Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Wines task force/Newsletter/03-04-2007

The Wine Project Newsletter! Issue II - March 4, 2007

Welcome to the latest edition of the Wine Project Newsletter! Feedback is always welcome. Please consider dropping a comment on the Newsletter talk page to let us know how we improve future editions. In this edition: News & Notes Wine assessment project moving along As of March 4th, a total of 942 articles have been tagged within the Wine Project's scope (an increase of 18% since Feb 18th) with 411 of the articles being assessed by Wine Project members. Join the Wine Project drive to have all articles assessed by the next newsletter edition (March 18th!). Simply drop by the category Category:Unassessed Wine articles and edit the {{wine}} project banner accordingly to the Assessment scheme. If you feel an article is of "Top Level Importance" then nominate it on the Wine Project Page for input from your fellow wine project members. Recently passed Top Level Importance Australian wine - Currently B class quality. French wine - Current Start class quality Wine Portal On the Project talk page, User:Charleenmerced requested feedback on a proposed Portal:Wine. Please share your thoughts on the Project talk page. Barnstars There have been discussion about a Wine related barnstar that could be given to Wine Project members for exceptional work on Wine related articles. User:MIckStephenson has suggested adoption of the The Barnstar of Life (see attached) The Barnstar of Life Share your thoughts on this barnstar on the Project talk page On a related note, congrats to User:Charleenmerced for her barnstar awarded by User:Agne27 for her work on the Wine label page. If you have recently given a barnstar to a Wine Project member that you would like to recognize, drop a note at the Newsletter Tip Room. Notability of Masters of Wine A discussion has been started on WP:WINEGUIDE about notability of Masters of Wine like Igor Ryjenkov. Feel free to contribute your thoughts on the Essay's talk page. Wine Sub-projects Please list your sub-project and an update on Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/Newsletter/Sub-projects Bordeaux Sub-project On going call for Bordeaux label images There is still a need for good wine label images with the Bordeaux project, especially for the Chateaus listed on the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. A related consideration would be images for the new and improved Wine label page. Recently there was a discussion among Wine Project members about best methods of label removal on Agne's talk page. Below are some tips from User:Smoulding For Bordeaux labels I bake mine at 275F for 15 mins. The label normally lifts right off. No fuss, no muss. The label comes off 'sticky' so it can go right into the album. I also pre-warm the bottle by filling with hot water while the oven is pre-heating (emptying out the water of course before it goes in the oven). A couple of problems I've encountered (1) a couple of labels were not pure paper, but had some plastic additive. The labels shrunk and warped making them useless. (2) Some labels needed another 15 mins before lifting off. (3) With one label the glue baked hard and had to be lifted off with a sticky commercial 'label-saver' (last resort). I've tried pretty much all other methods. This is the best one for me. Most of the time I get nice clean undamaged labels. -- Regards, Steve.Moulding 15:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC) Wine to GA drive Fresh off the success of getting Yeast to GA status, User:Scharks has embarked on an ambitious effort to get the main Wine article up to GA quality. There is a current peer review request and a preliminary GA review on Talk:Wine with some areas of improvements. Consider pitching in and eventually getting this flagship article up to Feature Article status like our Greek and Japanese wiki counterpart. Wiki-Winos - mroconnell Wine Project member Ryan O'Connell 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. 190–201. Robinson, Jancis (1999). The Oxford Companion to Wine 2nd ed. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. pp. 395–398. Wine Improvement Drive - Languedoc wine In honor of this week's Wiki Wino, we will share some love on the wines from the French region of Languedoc-Roussillon.In the next two weeks, lets work on improving this article up to GA quality. We had great success with last issue's WID article Carmenère taking the article from a stub to an article that the Wine Project is proud to submit for GA consideration. Way to go! Thank you to the effort all editors and wine project members who have contributed to the Carmenère article in the last two weeks-User:Charleenmerced, User:MIckStephenson, User:Agne27, and anon IPs User:200.104.120.37 & User:75.20.207.49. Grab a bottle Sometime during the next two weeks, Wine Project members are encouraged to grab a bottle of from the Languedoc-Roussillon to enjoy and share your thoughts about it on the WID talk page. This will also present the perfect opportunity to take a picture of this wine in the glass for use in the article. If we have several photos submitted, we will take a vote among project members for which one is the best. Be sure to properly license and tag any photos that you upload with {{GFDL-no-disclaimers}} .