regional wine articles (such as for Oregon or France), historical wine articles, and some under-appreciated varietals (like Amarone).

What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

Currently I am big in to the Good Article process. I also recently did a complete rewrite of Domestic sheep (now GA!)

What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

For everyday drinking, anything bone dry and mineral-drenched, especially Sauvignon Blanc. I also enjoy Tawny and Ruby port. The worst wine I have ever tasted is, hands-down, Greek retsina. It was like sucking pine sap off a live tree.

What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

Washington state wines for sure. Washington state viticulture isn't as fashionable as Oregon, but it's better in some respects. Oregon Pinot Noir is talked about a lot, but it's a temperamental grape that can be hit-or-miss even from quality wineries. Wine from top WA wineries, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, is consistently spectacular. Other than that, I don't think enough people appreciate the versatility of Gewurztraminer.

What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

I did some respectable work to the history of Bordeaux wine that I think is important.

Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

Though technically it's religious metaphor, Rumi uses wine as a theme in many of his most beautiful poems.

Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

My long-time girlfriend's mother drinks wine like a fish, but rarely strays outside the box. Once, when she broke out an artificially-oaked California Chardonnay for the holidays, I almost threw up (literally) from the nose alone. I turned it down without even tasting it.

What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

Defining the notability of wineries. Wineries are a business like any other, and some just don't merit an article.

What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

Too many to count, but I particularly like The Oxford Companion to Wine.

Amatulić

What got you first interested in wine?

During most of my 40+ years, an uncle has always grown grapes and made wine. During each visit he would ply me with his latest creations. He eventually perfected his craft and in the mid-1990s he built a wine cave, opened his winery, hung a sign out in front of his property, did absolutely no advertising, and sold out his entire stock from his tasting room the first year — a good feat considering Plymouth (Amador county) is off the beaten path for wine tourists. Word of mouth spreads fast for good wine, I suppose. However, I didn't develop any interest in wine until the year 2000 when I moved back to California and began visiting him regularly, whereupon he'd often put me to work behind the tasting counter. My fiancée (now my wife) would pitch in too, so we can now both claim "wine industry" creds when we go tasting.

After two years of consuming primarily my family's own wine, we expanded our horizons to tasting trips in Amador, Napa, Russian River, Sonoma, Paso Robles, Lodi, as well as Maui and Hawai'i, and wine stores in Singapore (mostly French and Australian there), accumulating fine wines faster than we can drink it! We now have too much wine; some whites are going bad from being cellared too long.

What brought you to Wikipedia?

I noticed a coworker often used Wikipedia as a quick reference. I started doing the same and found myself heavily involved with the stevia article, eventually bringing it to GA status. Within a few months of my first edit, I discovered the wine articles. Unfortunately, most of my time is now spent dealing with anonymous IP vandals.

What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

I edit articles on a wide variety of topics. I try to avoid pop-culture subjects (famous people, bands, songs, etc.), instead focusing on subjects like math, wine, biology, theology, technology, pseudoscience, etc.

What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

In my youth, I liked white wine. Now I prefer reds with big robust flavors, such as Syrah, Zinfandel, Sangiovese, and Malbec, among others. While I don't go for sweetness, I do appreciate fruit flavors.

My least favorite? Well, this may be heresy, but I dislike two popular wines, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. Occasionally I'll come across one that I like, and buy it. Otherwise they give me no pleasure. Unfortunately, my palette-knowledge isn't yet helpful telling me why. Only once in my life have I enjoyed a Pinot Noir, but when the person who poured it for me revealed that this was a rare $400 bottle of wine, I realized that I will never afford a Pinot Noir I could like. So I gave up on it.

What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

Plavac Mali grapes make tasty, big-flavored wine. It's under-appreciated because it isn't widely available outside of Croatia.

What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

I am most proud of the contribution I made to the Zinfandel article concerning its history and search for its origins which led to the discovery of Crljenak Kaštelanski in Croatia. I actually traveled to Croatia with my father (who speaks the language) and searched for days to find Ivica Radunić, the owner of the vineyard where Zinfandel's ancestor was discovered. We found him, got a lot of good information, tasted his wine (no pure Crljenak Kaštelanski exists; he blends it with Plavac Mali and others), and I took many pictures, one of which appears in the Zinfandel article.

Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

This is an oldie but I still like it:

A man walks into a wine bar and boasts that he can identify any wine poured for him. Customers and the bartender offer him several glasses of wine, each of which he tastes and identifies correctly. "That's a 1995 Médoc Bordeaux from the vineyard of Francois Emilion", "this is just a 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon from Gallo wineries", "Ah, a 2002 old vine Zinfandel from Frank Story's place" and so on.

Finally one customer hands him a glass, which he tastes and spits out. "This tastes like piss!"

The customer answers, "Yes, but whose?"

Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

I like buying from small boutique wineries whose wines can't be found anywhere but the winery itself. The wine snob in me is amazed at what the "notable" critics miss. I'm more amazed at the mass-produced dreck they rate 90+ points. Tasting some of these highly-rated wines has convinced me that critics don't know how good a wine can be. In fairness, I guess the poor bastards have no choice but to rate what the hoi polloi can easily obtain.

What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

Expanding stubs and focusing on Good Articles is important. I don't find the effort required for Featured Article status as worthwhile as making several Good Articles.

What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

Well, here's my problem. I have sources that are reliable, but they aren't written. To use an example, someone like Mike Grgich is a reliable source for certain topics (and no, I don't personally know him; others here do). You can go to him and ask him a question and get an answer. That source is also verifiable in the sense that anyone else can ask him the same question, and get the same answer. Such sources hamper my ability to edit wine-related articles unless I can find something written to confirm what a reliable-source person has told me. How do you cite a conversation? I think other editors might share my problem if they are more involved in growing grapes, making wine, and selling wine, rather than being end-user consumers. There's a vast body of knowledge shared among wine-makers or commercial buyers that isn't easily found in writing. -Amatulic (talk) 23:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

jmjanssen

1. What got you first interested in wine?

In college, I drank mostly hard liquor. I did not have a taste for beer (still don't really, but I have found a few that I enjoy) so that was pretty much it. The woman I was dating at the time wanted to get into wine so I gave it a shot. After having quite a few bad and/or mediocre wines I had a 2003 Woop Woop Shiraz and realized that this wine thing might work for me. It's become an obsession since.

2. What brought you to Wikipedia?

Noticed some vandalism on the entry of my hometown and started editing vandalism.

3. What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

I am ashamed to say I haven't really found the need or had the ability to do much wine editing as of yet, but I think it's important that we keep tasting notes out of Wikipedia while realizing that "typical" flavors are ok to have in.

4. What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

I mainly revert vandalism and welcome new people to encourage them to make constructive edits.

5. What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

Current favorites are 2006 St. Supery Sauvignon Blanc and 2005 Hartford Zinfandel. Lacheteau Vouvray is my stand-by though since I am on a budget.

I take risks on too many cheap wines to have a least favorite, but I have yet to have a Pinot Gris I truly enjoy.

6. What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

Among the general public, Vouvrays are not nearly appreciated enough, however I am ok with this as it keeps the price down. I think the bottom line is that people need to know that price is not necessarily an indicator of the goodness of a wine. Among those who drink wine often, there seems to be a hatred for Gewurztraminers and Rieslings, especially the sweeter ones. This does not make sense to me for two reasons: 1. Everyone likes sugar. 2. Sweeter wines are wonderful with spicy foods.

7. What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

see 3

8. Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

nope

9. Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

Eh, my friends tell me I'm a wine snob, that's mainly because none of them are as focused on wine as I am. I think it's important to not be a wine snob - for me this means not forcing my opinions on other people and trying to please their palates, especially when I am hosting.

looking at the other responses, I recalled that my friends often catch me swirling everything I drink, however I think that's a carryover habit from drinking cocktails, not wine.

10. What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

I am going to start cleaning up articles to remove tasting notes.

11. What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

I have a copy of the Oxford Companion to Wine, which I love, however it is filled with subjectivity.

Jmjanssen (talk) 07:25, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Charleenmerced

What got you first interested in wine?

• I loved drinking wine at special dinners when I was a kid. I really enjoyed it and started drinking wine and reading about wine.

What brought you to Wikipedia?

• Whenever I did a search I always found Wikipedia very helpful. So, I started fixing typos and I soon found myself creating new articles. It's kind of an addiction now.

What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

• I haven't started but will soon.

What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

• Editing TV and Literature articles.

What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

• Fave: Cabernet or Carmenère for red and Sauvignon Blanc for white; least fave Merlot and Chardonnay

What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

• Carmenère

Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

• My own - when a friend was about to add ice to her wine I nearly screamed bloody murder and proceeded to tell her that she must never add ice to wine. Also, when people serve red wine chilled.

What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

• Carmenère

CharleenmercedFile:SoleteRayosÑajo.gif 17:02, 17 February 2007 (UTC)Charleenmerced

Mroconnell

1 What got you first interested in wine?

The taste of it, although preceded by the look and the smell, the taste is what took it home :)

2 What brought you to Wikipedia?

I've been snooping around wikipedia for a while, collecting absurd amounts of knowledge on very strange topics. I look here for general information before checking Google now.

3 What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

I've been storming through some of the French articles, editing stuff on the AOC system and various regions and regional wines.

4 What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

I'm pretty geeky so I like a lot of things and most of them are on the quirky (verging on useless side of things)

5 What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

My favorite wines are the ones that I make on my vineyard ([1]). :) My least favorites is that Carlo Rossi junk that claims to be red but stained my sophomore dorm bathroom sink blue.

6 What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

Je suis vraiment chauvin, but I gotta say that the Languedoc-Roussillon has some real pearls waiting to be discovered. They're buried in a mound of worthless wines, but they exist for those passionate enough to seek them out! And it's really hard keeping this bias all bottled up when I'm editing articles, but I must, for the good of the wiki!

7 What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

I've been trying to make heads or tails of an AOC article that we can be proud of, and I've been trying to sort out the different articles that deal with the Languedoc, Roussillon and Languedoc-Roussillon regions/régions/wines. It's pretty complicated, so I'm happy with every little bit I manage to wade through.

8 Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

I just heard today that Thomas Jefferson had once said "A tax on wine is not a tax on luxury but a tax on the good health of our people" haha. Oh Tommy, you always knew how to flatter a Frenchman. I also like this comic although it's only peripherally related to wine.

9 Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

I kind of always get in these situations where people tell me all these verifiably false factoids about wine and I kind of smile it off because I don't have the heart to tell them that my personal experience invalidates much of what they're saying... and then later they inevitably find out that I make wine for a living and they realize that they've been prattling on to a "professional" and we both feel goofy.

10 What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

I could really use some help sorting out this Languedoc business. First of all, I don't know if I should merge it into the région's article since wine is so crucial to life and the economy there. Secondly, we need to fix all the entries that talk about and internal link to historic regions of France (like Roussillon) which only somewhat correspond to the contemporary designation of the Roussillon half of the Languedoc-Roussillon. Why is France so complicated?

11 What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

I've been citing the following a bit here and there when talking about my region since I can't just quote my buddies -

• Joseph, Robert (2005). French Wine Revised and Updated. Dorling Kindersley. pp. pp. 190-201. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
• Robinson, Jancis (1999). The Oxford Companion to Wine 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. pp. 395-398. ISBN -X. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check |isbn= value: length (help)

Feel free to cut out the boring answers if you want to duplicate this anywhere. --mroconnell 20:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC) also, here's a picture of me on the vineyard. I don't know if this is appropriate use of wiki commons though :-/ http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Ryan2.jpg--mroconnell 21:11, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

< ----------------------------- >

Christopher Tanner, CCC

Thanks for the welcome and invite to fill out the survey. I'm looking forward to helping out as much as I can with this project.

1 What got you first interested in wine?

• I went to the Brotherhood winery in the Hudson Valley region in New York when I was in eighth grade. At the time I had decided I wanted to write a paper for a class on becoming an oenologist.

2 What brought you to Wikipedia?

• I had read a book titled Zinfandel: A Grape and It's Wine by Charles Sullivan and wanted to see if the information from Agoston Haraszthy had been presented, especially on dispelling the myth of his bringing the Zinfandel grape to California first. It had not and it inspired me to begin editing pages.

3 What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

• Ive just begun, but I have worked on the Zinfandel article, Agoston Haraszthy as mentioned I plan on doing some research to support articles for individual wineries on Wikipedia.

4 What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

• I've worked on a few professional culinary organization articles as well as professional cookery books.

5 What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

• My favorite wines are some of the single vineyard selections from Ravenswood. My favorite was the 1994 Dickerson. It also happens to be the year I graduated from high school. The wine I buy more often than most though would be Veuve Cliquot NV Champagne, although I don't buy it allot, it's always a mainstay at the table when I have guests. My least favorite in the past used to be Mouton Cadet, but it seemed to improve somewhat in recent years. I suppose my least favorite now would have to be the Pinot Noirs they attempt to make in New York.

6 What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

• I don't have a particular answer for this one, perhaps I believe I would've said wines from India, but they are starting to show up on shelves recently. I had a beautiful Pinot Noir made in India last year, so people should give them a try.

7 What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

• The addition made to the Agoston Haraszthy article about dispelling the myth behind him.

8 Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

• Oh all those Zinfanatic words are always funny to me.

9 Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

• I try to personally be un-snobbish, otherwise it would be difficult to get people who are uninitiated to wine to enjoy it with those of us who have. I'm sure that there are people in general who find any intelligent wine drinker to be snobbish.

10 What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on?

• Individual wineries, as well as being less personal with their article writing. With encyclopedic articles, they should be about facts and not opinions which I find in allot of articles.

11 What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

• I read allot of academic wine books in general, but for reference texts I use Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia, The Oxford Wine Companion, Robert Parker's - Bordeaux, Robert Parker's - Burgundy, Hugh Johnson's - World Atlas of Wine, Hugh Johnson's - Modern Encyclopedia of Wine, Oz Clark's - New Wine Atlas. Robert Parker's website is also a good reference tool http://www.erobertparker.com/ if you have $100.00 a year to drop on the website subscription and then $70.00 a year for his magazine. I personally do not as I'm in Grad school, but I have used them both in the past for reference and they are excellent. This is another good site from Fine Wine Mag http://www.finewinemag.com/ as is the main stay WineSpectator.com which has some great wine classes on it for both the professional and amateur wine enthusiast.

Another question perhaps?

12. What is your favorite non reference wine book?

• Champagne by Don & Petie Kladstrup I like a book that mixes the great parts of culture and the mundane as well into my favorite wine. Wine,war, espionage, monks and French culture all make for a great story.

Christopher Tanner, CCC 18:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)Tanner-Christopher

Wiki-Wino : Steve Moulding

Steve.Moulding 04:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

What got you first interested in wine?

Trying to make some when I was a very young kid in England. A friend and I got a bright idea one day that if we left some apples in a barrel of water in his back garden and were to come back in a month, we'd have wine. It didn't turn out quite the way we'd hoped for, but it got me started.

What brought you to Wikipedia?

Getting more and more hits when using google. At some point it became time to see what it was all about.

What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing?

I'm an organizer, editor, and filer. You'll see more of this from me than the big one piece articles. It should be finite in scope however, but not trivial. The Bordeaux project for example...doable.

What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia?

Chasing vandals and catching sock-puppets. Passing on non-notable, patent-nonsense and hoax pages to the admins. Keeping an eye on the peacocks.

What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine?

Favourite....Haut Batailley 2000. Incredible.

Least favorite....anything corked, anything Manischewtiz (though I'd probably drink the corked wine if I had to).

Most disappointing...Oregon Pinots...they taste like grape juice to me (which technically they are I guess). Maybe I just havent had the right one yet.

What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion?

Oooh...good question. Don't know.

What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date?

No single article...many contributions here and there that hopefully add up in the end.

Know any good wine jokes/quotes?

Said to Winston Churchill : "If you were my husband I'd poison your wine".

Replied Churchill : "Madam, if you were my wife I'd drink it".

Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it.

I'm not sure who was the snob in this story...maybe no-one, maybe both. Anyway...I was in my local wine store on Madison Avenue in NY browsing the Bordeaux, looking, as usual, for something to try. A new salesman came over and asked, snootily I thought, what it was in Bordeaux that I might want help with. I asked him if the Chateau Marbuzet in my hand was Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel or just regular Cru Bourgeois (I know it was one, and Haut-Marbuzet was the other). He said, sighing, that presumably I meant was it one of the five Grand Crus? No, I said, I mean which Cru Bourgeois is it. He confessed he didn't quite know what I meant. I smiled, said no matter...let's look it up, and pulled out my Bordeaux notes from my backpack. I thanked him for his time and he melted away, not to be seen again that visit.

What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on

Nothing specific. I think if the organizers and watchdogs keep doing their thing, the writers do theirs, and both do some of the other, then we'll have done well.

What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles?

Staples on my bookshelf

1. Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia (Tom Stevenson)
2. The Wines of Bordeaux (Clive Coates)
3. Bordeaux Medoc & Graves (Stephen Brook)

Bethling

1. What got you first interested in wine? It's really a combination of a couple of things. I had a good friend who really loved wine, so when we socialized there was often a bottle of a really good red that was opened. Growing up, my only real exposure was to sweet whites that my mom drank, and those didn't really interest me. But the bold reds that my friend loved did. Eventually she started talking about going to school to study enology. My dad was a chemist, so the more she talked about it the more it seemed like something that I might want to try. So she was the reason that I got interested in both drinking and making wine.

2. What brought you to Wikipedia? I honestly don't remember what brought me here. :-D I know I made a few anonymous edits before ever creating my account in order to take part in a deletion debate.

3. What type of wine articles do you enjoy editing? I enjoy working with articles related to winemaking. Although I haven't done much with them, I'd like to find the time to try and expand the articles on a few of the AVAs

4. What non-wine related activities do you also enjoy on Wikipedia? I really like working to make Wikipedia a more friendly place for people who don't know it very well. I do quite a bit of editing to fix links to disambiguation pages since I remember being annoyed when I first visited WP and got linked to the wrong page for something that I was looking for.

5. What is your favorite wine? Least favorite wine? I really enjoy Bordeaux/Meritage style wines as well as Champagne. The best single wine I have ever tried was a vintage Krug. Though that's way out of my price range for normal drinking :) I've been the most disappointed with Italian Pinot Grigio. It's a wonderful grape, but the Italian wines always seem to lack something to me.

6. What is the most under appreciated wine, in your opinion? In the U.S. I really think that dry rosés are really ignored. People tend to link pink with sweet in the United states, and overlook how wonderful these wines are chilled during the summer on hot days with barbecue :)

7. What efforts on a wine related article are you the most proud of to-date? It's not really an article, but I'm most proud of working with the stub sorting project to help refine the wine stubs. I'm also happy to see that I've managed to get two wine articles on the front page through WP:DYK

8. Have you ever had a "Wine snobbish" moment? If so, tell us about it. On a couple of occasions I've found myself swirling my water and going to sniff it at a tasting.

9. What area of the wine project would you like more editors to focus on? I'd like to see some of the wine regions get expanded beyond stub status.

10. What are some wine related reliable sources (i.e. a wine book or web site) that you like using when editing wine articles? I really like my enology/wine technology books. They usually have detailed information about subjects that most books and articles don't really get into. I also like Wine Business Monthly for information on the business side of wine. --- The Bethling^(Talk) 03:34, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

DrGaellon

Thanks for the invitation, but I'm going to pass on participating. --DrGaellon (talk | contribs) 20:58, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

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