Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink/Wines task force/Newsletter/04-15-2007

{| style="border-bottom: 1px purple solid;border-left: 1px purple solid;border-right: 1px purple solid; padding: 1em; width: 100%; " 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.

News and notes
We've had five new members join the project since our last newsletter. Please be sure to give a warm welcome to User:Fyslee, User:CazShep, User:FlagSteward, User:Guavas, and User:VanTucky! Thanks for joining the project and sharing in our mutual love and passion for this great beverage. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to jump right in on the project talk page. These past two weeks the Wine Project had three articles awarded GA status, Commandaria, Oregon wine (Kudos to User:EngineerScotty!), and Tempranillo (Way to go User:Charleenmerced and User:MIckStephenson!). We are also close to possibly achieving a 12th Good Article for the Wine Project with Wine Country (California) currently on hold by GA reviewer. See Talk:Wine Country (California) for details on how you can help out and get this article up to GA! On April 10th, Chaptalization appeared on the Main Page as a DYK feature. Kudos to User:Bethling for nominating this DYK. Next up is International Grape Genome Program (created by User:MIckStephenson) which is slated to appear on the Front Page as a DYK on either April 16th or April 17th. Way to go Mick!
 * Welcome to our New Project Members
 * Three new Good Articles for the wine project.
 * Wine on the Front Page!
 * Having these wine related articles on the Front Page gives great exposure to the Wine Project and often results in several edits from non-wine project members that help improve the article. If you recently created a new article or significantly expanded a stub to at least a start class, considering dropping a note on the wine project talk page so that wine project members can help select a DYK from your work. Or consider nominating one yourself.

On Talk:Champagne production, User:FlagSteward has proposed a potential renaming of the article to Sparkling wine production, Methode Traditionelle or Traditional method so that the article could potentially assume the current Charmat process stub and present a more worldwide and not a singular French champagne focus. Please visit the talk page and share your views on this proposal.
 * Proposed Champagne production renaming

Wine Sub Projects
Since our last newsletter, we now have 1163 articles under the Wine Project banner with 789 Stubs and 289 Starts. We graduated a number of stubs to "Start" class quality with an increase of 51 Starts since our last newsletter. We also decreased the overall percentage of stub articles from 71% of total wine article count to 67%. Great work everyone!
 * Operation Stub Killer

Wiki-Wino : User: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)

Wine Improvement Drive- Bordeaux wine and splinter articles
In honor of this week's Wiki-Wino, we are going to take on the ambitious project of taking one of the world's most famous wine regions and bringing it to Good Article quality. Considering the breadth of information that can go into an article about Bordeaux wine, we are going to do something a little different with this WID. In addition to working on the main Bordeaux wine article, the relevant sub-articles are also open for improvement. These include....
 * History of Bordeaux wine - There is so much history to this wine that it deserves it own article. In the main Bordeaux wine article, we will need to craft a quality summary paragraph or two that will link to this main article.
 * Bordeaux wine regions - Another case where the amount of information could overwhelm the main article. This splinter will focus more on the wine and AOC laws of the various Bordeaux sub-regions like Saint-Émilion, Pomerol, Médoc, and Graves etc. This information will then be used to create quality summary paragraphs in the Bordeaux wine article.
 * Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 - A vital component to understanding Bordeaux wine. This article is essentially a list but there is more info that can be added to this topic.

The goal of this WID is to get all four articles up to GA quality in the next 2 weeks and possibly position Bordeaux wine into a potential FA candidate. It's ambitious but with the dedication and passion of wine project members we can do it.

Previous WID
After two weeks of improvement, Sauvignon blanc has improved greatly from its previous Start-class to an article that the Wine Project will be proud to submit for GA consideration. There is some current discussion the Talk:Sauvignon blanc about the lead paragraph and in particular the use of the phrase "Cat pee on a gooseberry bush". Once an editorial compromise has been reached, the article will be submitted to WP:GAC.

B-Article Adoptions
We are continuing with our Category:B-Class Wine articles adoption drive. Our goal is to improve 2-3 of this articles into GA quality article between each newsletter. To adopt an article, see the Category talk:B-Class Wine articles page for more details.
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