Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Wines task force/Archive 10

A group of articles to keep an eye on
A new user has created new articles on Robin Goldstein and Fearless Critic which relate to the guy who pranked Wine Spectator's restaurant awards program. I removed some cruft advert for Fearless Critic as well as material sourced to Goldstein's self published blog from Wine Spectator but it may be worthwhile to take an objective look at all these articles. Both seem to be very borderline on notability. AgneCheese/Wine 16:25, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If you want another group to keep an eye on, why not check out Georges Meekers, Mr. Meekers school Wine Campus and Mr. Meekers employer Emmanuel Delicata Winemaker. And then you can check out the edit history of, and if it doesn't seem strange to you, why not check out the WP:COI policy. And these articles have been around since July 2008 without being picked up by this project until now... It seems I have to try to make the automatic article notification work so we can easier avoid such things... Tomas e (talk) 20:20, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * YIKES! Holy COI SPAM Batman! Yeah that is pretty messy. AgneCheese/Wine 02:19, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

More on Captûre Wines

 * The following conversation has been moved from my talk page to solicit a broader response from the Wine Project. See also the archived discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Archive 9 pertaining to the original article (now moved to the author's namespace at User:RonaldMcWendys/Captûre Wines), and the deletion discussion at User talk:RonaldMcWendys/Captûre Wines. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:55, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I forgot to ask before the conversation concluded. What is a good rule of thumb for the number of reviews needed in order to successfully re-approach Captûre Wines' notability? I hope you could add some clarity to this concept. Thanks.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 17:20, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It isn't the number of reviews that matters, it's the content and the source.


 * There are well-known publications that have published a profile on the winery, but all of the material I've seen isn't much different than the coverage of many other new-company launches. It needs to be more than potential notability. If the wines distinguish themselves in a real competition (not one of the many hundreds of local or regional competitions, those don't mean anything), that would be something notable. If a well-known wine critic writes about the wine, that's something notable.


 * Unrelated events can also confer notability. Say, for example, a body of a long-unsolved murder was uncovered on the property, or the winery was a defendant in a high-profile lawsuit that made national news. It isn't the sort of publicity you'd want, but such events would cause the establishment to be mentioned in a Wikipedia article, or have its own article. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Great, thank you for the information.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 19:11, 1 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Amatulic. I hope you've been doing well since we last spoke.


 * I know you made it clear that "if a well-known wine critic writes about the wine, that's something notable." In the past two weeks the winery of the article I attempted has received flattering reviews from two critics I think may fit that description. One is Narsai David, wine critic of KCBS Radio (http://ourwinestory.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/narsai-4-24-capture.mp3) and the other is Stephen Tanzer of Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar (Score of 92). Do you find these critics meet sufficient notability? If you do consider them sufficient enough to reinstitute the article, is it customary to create a section which links to their reviews of our particular wine? I appreciate and look forward to your insights. Thanks.RonaldMcWendys (talk) 02:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)

I hate to say this, but this latest response gives me the feeling that your conflict of interest has caused you to place more importance on promoting this winery than on building an encyclopedia. Wikipedia isn't a channel for promotions. Wineries (or any companies) must gain visibility without Wikipedia's help. It is likely to take much longer for this winery to achieve sufficient importance for article inclusion, especially in light of the deletion discussions above pertaining to other wineries.

Regarding the sources, one is irrelevant, but the other may be relevant:


 * KCBS Radio is a local/regional news outlet, whereas this encyclopedia project has international scope. I wouldn't regard a local interest broadcast on KCBS to confer notability on anything. It's not much different than a new pizza shop being profiled in a local newspaper.
 * Stephen Tanzer, on the other hand, is a wine critic of some importance. His publication is paid-subscription-only, difficult to verify, not highly visible to the public. It raises some interesting questions, though:
 * Is such a publication citable as a source?
 * Does a wine score by itself confer notability?
 * Does every wine receiving a score from Stephen Tanzer or Robert Parker automatically make the associated winery notable?
 * Does Tanzer receive a lot of unsolicited submissions for the purpose of getting a promotional mention?

I don't know the answers. Any thoughts from the community here? ~Amatulić (talk) 17:55, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * A wine critic giving a score infer no more notability than a restaurant critic's review. Would every restaurant that receives a Wine Spectator award for their wine list automatically be considered notable based on that award alone? I don't think so. Now if Tanzer of Parker did a full fledged article on the winery, going into detail about it and the wines then that would be far different. A simple score is just a trivial mention. AgneCheese/Wine 02:28, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Seeking approval for Trapiche (winery) article
Trapiche (winery) is an article I have drafted and currently have posted to my user subspace. While building the article and preparing it for moving it into the main space, I have carefully followed WP:NOR, WP:SPAM, WP:NOT as well as WP:COI, because Trapiche is a client of my employer. For that reason, I would like an uninvolved editor to review the article. If it needs work before it can be approved, please let me know. If it meets Wikipedia's standards and can be moved, please move it or let me know if I can.

One more note: I see there is a related discussion involving another winery happening on this page today, though it appears to me the circumstances of each winery is very different. However, please let me know if you have any concerns or questions. Thanks. Nanorlb (talk) 18:32, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks very promising and excellent work on the sourcing. The only section that look a little WP:WINEGUIDE-ish is the Additional brands parts but I know there are other wine project members who view those more laxly. I would also recommend incorporating the Argentine wine link somewhere into the article rather than as a "See Also" since it is a relevant link. You may also want to link Mendoza wine as well. AgneCheese/Wine 02:31, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Has anyone heard of this?
New article Tre Bicchieri. I confess that I've never heard of this before. AgneCheese/Wine 04:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is the highest level of the scale used by Gambero Rosso in its annual Vini d’Italia, which it is probably safe to say is the Italian wine guide. However, here (in English), the article Gambero Rosso is on a restaurant rather than on the publisher. The articles in Italian and German Wikipedia, it:Gambero Rosso and de:Gambero Rosso, are on the publisher, and their website is here. The best thing would probably be to move the restaurant to Gambero Rosso (restaurant), and to move Tre Bicchieri to Gambero Rosso, and clean it up and expand it to an article on the wine guide and its scale rather than an article on the top level of the scale. Tomas e (talk) 10:01, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Unfortunately I don't have any sources on at hand. Will need to put this on the back burner myself till I get some time to do more online research. AgneCheese/Wine 04:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

A stand alone article or potential merge?
Interesting new article Clos (vineyard). At first glance it looks like a wikitionary entry on the dict def of Clos. Then it sort of becomes a "List of Clos vineyards". I don't know if this article has much potential for expansion or if it should be merged into vineyard. Thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 07:39, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Having a definition of the term as its own article would be OK, I think. The list is a bit more problematic. First, it seems to be on wall-enclosed vineyards called Clos or not, and vineyards (and vineyard subplots and properties) called Clos - wall or no wall. Second, I have no idea how complete it is. Offhand, I know at least one historical Clos missing from the list: Clos du Maréchal Pétain in Beaune, newly erected and named in honour of Marshal Pétain during WWII and then quitely torn down when the name became embarassing at the end of the war. Third, for a list to be useful, I would like to see some basic data rather than just the name - size of vineyard or length of wall, why not year of construction, and a comment for those Clos which no longer has a wall. Tomas e (talk) 10:26, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. I'll steer the article's creator to this comment. AgneCheese/Wine 04:27, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I created the article because having come across a Clos and taking a while to confirm an English definition and use of the word I though one should exist. I also think best to keep as separate page as it is safer to reference to from other articles than a page sub-section title. As for the list of Clos, I can see this as being problematic. It is not a complete list (was copied from German Wikipedia). I leave it up to this project's members to keep or delete the list, but I would suggest leaving a few example on the page a least.Traveler100 (talk) 18:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Uninvolved opinion and help sought
Over at Talk:Muscadet‎, Tomas and I have been working with anon editor for the past few days with a bit of difficulties. The anon is quite passionate about the article but at the root of problem I suspect is just a lack of familiarity about Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. The anon seems quite determined to add their own personal knowledge and opinion to the article while Tomas and I are trying to steer his energy and enthusiasm towards finding reliable sources to cite rather than rely on his/her personal knowledge and OR. We're making some progress and the anon has been improving their use of citing referencing but I suspect he/she would benefit having an uninvolved "mentor". As Tomas and I have been in dialog with them we no longer qualify as "uninvolved". I'm confident that an amicable resolution will eventually be reached but some unbias voices are always helpful. AgneCheese/Wine 04:27, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Update on Trapiche request for assistance
Last week I asked for advice on getting approval for a prospective Trapiche (winery) article. In response to Agne’s advice on how to improve it, I have reviewed WP:WINEGUIDE and made a few changes. As requested, I have incorporated the links to Mendoza wine and Argentine wine into the Trapiche article.

As for the list of Additional brands, I believe its inclusion is merited, as it describes the range of products under the Trapiche label (and it is not a list of "best" Vintages, as discouraged in WP:WINEGUIDE). I also added an explanatory sentence with a citation to underline this fact. I welcome any further advice on this point.

But, if this is ready to move into the mainspace, I'm happy to do that or let someone else do it. --Nanorlb (talk) 20:15, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm still not the most keen on the additional brands but the cite and intro sentence does help. Overall I think the article is well down and would support its transfer into mainspace. AgneCheese/Wine 03:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Agne. I have moved it, and if you have any suggestions for improving that section, please let me know. I would like to continue developing it as appropriate. Perhaps adding more context, if sourced, would help? --Nanorlb (talk) 19:10, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I agree with Agne here - the 'additional brands' sub-paragraph should go. It's completely unencyclopedic and reads just like self-promotion. Good article in general though IMHO. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 20:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I hear your concerns, and I don't want to have anything in the article that goes against the consensus of the community. I've put the section on a subpage in my userspace. But I do still think the brands Trapiche sells is important information, so I would like to figure out if there is an appropriate way to include those. Anyone have advice on what would be necessary for it to be considered encyclopedic? --Nanorlb (talk) 22:56, 31 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Nanorlb, thanks for respecting the consensus. If you check out the other winery articles (and their histories), you'll see that wine listings, vintages, brands etc are not in fact included in the articles. I think the feeling is that even though such information is important (for the winery), it doesn't really belong in an encyclopedia, and is more appropriate to the winery's web-page, brochure journalist write-up etc, which is where potential customers will look for such info.
 * Maybe if one of your wines has won an award in a notable event and received significant coverage from independent reliable sources, then that would be a noteworthy item of info that could be considered encyclopedic and included in the article.
 * Also, please be aware that I'm by no means an expert in these matters, I'm just another editor! The important thing, I think, is to respect all the wiki guidelines (WP:N, WP:CORP, WP:SPAM, WP:COI, etc...). This will be quite tricky in your case as you have a vested interest (COI) in promoting your winery by using wikipedia as advertising space. The rest of the community have no such interest and we just attempt to include notable wineries with references. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:49, 1 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input. I definitely intend to keep Wikipedia’s interests first, and I will do my best to suggest only material that fits the content guidelines. If I find more, I will make sure to ask about that here. --Nanorlb (talk) 14:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)”

Albana (grape)
I did a quick cleanup on this article (Albana_(grape), but I think there's something not right about the image. Should it not be in the Commons, and have a proper link? I'm afraid I don't know how to fix it. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 13:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I assume you were looking for the albana secco.jpg format, which in difference to just [[File:albana secco.jpg]] gives the article a specific size (not dependent on its number of pixels), or at least specific width, as well as a border and the possibility to specify a caption. I must say, though, that this image looks very much like a professional photo of a copyrighted bottle/label design, so I'm not sure that it lives safely in Commons, no matter which license tag it has... Tomas e (talk) 15:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've no idea! It was user Lavamar (talk contribs) wot dunnit! He or she inserted the photo shortly after I did the cleanup.--BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Is wine cuisine?
The anon IP 71.139.4.218 has been adding Category:Cuisine of the Western United States to a number of articles, including California wine‎, Category:California wine, and Wine Country (California). I don't think the categorization is appropriate for the latter two, and I don't know about the first (is there a precedent here)? What do y'all think? Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 23:56, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
 * hmm...I would say no. You normally hear wine distinguished from food cuisine such as "Fine wine and cuisine". If they were the same category, people wouldn't distinguish them. AgneCheese/Wine 00:16, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Please don't take this improperly, you would be wrong if you said that. Cuisine is a coherent tradition of food preparation that rises from the daily lives and kitchens of a people over an extended period of time in a region or country. Wine, like beer, is a significant part of cuisine in cooking, dining and socializing in almost all societies that imbibe alcohol. The addition of this category fits into that ideally. --Jeremy (blah blah) 03:19, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you take it to the far extreme of stretching, yes wine could fall under the "cuisine" category but so would ice cubes and dinnerware for that matter. Wine is on the periphery of that categorization and it really doesn't benefit Wikipedia's organization to put all these tangentially related wine articles in predominately cuisine-oriented categories. AgneCheese/Wine 03:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This sort of discussion is why I brought it here instead of just reverting. But to me, part of the issue is: why would it only be considered part of the cuisine of the Western US? Would there be a reason why California wine wouldn't go with other regional cuisines just as well? I can understand adding wine in general to cuisine in general, or a wine that has a long-standing tie to a particular cuisine to that region's cuisine category, but California wine doesn't only go with California cuisine. Not to mention that Wine Country (California) is about a region, not wine... Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 03:53, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Those are the type of problems that come when categorization gets stretched to the fringe. I prefer the KISS principle by keeping categorization direct and reasonable. AgneCheese/Wine 04:03, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I would say that wine is related (very closely) to cuisine, but not an actual part of it. I understand the core meaning of 'cuisine' to basically be the preparation of food. There's also the 'practical' aspect to this question, ie tagging several thousand wine articles would be time-consuming (or would a bot do that?) and, more importantly, it wouldn't serve any purpose. I think all humans (even the millions that don't drink wine) are already aware that wine is closely related to cuisine. I vote for no tagging! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:32, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know that we achieved consensus in either direction, but the more I thought about it, the less it made sense to me that California wine would be tied to California cuisine. Consequently, I've reverted the categorization. Dori ❦ (Talk ❖ Contribs ❖ Review) ❦ 01:49, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Duplicate infoboxes, or Did I fall asleep?
Hello oeno-folks, I wonder if I fell asleep over a unusually long time some months ago (early February 2009, to be more precise) and stopped keeping watch over certain grape articles. The reason why I ask is called Template:Infobox wine grape variety, which was created on February 2, 2009 by. Now, several of you are going to say "No, that's not true, we've had that infobox a lot longer". But what you're thinking about is Template:Infobox grape variety (notice the lack of the word "wine"), which goes back to just shortly after grapes were first trodden by man to make wine, or more precisely, March 20, 2007. I discovered this because I just added an infobox for Sacy (grape), which I simply took and modified from Chardonnay, and I didn't get it to display the parameter for the grape's origin that I added. The reason turned out to be that this new template has no parameter for origin, or for species, for that part. Looking at which varieties that use the new template (they are few but include some very well known ones), I just can't believe that I missed that the existing infobox was replaced in e.g. Syrah with one that omits these central parameters. So I must ask if I missed a project discussion in early Febrary that reached consensus that 1) ampelographic information like species, pedigree and origin is not interesting to display in infoboxes on grapes, and 2) the project should have duplicate infoboxes for the same things? If not, I suggest that the seven varieties now using this template be relieved from it as soon as possible, and the template is put up for deletion. Thoughts? Tomas e (talk) 17:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Would adding the missing parameter fix the problem? If that's the case, then you don't really need to propose the template for deletion, just redirect it to the other template. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like they have a different set of parameters, the "wine grape" one misses out on a lot of ampelographic ones, but also has various parameters for wine characteristics in different climates (cool, medium and hot) and the ability for aging. In principle interesting information, but sounds like things a little to complicated and potentially POV to have in a template. Tomas e (talk) 17:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * LOL...well you weren't the only one sleeping, I didn't realize we had different template either. We obviously don't need two and I agree with Tomas initial suggestion on putting the extra template up for deletion. AgneCheese/Wine 01:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh? Qué? What? Where am I? What time is it? Template? What template? :) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Coriole
Has anyone been following the deletion discussion here: [] The consensus is going towards Keep, because recently an author slapped 12 references onto the articles it it now looks weel referenced. I've actually checked them all out: half are not available for viewing (you have to pay or subscribe) and the other half are passing mentions in related fields (tourism, cuisine, etc) Not a single source has any actual content, let alone notable content.--BodegasAmbite (talk) 14:13, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Checking on Erobertparker, 55 of their wines have been reviewed, with top scores reaching 94 points. So although I hadn't heard of them before, it seems they're not that anonymous to international wine critics. Tomas e (talk) 13:42, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Another infobox
Hello, I just had a look at another infobox, Template:Infobox Australian winery. While there's nothing wrong to its existence as such, I noticed the last three of its parameters: This sort of seems a bit too much of a WP:WINEGUIDE or even a tourist guide to me. Should we really have infoboxes with these parameters? Tomas e (talk) 13:48, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * other_attractions = e.g. Wetland tours
 * distribution = e.g. national, regional, limited, restaurants, wine club only, etc
 * tasting= open to public, by appointment, special events, etc
 * No kidding. There is nothing encyclopedic about that. AgneCheese/Wine 16:25, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

AFD Vasse Felix
While we are at it, you better look here also, I say keep but as always, I can be convinced I'm wrong :-) --Stefan talk 01:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Potential COI at Kendall Jackson
Sheesh, another winery article. Another issue. :/ User:Kvice has been adding massive amount of unsourced info that was apparently approved and "provided by the winery itself" according to the edit summary and confession on my talk page. I've tried to point the user to the relevant policies, including WP:COI policy but this is something to keep an eye on. AgneCheese/Wine 16:45, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * On a related noted Since we seem to have so many frequent issues with wineries, do you think it worth it to have a dedicated "Winery Noticeboard" or something to where we can centralize these location. AgneCheese/Wine 16:45, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't have a problem with them being here, it isn't a particularly high volume talk page as it is. If people are keen to have a separate dedicated discussion venue though I also don't have a problem with that! Camw (talk) 18:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Article to keep an eye on
check this one out please: Palotai Vineyard and Winery. Reads like a blatant advert, but I haven't proposed it for deletion (yet). Maybe the author (with possible COI) can dredge up some notability! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Prodded. You don't have to be hesitant about such things. For blatant advertising, use db-spam to propose for speedy deletion. For clearly non-notable companies, use db-corp to propose for speedy deletion. Otherwise use prod to give the author a week to make improvements before deletion. If you are less certain you can always go with the formal AfD proposal. But there is no need to hesitate. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:31, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the encouragement, Amatulic. It's just that I'm still not sure when to go for Speedy, Prod or AfD. I guess I'll get the hang of it eventually! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:06, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello everyone. I'm a long time reader short time Wikipedia writer. Possibly the problem with my article is my understanding of Stub and it's usage. I have been treating this as a work in progress flag.  The purpose of a public work in progress being that I can provide a basis for the community to assist in research while acknowledging the article does not meet the established requirements to be considered a finished article. Is the proposal for deleting being considered because I am misunderstanding / misusing the stub article status?  Is a stub only meant to live as such for an established length of time after which it is either promoted to full article status or deleted? Uncubed (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Uncubed,
 * There is no problem with Stubs. A stub is just a short article, maybe because there is nothing more to say about the subject in which case it will remain a stub for ever; or maybe because it hasn't been expanded yet (in the case that there is something more to say). There are also good stubs and bad stubs (just like there are good/bad Starts, good/bad Bs, etc). Basically, a good atricle (including stubs) must include reliable, independent references.


 * The issues with Palotai Vineyard and Winery are Notability and Advertising. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the follow up. I'm not certain why the article feels like an advertisement to you.  Is it one or more items contained in the article, the composition of the article or something else?  My guess is that it's the awards list?  I want to make sure I fully understand the issue before I spend time trying to fix it. The notability discussion I will address later when I have more time.  Just making a quick post between things at the moment.Uncubed (talk) 23:31, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If you have no conflict of interest, I think it's clear by now that you did not intend for the article to come off as an advertisement. The awards list isn't appropriate, slanting the article toward a wine guide, and Wikipedia is not a wine guide. The notability is a problem. I am not seeing anything that would warrant inclusion of this article, per WP:CORP and WP:NOTABILITY. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the awards list and the prod. I've left the notability tag in place.  I do plan to address this concern to the best of my ability but I would like some time to accomplish this.


 * I do have a question that will help me determine if I can accomplish this. How is "local" defined for sources?  My thought is that local would be limited to cities near the subject, say ~30 mile radius. Regional would be the area covered by the Umpqua_Valley,_Southern_Oregon AVA region.  Check the article's map, it's a good sized area.  Then anything outside the region would be a non regional source. Notability could be established possibly with a few regional articles and at least 1 non regional article providing significant coverage. that could be used to establish notability outside the region.  If non regional is going to be considered a much larger area, say, find sources from 2 countries outside the USA, then I may need to reconsider the article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncubed (talk • contribs) 05:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A thought: US sources as such is definitely not a problem. But it should preferably be US sources that either give good coverage of wines from across the US (and not just from one part of California, for example), or US and non-US wines, or are widely read also outside the US. And are relevant to the field of wine, of course. Tomas e (talk) 09:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Another thought: If I were you (ie, if I were keen to keep an article) I would look for something notable about the winery and back that up with good references. Something very similar to this articles is happening right now over at Coriole. Check out the discussions on the article's deletion page, here:[]. At first sight (and as the article stood at the time it was proposed for deletion) it was completely unnotable with no decent refs. But then someone came up with a possibly notable item, research was done, solid references were found, and now the article will almost certainly be kept. There's no need to get bogged down in the definition of what is local/regional/etc. Once you start researching for refs to a notable item, you'll know which are the best refs! Find that notability first :) --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding notability I will place my primary focus on the Bull's Blood blend produced by the winery. I will supply additional notable information found in the process. I was provided with the information I needed regarding the National Geographic article, November 2007 National Geographic Adventure. I need to track a copy down through the library and review the article in full to confirm the information and properly source it.  My progress going forward is going to revert to the talk page for the article.  If anyone in the WikiProject becomes concerned over the articles status please put a prod in the article talk page and I'll check back in on this thread. Aside from a prod I will stop in again when I feel the notability requirement is met and needs peer review.  Again, thank you all for your help and suggestions.Uncubed (talk) 06:52, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

I placed the prod on that article. I still believe that the WP:CORP concerns have not been addressed, but I'll wait a week or so before going to a formal deletion proposal.

The topic of winery notability has received a lot of attention in this Wikipedia Wine project lately. I would like to see Wikipedia is not a wine guide upgraded from essay to guideline status, because it is a guideline document that makes a lot of sense. It already contains a detailed section on winery notability, which serves as an excellent extension to WP:CORP.

I have created the shortcuts WP:WINERY and WP:WINERIES to point to that section, for future reference. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:18, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Croatian Wine
I created a new article for Croatian wine and would appreciate a review by the more experienced Wiki authors amongst us. One issue is that I don't seem to be able to get Croatia listed in the "wine by country" category box - obviously I'd like to. Thanks! Farscot (talk) 16:11, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Added the article to the template. Tomas e (talk) 17:14, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Notability of tourist wine trails
While doing some housekeeping I came across Connecticut Wine Trail. Looking at some of the WP:NOTABILITY guidelines, I really couldn't find anything for "tourist trails" or the like. Searching online provides scant referencing outside of very trivial mentions in local newspapers. Considering that nearly every US AVA or wine area has a "wine trail" of sorts, perhaps we should discuss what makes wine routes like the German Wine Route notable verses these smaller AVAs, etc. AgneCheese/Wine 06:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Another one Riesling Trail AgneCheese/Wine 07:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts
Hello all! I subscribed this project up for the article alerts bot which will search all namespaces with the wine template and make a daily record of changes including Prod, AfD, GAN, FAN etc... Once it gets going in a day or so I will update the main page so it displays the changes automatically. Furthermore you will be able to monitor changes by watching the WikiProject Wine/Article alerts page.

Hopefully this can help us all keep up on the many changes that are occuring each day in the wine field here on WP.

--Jeremy (blah blah) 07:47, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, we were told about it a couple of months ago, but noone really picked it up. I've found the article alerts quite useful in another project, and can definitely encourage other editors to check them out regularly. Will you make them clearly visible on the project page when the bot gets going? Tomas e (talk) 16:25, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I will reset the page so it is prominent under the article information section of the page. --Jeremy (blah blah) 01:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * A report has been generated, it is at WikiProject Wine/Article alerts. --Jeremy (blah blah) 01:57, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * If you watch the alerts, remember to set your watchlist to show bot edits otherwise it won't show up.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 03:43, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to promote a wine guide essay to a guideline
Per the instructions on WP:GUIDE, I propose that the essay Wikipedia is not a wine guide be promoted from essay to guideline, with WP:CORP as its parent.

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is not a wine guide. Thanks. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

As I noted on the talk page, I do think WP:WINEGUIDE needs to be rewritten and brought up to date. Especially over the last year its usage and focus has shifted along with consensus opinion regarding WP:CORP, winery articles and notability in general. As a project, we've had a lot of discussions on this page and at various AfDs. with some clear consensus views forming that should be solidified in WP:WINEGUIDE. How about we create Wikipedia is not a wine guide/Draft revision and focus in on some key details like....
 * What distinguish "trivial" coverage in reliable sources from substantial coverage?
 * "Sure-fire" indicators of notability like important role in pioneering a wine region, wine style or grape variety and coverage in national/international media
 * "Questionable/tenuous claims" of notability like wining awards at local events, sponsoring concert series, coverage solely isolated to local media

Of course there are somethings we want to carry over from the current version of WP:WINEGUIDE like the restaurant test but maybe we should move some of the "style" issues regarding wine lists and vintages, etc to a separate article? AgneCheese/Wine 04:06, 13 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Excellent idea, and I will contribute as far as I am able.
 * Especially seeing as I seem to have been the cause of the recent activity on winery notability, AfDs, etc. I think I bit off more than I could chew in my attempt to 'clean up' some unnotable winery stubs! At the time I didn't realise the complexity of the issues, procedures, criteria, etc, but I do now! and if we do the guideline than some good will have come of it all. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 13:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * PS. I was offline all last week because I was on holiday in Lanzarote - where they make some good wine! I may even have found a notable winery to write an article about!!!
 * PPS. I've just read the comments to Amatulic's proposal, but I find it all a bit too wiki-technical. Count me in if we start working on Wikipedia is not a wine guide/Draft revision --BodegasAmbite (talk) 13:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. For one thing, the title should be Notability (wine business) or similar. The current title "Wikipedia is not" implies that it's a child of the official policy What Wikipedia is not. We're not trying to come up with new policy here. What we're after is a notability guideline child of WP:CORP. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:25, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * So if we need a notability guideline for wineries &c., perhaps we should try to extract some elements of the essay, rather than to rewrite it? I assume that such a guideline should be shorter and more succinct? The essay, which is very nice reading, could perhaps be reworked into an essay about "how to write about wine on Wikipeda", but remain an essay? It seems to be the notability guideline that is pressing so rewriting the essay would then have a lower priority. Tomas e (talk) 18:39, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, actually the essay already contains an article-length section on notability. I have just rearranged the words in it, putting the style stuff in the top section and the notability stuff in the Notability section. I wordsmithed a few things too. The Notability section by itself would now make a good stand-alone guideline. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:22, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with Amatulic idea about creating a separate guideline. However, I do think we should make sure we have some consensus in regards to the questions I posted above. AgneCheese/Wine 03:19, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not really against a guideline but think it will waste an awful lot of time and I think it will be opposed, I think we should spend that time to write more content instead or possibly enhance the current WP:WINEGUIDE a bit. Some consistent !voting from us in AFDs will have a major impact on any AFD result (if we just have a common view and can argue that view, which we can define in the current wineguide). To put things in context look at the current notability guidelines, we have Academics, Books, Criminal Acts, Films, Music, Numbers, Organizations & companies, People, and Web content; Do we really think wine is so big that it fits in that group (the only one that is odd to me is criminal acts, but maybe I have spent to much time drinking instead of doing criminal acts :-).
 * Also, I can not find any child notability guides? If we aim to be child of CORP, maybe it is better to just add a few lines to CORP? That is probably much easier and will achive the same thing. If you guys are serious, I also suggest reading Notability (populated places) which seams to have failed twice (I have not read the discussion yet), to try to avoid make the same misstakes they did. --Stefan talk 03:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Stefan: Yes, wine is a big subject with worldwide universal scope, at least as much as academics, books, and music. The problem with WP:WINEGUIDE as it is now, is it is a blend of a style guide and a notability guide. The style guide portion doesn't seem controversial, but the notability issues continually come up in AfD debates. That fact alone means we should have something stronger than a mere essay to define what makes wineries notable.
 * All those other notability guides are children of Notability. A wine notability guide could be also. In its current form, WP:WINEGUIDE focuses on notability of companies, which makes it logical to be a child of WP:CORP. However, there is nothing preventing the guideline from being expanded beyond that to wines, competitions, tourism topics, sommelier schools, and other subjects. Therefore any notability guideline we make should be a child of Notability instead. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)


 * What I say is, define a notability definition first, test it, use it, make it defacto, then think about making it a guideline, if you mix the 2 it will more compliacated. I hope I'm wrong, but I think you underestimate the effort of getting it aproved as a guideline. --Stefan talk 10:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I stumbled upon this WP:REST, not very good, but the comments are the same as I expect to get if we try to make one for wine. --Stefan talk 14:18, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I have split out and expanded the notability portion into a new article Notability (wine topics). There are sections to be expanded on wine, winemakers, wineries, regions, and competitions. There should probably be a section on tourism attractions too. Please expand. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:58, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

More pressing-notability or POV?
Coming across Concha y Toro reminded me of a comment that Tomas made a couple weeks ago in the section above Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Wine about "I'm more worried about winery articles written like advertisements than those that are borderline cases when it comes to notability". The Concha y Toro article is a great example here. It is clearly a notable winery but it has a lot of "sneaky POV". It is not screaming out as a sales brochure but the descriptions of the individual wines and vineyards are very clearly written like something you expect to see in a wineguide or in a distributor's sales write up sheet. The "referenced" material (courtesy of the winery's own website) on the Casillero del Diablo wine tells you that it "is medium bodied with smooth and friendly tannins and lingering finish. It has hints of plums and cherries and a generous touch of toasted American oak" and so on. Now with all our time being very limited and precious, Tomas' words above have me thinking. As Wikipedia grows it seems like wineries are becoming more and more of a headache and the source of our biggest problems-be it notability, POV or COI. Going forward this project does need a game plan on how to handle all these issues. AgneCheese/Wine 06:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * That was my thinking when I proposed we need to establish a consensus on an official Wikipedia guideline or policy that helps define inclusion and content, instead of an essay. I was premature in my proposal to elevate your essay to guideline status, but I strongly believe that a revised version of that should be our path forward. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:48, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup listings
I have also subscribed the group to WolterBot. WolterBot goes through WP:Wine articles tallying all articles that have a clean up tag of one type or another (wikify, citations etc...) and cataloging them. This should help with the Improvement drive as we can now get a handle on those articles in most need of help. This list is updated roughly bi-monthly.

--Jeremy (blah blah) 01:23, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * A report has been generated, it is at WikiProject Wine/Cleanup listing. --Jeremy (blah blah) 01:56, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Now I'm somewhat confused. Didn't I do that in October 2008? Is there a need to have the same icon twice on the project page, since it seems to be subscription for the same page? Tomas e (talk) 14:55, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Notability guideline started
I have rearranged Agne's essay WP:WINEGUIDE so that the style stuff and notability stuff are cleanly separable, then I moved the notability part to a new article: I have included several additional sections beyond just wineries that may have notability concerns. A couple are still blank, and others can use further expansion.
 * Notability (wine topics).

Please participate, get involved, make edits, and discuss on Wikipedia talk:Notability (wine topics), especially if you disagree with anything. Overall, though, I think it's off to a good start. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Muscat Primary topic?
Does anyone think we have a strong case to get Muscat (grape and wine) moved to Muscat as the Primary Topic? The closest contender is the city in Oman but in the English language it seems that the most common usage of the term is in relation to the grapes and wine. AgneCheese/Wine 06:21, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably the crowd that reads this page might be more sympathetic than average.:-) Since Muscat is not just a city but the capital of Oman, it could perhaps be some resistance. But I'm just guessing here, so I wouldn't mind a try. In any case, the "grape and wine" part of that article's title has long irritated me. Muscat (grape) would be enough for me. All grape articles are in general about vines, grapes and wines without the need to have a multipart disambiguation for other varieties. Tomas e (talk) 08:53, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There is already an extensive disambiguation page at Muscat, although only the capitol of Oman would be contentious as the primary topic. The history of the Muscat page reveals that it started out as a grape article, but someone disagreed in 2004 and changed it to a disambiguation page, moving the grape content to an article called Muscat Grape, which is now a redirect to Muscat (grape and wine).
 * Muscat has been a disambiguation page for so many years I don't think it's appropriate to change it back.
 * There is already a redirect page Muscat (grape). Moving the article would involve copying and pasting from Muscat (grape and wine), making that article a redirect to Muscat (grape), and then fixing all other redirects to Muscat (grape and wine) to point to Muscat (grape). ~Amatulić (talk) 17:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * We would need to do a full WP:RM process in order to maintain the history. A simple cut n' paste wouldn't work in that case. I can understanding the longevity argument but I do think consensus on primary topic and disambiguation has evolved quite a bit since 2004. For one, you see more discussions relating to primary topic in the language of the encyclopedia. While the city in Oman would probably be the primary topic in Arabic, in English I think it lags far behind the grapes. But if you guys don't think we have a case, then I'm okay with a WP:RM move to Muscat (grape) AgneCheese/Wine 18:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think the capitol city of any nation in the world would trump a mere grape as a primary topic, regardless of the language. There are a thousand or so grape cultivars, but only about 200 sovereign countries with national capitols. The grape Muscat doesn't seem to rise in importance so far above other grapes that it needs status as a primary topic over other subjects with similar titles.
 * The language argument isn't a fair comparison. Unlike a grape, usage of a capitol city name in any language waxes and wanes with world events. Are we expected to change the focus of primary topic articles when a city becomes the subject of intense international news coverage, thereby giving more langauge 'hits' to the city name?
 * If Muscat was an obscure village somewhere, I think the language argument would have some validity. Rather, because it's the name of a nation's capitol, I lean toward keeping the disambiguation page as is. I would support moving Muscat (grape and wine) to Muscat (grape) but I don't feel strongly about it either way. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

New case to review for COI and Notability
See Tempra Tantrum and Osborne Group. --Stefan talk 02:56, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Osborne Group can make some claim for notability but the Tempra Tantrum brand is distinctly non-notable on its own so I merged it into the main Osborne group article. If anyone wants to take that to AfD feel free. AgneCheese/Wine 06:47, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * That might have been a reasonable solution except I have grave doubts about the notability of the wine. Osborne are a huge brand in Spain and frankly I'm surprised we haven't had an article on them until now. The related Osborne bull article hints a little more at their notability; I'd say there's actually great potential for expansion of the winery article. I'd almost go so far as to say they are to Spanish national identity what champagne is to the French. However that wine appears to have been the prime mover behind the creation of the article; something to hang the Tempra Tantrum one off. Gooogle it and you'll see that it's a brand new product and as such the article was a completely non-notable marketing exercise. COI? Almost certainly. Notable for Osborne is probably one of their iconic products like Bobadillo 103 brandy or their solera sherries, not their most recent product range. I'd suggest deleting all reference to Tempra Tantrum. --mikaultalk 07:24, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no objections to that. AgneCheese/Wine 07:33, 25 June 2009 (UTC)


 * yes, Osborne Group is almost certainly notable, if only for being one of the oldest companies in Spain, and merits a better article than the present one. I also agree that reference to Tempra Tantrum should be removed. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:46, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Geography, politics, Turkey and Cyprus
While this project's articles have had their fair share of linkspam and "commercial POV", I haven't seen that much political/ethnical POV-pushing, which is good. However, we now have a case of an editor called who has tried to move Turkey from (Minor) Asia to Europe in the List of wine-producing regions, citing Cyprus as his tit-for-tat argument. (Sigh.) It's a user who has already been blocked, and who seem to be a POV-pusher in general rather than someone interested in wine, and doesn't seem to be interested in taking advice or writing NPOV. I think he'll try again, so I wouldn't mind if a couple of more editors keeps an eye on this list. Tomas e (talk) 16:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Your right, this is new. Will help out with an extra set of eyes. AgneCheese/Wine 05:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been keeping an eye on it too --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:51, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Sommelier notability?
See Randy_Caparoso, seams to be resonably well written, with claims of possible notability, but possible WP:COI and notability issues. Comments? --Stefan talk 09:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I added a References tag to the page, but no time to look them up myself these days! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:56, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I did some clean up work up. More can still be done. Very borderline notability but probably enough to survive an AfD. Most google hits are derived from various self-promotion websites. AgneCheese/Wine 07:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Need copy-edit help on History of South African wine
Its nomination at Did you know is being held up for copy-editing concerns. As this is certainly not my forte, any help from more grammatically inclined editors would be appreciated :p AgneCheese/Wine 07:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

AlexNewArtBot
Now User:AlexNewArtBot is running for wine pages, see User:AlexNewArtBot/WineSearchResult for a filtered list (watchlist this) and User:AlexNewArtBot/WineLog for all logs. If you want to help tweak the search terms, please help at User:AlexNewArtBot/Wine, it is still a work in progress, but think it starts to be useful, but expect lots of false hits. This is a good way to find new COI and low notability articles. --Stefan talk 03:32, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Winery article issue #423 or something
Someone is pretty hardcore about getting Pollak Vineyards some free WP:ADVERT on Wikipedia. First User:Mollygibbs tried several times to add the redlink to the Monticello AVA, when that was deleted. She then create a quick copy vio article so that the link would turn blue. That article won't be around long and looking online, I'm not sure if a referenced, pov article can be written. AgneCheese/Wine 02:42, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Penedès (DO) and Penedès (Vegueria)
The Penedès article has run aground somewhat during the last six months, largely I think due to the confusion surrounding the wine region as a linked-but-separate entity with the administrative area. I've been involved off & on with the vegueria article in which the highly confusing political situation there, following the 2006 declaration of the reintroduction of the vegueria system of government, has led to speculation that the Penedès may one again become a unified province. Here's the thing: technically, there's no such place as Penedès just yet, making it hard to justify a separate article. A lot of its geographical and historical detail is intertwined with the wine region geography and history and I'm very tempted to properly combine the two facets of Penedès in the one article, at least until such time as the vegueria actually comes into existence again, at which point it can probably be split off if necessary. I've re-jigged the article to see if this works and posted it as a sub-page to my user page here. I think it does work – just – but it's an unusual one as wine articles go. I'd appreciate your comments before I replace the existing page with this draft. --mikaultalk 12:57, 29 June 2009 (UTC) It's difficult to evaluate, I know. I guess it all started with this edit – if you look a the article prior to that point it was a little confused but was clearly about Penedès wine. That edit basically hi-jacked the article to outline the political situation. My proposed edit goes beyond the copyedit it sorely needs to a compromise response to that. I "know" the editor concerned and whereas I doubt there's be an edit war over it I would like to be diplomatic, at least until the political situation is resolved next year. I'm still open to suggestions, though. --mikaultalk 22:40, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree its confusing. Does the Spanish DO office still have their set boundaries for the region in tact? In general, I like to keep a region's political identity separate from discussion of it as a wine region to avoid such confusion. AgneCheese/Wine 16:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * There are no plans AFAICS to reconsider the DO boundaries, as in no discussion at all. It is a wholly separate realm, typical of DOs; their boundaries are rarely the same as the political ones, hence rarely become involved in their disputes. However the problem (for us) has always been the close proximity of the Penedès wine region boundaries to those of the old vegueria. There was always a little of this confusion in the article and always will be. What's happened recently is that the section(s) which mention these discrepancies have become less accurate and even more confusing, to the point where we either (a) remove all mention of administrative boundaries or (b) attempt to clarify the background to (and keep up with) current affairs, until such time as a split off article can be linked to. I think (a) is a non-starter.
 * Well as far as compromises go, I guess your draft is probably going to be the best. AgneCheese/Wine 02:44, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I think your draft is better than the existing page, and your rejigging is definitely an improvement. Ideally, the Penedes DO article should be 'standardized' even more to make it similar in format and content to all the other DO's. And it could have a link to the Vegeries article and a short explanation that the admin region Penedes is different from the DO Penedés. After all, there are quite a lot of Spanish DO's that have the same name as a region or a town. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:51, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Black Spanish grapes and Lenoir grapes
I noticed these varietals don't have articles. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:06, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Do you know of any reliable sources that we can use for such articles? AgneCheese/Wine 19:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There seemed to be quite a lot of sources at least mentioning those types of grapes. LeNoir or Lenoir appears to be a type of Vitis Bourquiniana (which also doesn't have an article). This source discusses the varietals a bit and seems pretty good. There are quite a lot of sources on Google Books and Google News, but many are only available as snippet views. I'm just throwing these topics out as I think covering the varietals seems important for comprehensive coverage of wine. I'm more of a juice drinker. :) ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:46, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This source seems to have some of the history . ChildofMidnight (talk) 20:53, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Vitis bourquiniana (in Thomas Volney Munson's terminology) is apparently the same as Vitis aestivalis var. bourquiniana. While one single holding institution has a V. bourquiniana "Lenoir" variety registered (primary name actually "Ohio"), 17 institutions hold a hybrid variety (V. aestivalis x Vitis vinifera) with the prime name "Jacquez" and Lenoir and Black Spanish as two of several synonyms. Since grape varieties actually used for wine production are almost always found in multiple holding institutions, this is almost certainly the actual variety you're referring to. Tomas e (talk) 23:41, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Reading up on this, I'm not at all sure about those synonyms: "Black Spanish" is likely not the same thing as Lenoir (v. aestivalis x v vinifera) but most likely the Mission grape or a descendant of it, "discovered" by westward migrants and (visually) lumped together by virtue of both having strong vinifera ancestry. The confusion makes for a great story – this very well-referenced article is unfortunately not your typical RS, but it is a cracking read! While the real origins of both grapes might remain a mystery, the Mission grape article could conceivably be fleshed out a bit if we can establish the truth of the Black Spanish connection, and there's clearly a lot of mileage in a Lenoir article w/ ref to Munson and Euro/American hybridization. The whole to-and-fro of establishing European rootstock in American soils through to solving the phylloxera crisis is a really fascinating subject. --mikaultalk 03:03, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Never heard of either of them, BUT, curiously, while randomly surfing around various wine articles, I came across the article on Messina Hof, where both these varieites happen to be mentioned! Another case of a possibly un-notable winery, which reads a bit like an advert. Would anyone like to take a look at it? What's the latest on the new winery notability guidelines? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:08, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

disambiguating wine people
If I were going to write up an article on John Williams the winemaker, what would the expected article title be? John Williams (wine), John Williams (winemaker), or something else? Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 18:27, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I prefer the simple (wine) disambig myself unless there becomes multiple John Williams in the wine industry such as a (viticulturist), (wine critic), etc. AgneCheese/Wine 03:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Database for some wine-related reliable sources
Hey guys, there is a new "Google for wine" search engine out Able Grape that looks to be a pretty nifty tool for finding some reliable sources to use in wine articles. While not every link that shows up would qualify as an RS, it sure is better than just searching Google. I recommend wine project members bookmarking the link. AgneCheese/Wine 22:47, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Is Template:Wines getting too big?
Once again a litany of editors have added their personal favorite grape or wine region to the template diminishing, in my view, its usefulness. Templates are not meant to catalog every possible article that can be included in a category but rather the major articles that contain links to these other articles. My thoughts are that the template is getting too big and including too many grapes and regions that should be just represented with links to List of grape varieties and List of wine-producing regions. Other thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 03:18, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. I have never really studied the template but it does seem crowded - not to mention biased. I just caught myself in thinking "why is Grenache a Local Grape varity?" and then realized - how many wouldn't think that their favourite (local) grape is indeed worthy of mentioning, or their local wine region and so on. Come on, Egri Bikaver??? It sounds made-up.--Nwinther (talk) 11:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it is getting to big. For a long time, I've been groaning when I see the size of it, and wines/DOC(G)s like Brunello di Montalcino and Amarone being called "regions". I also don't like this with "local grape varieties". While there definitely is a limited set of truly international grape varieties, I'm not sure if "local" is the right term for all the rest. In my mind, the term more conjures up local oddities like Romorantin or Mondeuse Noire. Tempranillo, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese are absolutely not international varieties in terms of cultivation, and mostly restricted to one country (or one part of a country), but their wines have international fame. Varieties like Pinot Blanc and Silvaner are found in more than one European countries, but have never made it "big time" in the New World, so they couldn't really be called international. But still, it seems like "other major grape varieties" or something like that would be a better descriptor. This template is begging for cleanup and pruning! Tomas e (talk) 17:50, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I like the description of "Other major grape varieties". And yes, it does need some major pruning followed by a big note saying to please seek consensus before adding to this template. AgneCheese/Wine 00:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be an idea to make the links to "red grape varities", "White grape varities" "other grape varities", and "Italy|italian_wine", "France|french_wine" etc.; and keep the wine styles. That'd reduce the POV somewhat as well as minimize the template. Of course, it'll lessen its use - but that's the trade-off I guess.--Nwinther (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Grand cru
Discussion about capitalization and including mention of other products using the term "Grand cru". All opinions and viewpoints welcomed. AgneCheese/Wine 06:34, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Second that. I can't see much use of listing a number of beers which has "grand cru" as part of their brand name, when the term is unregulated for beer and lacks any meaning in that context. A slightly exaggerated comparison: the kangaroo article states "The kangaroo is a national symbol of Australia". Would it be appreciated by our wiki-zoologists to insert a section on Australian wine brands having a kangaroo on their label in the article? Probably not, and I won't try. Tomas e (talk) 12:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Oooooh a shiny NEW form of COI advertising in wine articles
User:Dcousino, apparently connected with the winery Cousino Macul, is pretty gosh darn determined to put a photo of his wine in the Chilean wine article. Now if this photo was an improvement over the existing photo (such as including an actual glass of wine or grapes with the bottle), then I might be incline to overlook the clear WP:COI because it would improve the article. But replacing one bottle pic with another for the sole benefit of promoting your company is clearly crossing the line. AgneCheese/Wine 01:14, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Robert M. Parker, Jr.
User:Robert Parker aperantly joint our project...--Symposiarch (talk) 13:57, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it just says Robert Parker, not Robert M. Parker, Jr., so it could be any ol' Bob. Incidentally, the first edits of this account are all concerned with Moldovan wine which "the real Bob" technically has left to David Schildknecht together with the rest of Eastern Europe. Tomas e (talk) 15:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Bloomin'eck, does that mean he doesn't need to cite WP:RS? On a cautionary note, I once (a few glasses short of reckless, thankfully) thought it might be a hoot to sign on as Hugh Johnson. Not to impersonate anyone really, just always thought it a very amusing name :-) --mikaultalk 21:59, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions (cuisines)
This is the proposed naming convention on cuisines that has been percolating for some time, I would like to request all members to please take a look and comment on its talk page. This is a very important rule set that needs to be decided upon, if you wish to establish or please comment under the appropriate section. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 07:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Reporting winery and wine ratings in winery articles?
An article on the Burgundy winery Bonneau du Martray was recently added by one of our project members,. It's a good and properly referenced article, and this project would have much less "winery headache" if all winery articles were written like it. Nevertheless, it included a final section which consisted of Clive Coates general opinions about two of their wines (though not vintage-specific) and Hugh Johnson's star rating (four) for the winery, all referenced. I felt that this section went against WP:WINEGUIDE and therefore removed it. Camw disagreed and pointed out that the quotes are not vintage specific reviews per the section in WP:WINEGUIDE, but comments from independent notable authors on the estate itself and its standing, that contribute to assertation of notability. Also, reviews from critics are included in articles in articles covering many other subjects, and WP:WINEGUIDE mentions parallels to restaurants. Since Camw rightly pointed out that WP:WINEGUIDE is an opinion, I would like to see if we can reach some sort of project consensus on the issue of reporting this kind of winery and wine ratings in articles, as this could be valuable and possibly be included in Notability (wine topics). My opinion on this matter goes like this:
 * Reporting ratings of wineries and individual wines in articles should be avoided. For wines, this goes both for reviews of specific vintages of a wine, and a general rating.
 * Individual critics' opinions, even well-established ones, are in most cases not notable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Partially because they are variable over time, and between critics. (Comparing to print, Oxford Companion to Wine includes very little of such material.)
 * There are many established wine critics (wine publications) to choose from. The case of Burgundy is probably one of the most complex ones; no single critic holds the influence Parker does over top Bordeaux wines. For Burgundy, there are not just Clive Coates and Hugh Johnson to choose from, but strong cases could also be made for at least Wine Advocate (currently covered by David Schildknecht, but previously Pierre Rovani and before that Robert M. Parker, Jr. himself), Wine Spectator, Decanter Magazine, International Wine Cellar/Stephen Tanzer, Jancis Robinson, Allen Meadows/Burghound, Burgundy Report, Guide Hachette, La Revue du vin de France, Michel Bettane & Thierry Desseauve, and René Gabriel/WeinWisser. Including all opinions would seeem to go against WP:NOT, e.g. "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information". Obviously, producers themselves are free to report whichever critics' opinions they feel are helpful in their marketing, but if editors were e.g. to specifically seek out favourable opinions among "medium+ sized" critics for inclusion in winery articles, this could very well be WP:POV, or perhaps more specifically WP:UNDUE.
 * While reviews could be used to establish notability for borderline cases, I don't see that this really outweighs other the other concerns above.
 * That said, there may be exceptional circumstances where such material may be reported, even on individual wines. (I also think that auction prices could be treated in the same way as ratings, by the way.) I see no problem in mentioning the iconic status of wines/estates such as Romanée-Conti, Château Pétrus and Château d'Yquem and backing it up with a few quotations. One case when reviews could be mentioned is when it is tied in with the description of the history of an estate, appellation, or region. Statements such as "in the 1980s, the estate focused on quality and it was the first winery in this region that got international attention after favourable reviews by XX and YY" would be OK. As another example, in an article on E. Guigal, briefly mentioning his exceptional series of 100 Parker point ratings for his single vinyard Côte Rôtis seems justified. Also, if Weingut Hermann Dönnhoff were to be written, I would consider it notable to mention that this estate produced the first German wine every to be rated 100 by Wine Advocate.
 * I'm also more inclined to allow the inclusion of general opinions on estates by established wine writers, especially if it is of an historical or retrospective nature, such as "NN has called it one of the historically most important estates in Côte de Beaune" or "is recognized as one of the Napa Valley quality pioneers of the 1960s" than specific star or point ratings.

Other thoughts? And, by the way, I'm sure that there is material that should be removed from various existing winery articles if you were to agree with me. Tomas e (talk) 11:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Tomas explains the case well - although I am not against modification to the section, I don't think it should be removed entirely. These are opinions on the estate from respected, notable in their own right critics and are not different from including ratings or opinions for restaurant articles in particular (Michelin stars, see pretty much every restaurant article linked to on this page - these are very variable over time, but I do not believe they are of harm to the article) but also movies, books, music and so on that would for the most part include critical reception sections on all of their articles in their equally subjective fields. I would be happy to include unfavourable opinions in the article as well as long as they are properly sourced from a reliable and notable publication or author. The text in the article as it stands can probably be improved - but these are not tasting notes, they aren't vintage specific guides or recommendations - they are sourced, referenced opinions regarding the estate and its products as a whole over time from authors that should be considered reliable sources in their area of expertise. Camw (talk) 11:57, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Section break
The problem with referencing wine critics is that there are literally dozens of wine critics of equal stature, esteem and notability and many times these critics disagree which brings us conflicts of WP:UNDUE and WP:POV criticism. This is a far different circumstance than in the restaurant world where Michelin is pretty much unparalleled. (Though in all honesty, I personally think Michelin's use is overdone in restaurant articles anyways) I agree with Tomas' point that views of critics is content that you normally don't see in encyclopedias (like the Oxford Companion) - which really goes to the heart of what WP:Wikipedia is not a wineguide is all about. As a project we have to make a decision about how we are going to present wine related content. Are we an encyclopedia or a wineguide? As an encyclopedist, my view is that we should focus on the facts (i.e. more or less objective statements) and leave the color commentary to other websites. AgneCheese/Wine 14:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The Oxford Companion has plenty of subjective commentary and opinions on wineries and their wines. Guigal "most famous of any of the Rhone valley's merchants" - DRC "most prestigious wine estate in Burgundy" - Yquem "the greatest wine of Sauternes" - Krug "producing Champagne that is the among the most admired in its region" - Gaja "the most renowned producer of high quality, estate bottled wines in Piedmont" and so on ... how are these different to a properly cited statement that wine from the producer in the article was described by Clive Coates as "one of the very greatest in all Burgundy"? There are dozens or even hundreds of authors in many fields but it is about finding a balance rather than excluding or including all the input of experts. Camw (talk) 15:01, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The problem is precisely that "finding a balance" requires more than one opinion, no matter well-respected your one opinion may be. If you found a broad consensus among multiple critics and could cite that fact from a reliable source publication, there might be much less danger of POV-type criticism. I realise it's asking a lot (a whole load of critics agreeing?) but the alternative is multiply-sourced, often conflicting opinions; that and the concomitant need for balance leads us inexorably to the wineguide scenario. Regarding your examples, the Oxford Companion has something Wikipedia will never have: an editorial opinion. --mikaultalk 01:07, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The section you link specifically says to cite sources to support the claim, exactly what has been done. Camw (talk) 01:13, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Citing a source to support a fact would do but not, as I pointed out, merely citing the source of an opinion. Look at other big-name wine/estate articles and you'll see they're referred to as "widely-acknowledged" this and "one of the most highly-rated" that – a distillation of multiple opinions, if you like, proceeding from a reputable publication and reflecting a widely-acknowledged fact. --mikaultalk 01:56, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) Read ASF it talks about facts and opinions, I think camw follows ASF very well and I think it is tomas or someoneelses job to find a more 'negative' quote to balance the article if he think it is not NPOV enough. --Stefan talk 02:14, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Stefan, the section on ASF as part of the NPOV policy sums up my view and my intent well. Camw (talk) 02:32, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The section you link says "If others have found something amusing or ironic, etc., then indicate who did so and why, citing sources to support the claim." If someone finds something amusing or ironic (or good, or bad), that is an opinion. I am not putting forward MY opinion, which is what MOS:OPED is about. How is putting forth a vague collated opinion like "one of the most highly rated" in an article more help to a reader than citing specific examples? A "fact" like the one in the previous line leaves the reader in the dark about way too many aspects of the information - readers should know who has said something, and why. Camw (talk) 02:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, we're running into different interpretations of ASF now. I read it differently, exactly as I put it in my last post in fact. In fairness, had I been copyediting that Bonneau du Martray article the only red flag there for me is the Coates stuff. I'd certainly have removed the "now very good" comment and questioned the rest but I'd have left the Hugh Johnson rating. I'd also have preferred this debate appear on the article talk page, so its resolution can serve as a justification for future editors to take into account. --mikaultalk 04:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The first thing I said to Tomas on his talk page was that I'm happy for suggestions or assistance to improve the section, I make no claims to being a good writer (I generally stay out of article writing as I know it isn't my area!) and the entire point of this place is to work collaboratively. It was just the removal of the entire section with no discussion that I objected to initially. I agree the "now very good" part is probably better left out - my intent there was to try to give some coverage to both of the wines the estate produces but it isn't ideal. As for the discussion location, we can always create a link to this discussion on the article talk page once it goes into a permanent place in the archive here, a central discussion here will be good to refer back to when/if there are disagreements on other articles. Camw (talk) 05:14, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Be good to get some other feedback here (I guess Tomas will be online soon) but for me that would be a decent compromise. The gist AFAICS is that the opinions of highly notable critics on an estate or region, rather than a specific vintage or product, should in general be permitted or even encouraged, as we have little else to use as a benchmark for estate/region notability. --mikaultalk 08:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Can you guys check my NPOV attempt?
Hey guys, I just finished an article on Wine and health which I submitted for WP:DYK consideration. I tried really hard to keep it as NPOV and balanced as I could showing both the positive and negative attributes associated with wine consumption and health. Considering the drama that the French Paradox and Resveratrol articles have seen over the years, I suspect there maybe some issues once this article hits the front page-especially for those who take a hardline view against alcohol in general. I figure the more neutral and factual we can keep this article, the better. Any additional eyes and tweaking would be greatly appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 08:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Great article Agne, really interesting. It does need a thorough edit though. I've had a quick go at the lede so it gets a slightly better chance of a favourable DYK review ;-) You're right about the likely controversy too, reading long-term effects of alcohol that it used to redirect to... the talk page there is a real eye opener. I'd say yours was good balance to that article and I've actually suggested that the "long-term" article not mention moderate consumption except in passing, much as yours does alcohol abuse. The relationship the two might have is interesting to say the least! --mikaultalk 11:02, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well I use the phrase "heavy drinkers" to more or less reference alcohol abuse, following the pattern of the reliable sources that I saw. Yeah, I thought the long term effects of alcohol article was very unbalanced considering the abundance of reliable sources talking about the positive benefits of moderate consumption. I figured the best way to present that information was with a dedicated article on the subject of wine and health rather than try to shoehorn the info into that article. Do you think it's worthwhile to drop a line at WikiProject:Medicine? AgneCheese/Wine 16:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably a good idea to introduce it there, yes. The long-term article is only unbalanced if it steps outside of its "abuse" remit. I think it's mentioning moderate-consumption benefits only very occasionally and out of this context (which it does) that makes it seem unbalanced. Your article specifically focusses on documented health benefits of a particular beverage; you mention heavy consumption in the context of recommended limits, which his fine and a good-enough balance, IMO. They shouldn't really have anything but passing relevance to one another but... the sad fact is they probably need "see also" interlinks, at least. This is what I meant by "interesting relationship". See what the med peeps think, but I'd suggest introducing it this way. --mikaultalk 21:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks reasonably balanced to me as it stands. The chances of it becoming a venue conducive to high levels of drama are very likely, but that doesn't take away from it being a good article. Camw (talk) 12:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

POV is ok by me, but I'm sure other will have issues. A non POV issue, beeing used to metric units I have no idea what soever how many cl a 5 ounce glass is, and since ounce is a mass unit and cl is volume it gets even more complicated (why would you measure wine in weight???), what is the density of wine? does a mosel riesling have higher density than a 16% Barossa Shiraz (so I can drink more of the shiraz it:-))???? Not stated in our wine article :-) I guess 0.9xx? but still a proper metric value would be nice to have. Guessing 13-14cl??? --Stefan talk 06:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oooh good point. It is fluid ounces but I have to see if I can figure out the convert function. AgneCheese/Wine 06:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hum, did not even know you had that :-), ok then it is simple 5 impoz or 5 USoz depending on what you have. --Stefan talk 07:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Why don't the world (US) just go metric? Ounces... Jeez. How many leagues in a furlong?--Nwinther (talk) 14:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

An AFD on a grape variety that no one knew about
The grape Onaka (grape) (which wasn't even tagged for the project) was nominated for deletion as a "non-notable". The two person consensus of Articles for deletion/Onaka (grape) was to merge into List of grape varieties. This is a dangerous precedent and obviously a bad idea. The grape variety list is suppose to be just that-a list and shouldn't included merged content talking about the history and description of the grape. Furthermore, it should be well established that all botanical species are inherently notable. While we may someday, as a project, group together lesser known and used grapes into specific articles like Minor grapes of Southern Italy, etc - I don't think we would ever just leave a grape article as a merged redirect into list of grape varieties. AgneCheese/Wine 16:12, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree. Maybe there is something to be said for compiling a glossary of minor grapes, but to stuff AFD-failed grapes into the master list makes no sense. Seems like something to be put through deletion review. M URGH   disc.  06:00, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Alcohol in the Bible
I have done a GA Reassessment of the Alcohol in the Bible article as part of the GA Sweeps project. My reassessment can be found here. I have found that the article does not meet the current GA Criteria and as such I have placed it on hold for one week pending work. I am notifying all interested projects and editors of this in the hopes that an editor will come forth to work on the article. Should you have questions or concerns please contact me at my talk page. H1nkles (talk) 20:03, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Is this notable?
Does anyone know of ant reliable sources for Balloon wine? The two current links are two recipe sites with one clearly being an unreliable, blog type site. AgneCheese/Wine 04:20, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I did find this reference to the use of a balloon in winemaking but I'm not convinced balloon wine warrants an article, especially if its orphaned. What do you say to merging it into winemaking, maybe including some of the good info from that source? --mikaultalk 06:28, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Spanish wine regions again
Still pondering the right thing to do with Penedès, I went through the other Spanish DOs to see how the corresponding geographical /administrative articles are handled, naming-wise. Apart from Ribera del Duero, all our wine articles leave the main article to the administrative one, wherever these actually exist. Even Priorat (DOQ), arguably way higher in importance to the the English encyclopedia than Priorat, follows this protocol. Penedès is a special case, as technically there's no extant administrative region, so the two are currently (messily) merged as one. I brought this up a while back, still have an alternative version of the merged article lined up, but I'm not at all sure this is the right way to leave things. My instinct is to split off Penedès (DO) per most other regions, but I'm also tempted to keep the wine article as it ever was and split off Penedès (vegueria) instead, per Ribera del Duero (comarca). This vegueria has an interesting history and it's easy to justify an article on it, ahead of its anticipated (but not certain) resurrection as an administrative entity in the coming year or so. I'd much rather have some WineProject backup for the latter option, if that's the way we believe it should be. So what do you think? --mikaultalk 07:17, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Dönnhoff article name
I'm having a go at a short start on an article on Dönnhoff - any suggestions on the best place to put the article when it has been fleshed out a bit? Most references I've seen list it as "Weingut Hermann Dönnhoff" (or H. in place of Hermann), the official website and label on the wine it is simply "Dönnhoff". I'm tempted to go with "Dönnhoff" as the common name that "the average user of Wikipedia" would "put into the search engine" due to the label. Redirects can be created easily enough for alternatives, but thought I should check opinions here first. Camw (talk) 05:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with your reasons for using "Dönnhoff". -- JHunterJ (talk) 11:25, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that is where I've put it. Camw (talk) 01:06, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Naming conventions: cellar or vineyard?
Greetings, viticulturists. There's an article Caduceus Cellars that discusses both the cellars and the associated vineyards, Merkin Vineyards. A question has arisen as to whether titling by cellar alone is appropriate, and what the naming conventions are in such cases. Can anyone help out? Skomorokh 11:47, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Notability questions?
Please see: --Stefan talk 03:01, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Schloss Gobelsburg might be notable??
 * Montenegro (wine) I doubt it??
 * Probably could be expanded; it's only been an autonomous political region since 2006 and hence qualifies as a wine growing region as well. --mikaultalk 04:04, 22 August 2009 (UTC)\
 * OK, it is a region not a winery, then it is notable, but a very bad article!!!! --Stefan talk 05:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it looked just like a cheesy supermarket brand at first. To be fair, there was a fair bit more info there but it was removed as a copyvio. A bit of a map, category, etc should have it looking respectable in no time :-) If I can get some time over the weekend I'll see what info I can find. --mikaultalk 06:34, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Marie-Thérèse Chappaz I have no idea, lots of google hits for a wine maker at least??


 * While the articles are in very poor shape, there does seem to be the potential for notability to be established but admittedly they would be low on the priority list for improvement. AgneCheese/Wine 05:39, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Wine Prod
See Umberto Cesari for new prodded wine article. Does not look much notable from a few quick searches, but I know to little of italian wine. If anyone think it is notable please help save it. --Stefan talk 02:06, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Gawd, another horrible winery article. The producer is pretty notable but sometimes I think it is worthless to have junk like this. AgneCheese/Wine 05:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Another troublesome issue Wine and Health
Over on this article I'm dealing with IPs from Finland (most likely the same user) completely blanking sections from this article that they don't agree with. On the talk page and their IP talked, I tried to steer them towards important Wikipedia policies like WP:NPOV but they seem determined to white wash the article free of criticisms. More eyes would be appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 18:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats
After a recent request, I added WikiProject Wine to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at WikiProject Wine/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 02:10, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Very AWESOME! AgneCheese/Wine 04:32, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Oooooh we've been dissed!
Stumbled across this blog hyping an article on his "Wineepedia" which is the author touts as "the wikipedia for wine except I actually know what I am talking about...". Total burn, huh? :p Anyways I got a chuckle out of that as I perused his articles which would probably be "Start class to C level" under our classification and lacks a bit of encyclopedic tone with more sales brochure flare.(And yes, EXTREMELY POV oriented) However, there is more coverage on certain European wine region then what we have currently. These are gaping holes that needed to be filled eventually and admittedly this display of hubris sparks in me some motivation to work on just that. :) AgneCheese/Wine 05:33, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * So I did a rough comparison of the content currently on Wineepedia with what we have already on Wikipedia here User:Agne27/Wineepedia articles. The site list many potential articles for expansion though they are currently sitting at around 43. Overall I think Wikipedia's glaring weakness of wine coverage compared to Winepedia is with the sub regions of the Loire Valley, followed by Burgundy. While there is a few differences in the detail of our German wine regions (and Mittelrhein wine could certainly use some expansion), I don't think those articles convey the impression of "not much at all written by people who have a clue about wine" or being "gar bahge". For my part, I'm going to get working on some of the Loire wine articles. AgneCheese/Wine 19:44, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Well if he continues to write most of it himself because his prose is almost comically bad. The two main sections that the Mosel are usually classified are the Lower Mosel and the Middle Mosel. The MIddle Mosel has the most fame producing its stunning array of fruity style Rieslings (wines with residual sugar) but the Lower Mosel, as of recent is nipping at its heels, with its big powerful dry wines and also some fruity wines. Dear oh dear... and what kind of name is "WineePedia"? It looks as if he might be referring to our lack of wineguide style as much as anything, declaring as he does his desire to find producers to reccomend (sic) above all else. Much of the content there is fleshed out with opinion, presumably his, and carries no more authority than any self-publicist. Why do I get a funny feeling we may see him spamming our articles in the not-too-distant future?  --mikaultalk 01:20, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * The main difference is exactly  that (thank  goodness!): the Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not  a wine guide.--Kudpung (talk) 09:02, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

References are commercial linkspam that should be removed?
I'm having a bit of a problem with an editor by the name who is repeatedly removing a reference I've used for the artice Belgian wine calling it commercial linkspam, despite being fully aware that it is the source I actually used, and completely dodges questions about which sources acceptable to him that I should use instead for this subject. (By the way, Belgian wine is not really a subject were English-language sources abound...) He and another editor seems to think that it is preposterous to claim that it is vandalism to remove references, and that the references I use are "bad" and "rubbish". An outside, independent look would be appreciated, otherwise this just risks running into WP:3RR without Wikipedia's coverage becoming any better or better sourced in the process. And of course, it could be me that's completely wrong after all. Tomas e (talk) 14:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think it was a good start to go and accuse the other editor of vandalism, good faith should be assumed and going into the discussion this way might have produced a more helpful response from the editor. Putting aside the concerns about spam - I've had a look at the link, can you tell us what makes it suitable as a reliable source on the subject? References don't have to be in English, if there are better ones in Dutch or otherwise then they can and should be included. Camw (talk) 15:48, 26 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Tomas, after many attempts, I  have been unable to  get  a connection  to  this link:  Haspengouwse  Wijnbouwers. The other link, Winkasteel, the one which  I  assume you  to  be having  problems with,  is to  a highly  commercial  site. I read Dutch  fluently  and my  initial  reaction  would also  be to  class it  as linkspam. Just  being  the only  wine  'Château' in  Belgium may  not neccessarily  accord it  sufficient  notability. I  would probably  have worded the sentence  to something  like:

AOC Haspengouw followed in 2000, located in Limburg, close to the border with Netherlands, and home to Belgium's only wine "château" and largest producer., leaving  the name out of the text  and only  to  figure in  the reflist. not a criticismm, but  just  my  2 cents, Tomas.--Kudpung (talk) 10:12, 3 September 2009 (UTC)(Chris)

More ethnic/political drama finding its way into wine articles
And you thought it was just Cyprus! ;) This time the Israeli wine is being targeted by those interested in the Golan Heights conflict. Instead of focusing on wine, this editor/IP is interested in taking the article off topic and focusing on political disputes. Extra eyes to keep the article neutral and on topic would be appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 22:05, 4 August 2009 (UTC)


 * You want fun? Try the Cuisine of Macedonia articles. --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 05:45, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Ahh... this brings back memories of a dispute a few years ago of how Systembolaget, the Swedish governmental distribution monopoly, were to label wine from the Golan Heights. They had introduced a few wines from that region to be able to provide Kosher wine. They simply copied the information from the wine label into their catalogue and onto their shelf labels and wrote that it came from Israel. Then some political group or other asked why Systembolaget claimed that this area was in Israel, since it was occupied territority, and why they - as a government-owned company - had a different opinion on a matter of international law than the official position of the Swedish government. So they then changed the country designation in their catalogue and on the shelves to "Israeli-occupied Syrian territory". Not unsurprisingly, neither Israeli representatives nor the intended consumers of this Kosher wine didn't find this designation quite "Kosher" (if you pardon the expression), so then they got new protests asking why they - as a wine-selling company - engaged in political propaganda and foreign politics, which was not part of their governmental mandate. Then they gave up, and the wine is now listed as being from "Other origins" instead of any specific country. :-) Tomas e (talk) 16:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)


 * How do you feel about semi-protecting? I've already filed a SPI for these edits but RPP might be effective right now, especially before they get enough to qualify for autoconfirmation. mikaultalk 00:54, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Blocked :) --mikaultalk 21:09, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmm, although their interventions weren't that helpful, and obviously socking is bad, there is kind of an issue here. And the problem is that the politics is already there of course - glossing over the issue, and simply asserting that wine from the Golan is Israeli (with only a brief qualification I think, via one reference to "disputed territory"), is just as political, albeit the other way. Just as you couldn't have a proper or complete article about Sport in South Africa without some reference to apartheid and boycotts, unfortunately the same probably applies here. Anyway I won't - and probably can't - do anything substantive with that. It might though be something that's worth looking into a bit more, so long as WP:WINE people handle it rather than the usual suspects from elsewhere here, who do - unfortunately - have a habit of dragging Israel-related disputes into every page here in great detail, especially those about eg the UN or the media. And did you ever see the Hummus kerfuffle? Anyway, here's a Decanter piece about the above Swedish controversy, for info if nothing else. --Nickhh (talk) 11:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't disagree, but neither do I have any time for people who use disruption before dialogue, it's just a waste of everyone's time. The root issue is the way wine has to be described in geographical terms; sport is maybe a good analogy. However I think we need to be neutral, objective and simply report the current situation – basically keep our diplomatic language in proportion with the size of a given international political controversy. Whether our use of the phrase "disputed territory" lends sufficient weight to the current Golan Heights situation, I'd be happy to discuss, given the opportunity... refusing to engage with that debate might suggest an admission of defeat, but I suspect in this case it was no more than an awareness-raising exercise anyway. --mikaultalk 19:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Cristal (again)
Anyone with an opinion on the viability of a pop culture section within Cristal (wine) might want to chip in on a new discussion started on the talk page. For those not familiar with the long-running farce there, the latest version of the section in question, prior to being deleted, can be viewed by following this link. The older version is probably worth pointing out too. --mikaultalk 09:07, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Champagne capitalization (again too :p )
I know there is a discussion buried somewhere in the archives but we have another editor wanting to revisit the capitalization of Champagne. See Talk:Champagne_(wine). I corrected the mis-capitalization but the editor reverted me, leaving open the invitation to correct the capitalization again provided I provide a "good argument". Well my argument is essentially this-Champagne from the Champagne region is a protected name, essentially a brand name like Pepsi or Budweiser (note the capitalization in those articles). In that context it is a proper noun and should be capitalized. When the term "champagne" is being hijacked by producers like Korbel, it becomes a different thing entirely-more a "style" rather than a distinct wine and then it should be lowercase. The two capitalizations are meant to distinguish between real, authentic (and protected brand name) Champagne and the products of imitators. There is no need to distinguish via capitalization between the wine and the region because people normally use the terms interchangeably anyways (like Bordeaux and Burgundy. When people do need to distinguish between the wine and the region, they normally would add the qualifiers "region" and "wine" anyways. AgneCheese/Wine 16:40, 8 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Looking at The Oxford Companion to Wine, they use capitals for the region and then lowercase when talking about the wine. Whether we should follow their lead or not is a different matter, but I just thought it is something to consider in the discussion. Camw (talk) 20:53, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Vouvray Copyright Discussion
Just noticed that there is a problem with our article on Vouvray as there is a discussion about possible copyright infringement going on at the Copyright problem noticeboard. I see some of our members have edited the article in the past (mostly cleanup but some more substantial changes as well), if anyone has more information they can provide on the issue that would be good.

If it is decided that our article has been copied from the site in question rather than the other way around, we may have to pay some quick attention to building it up again from whatever point it needs to be reverted to as it is a High importance article and does get a fair few views. Camw (talk) 02:35, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I chipped in my 2¢, looks to me like our article was copied. --mikaultalk 05:07, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * To be completely honest, this article has been on my "hit list" for a while in need of some major clean up and expansion. (While I love Flag's enthusiasm, he never was the most diligent when it came to referencing and tended to add some WP:WINEGUIDE-ish flair) Though I agree with Mick it looks like the copyvio is the other way around, I'm probably going to completely rewrite the article next week anyways. AgneCheese/Wine 16:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, now that I've finished Anjou wine, Vouvray is now on my plate! Should be able to crank this out by early next week. AgneCheese/Wine 00:21, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
 * If it's anything like your Anjou effort, it'll be well worth the wait. Kudos! --mikaultalk 21:13, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Something to think about-Audio Pronunciation
Probably a long term objective but at some point I do think the wine project should consider incorporating audio files into wine articles with pronunciation of certain wine regions/grape varieties, etc. I think it would be more useful than using the IPA alone. Something to think about. AgneCheese/Wine 21:24, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Copyright discussion
check out the talk page here, folks: Australian Wine zone --BodegasAmbite (talk) 08:57, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

The Wine Doctor's take on Wikipedia's wine articles
An interesting read. When I get a chance, I'll double check the sources on the Limoux wine article though if anyone gets too it before me, feel free to do any tweaking that needs to be done. AgneCheese/Wine 18:55, 19 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Season's greetings. That is interesting. Ehm, guilty. Glancing at the history, I take it Tomas e has fixed the things that Kissack addresses. Cheers. M URGH   disc.  14:59, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I tried to take care of the things pointed out as errors, but I left out the downy undersides due to a lack of sources. Also, I think that the text should probably be restructured somewhat to avoid repetition, so the article can definitely be improved. And I must say that it's not that diffiucult to get the grape composition for red Limoux somewhat wrong with an AOC regulation which in the relevant part reads Les vins rouges doivent provenir des cépages suivants: merlot N, cabernet franc N, cabernet sauvignon N, grenache N, cot N, syrah N, carignan N. Le merlot N doit représenter au minimum 50 % de l’encépagement. Les cépages grenache N, cot N, syrah N, carignan N doivent représenter, ensemble ou séparément, 30 % minimum de l’encépagement. Le carignan N ne peut toutefois pas excéder 10 % de l’encépagement et ne pourra plus être revendiqué à partir de la récolte 2010. Le vin doit provenir de l’assemblage d’au moins trois cépages, les deux principaux ne pouvant excéder plus de 90 % de l’encépagement. I seriously can't understand why you want to regulate both miniumum and maximum amounts for grape varieties, and do it both separately and in combination, when neither Bordeaux nor Châteauneuf-du-Pape complicate their AOC rules in this way. But then again, who understands French bureaucracy... :-) Tomas e (talk) 21:02, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

List of vineyards and wineries - in one single article!
Folks, today I stumbled across an article called List of vineyards and wineries, the lead of which declares it to be a "...a non-exhaustive list of vineyards and wineries from around the world". It wasn't assesed for this project (now it is), although it has existed since 12 February 2006! I suppose I don't have to point out the futility of trying to draw up such a list. Or perhaps I should, just to show the scale and complexity of the issue. Germany, which only accounts for 1.3% of the world's vineyard surface (102.000 ha out of 7.9 million), still has 2,632 officially defined single vineyard sites (as of 2006), and counted 68,598 registered vineyard owners as of 1999. Since this list has no selection criteria, and I can't imagine any criteria that would give you a manageable list, inclusion seem simply to be based on POV. I would suggest putting it up for deletion as soon as possible. Or perhaps we should simply redirect it to List of wine-producing regions? Tomas e (talk) 12:43, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oups, it had been up for AFD only two months ago at Articles for deletion/List of vineyards and wineries (2nd nomination), with the result no consensus. (The "old AFD" link led me to a 2007 vote.) That sort of seems to rule out the redirect alternative. But I see zero convincing argumentation among the "keep" voters, and nothing to indicate that the WP:LSC policy can be followed. Tomas e (talk) 12:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that this is an utterly useless article. Looking at the AfD discussions, there doesn't appear to be many folks participating who are active in working with wine related content. I think if we can come up with a solid consensus here on the project based on what is most encyclopedic and best representation of wine related content, then we should probably do a WP:BRD and go ahead and merge it as a redirect if that is best. If some truly cares about the wine content in Wikipedia and feels that is not a good idea, then we can start another discussion. AgneCheese/Wine 18:21, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Speedy of Chateau Morrisette
See Chateau Morrisette which is tagged for speedy deletion, please help to save if it is worth saving, a quick google check does not give any indication that it is notable. --Stefan talk 00:16, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh boy....lots of issues with the article. I agree that a google search doesn't offer many promising leads to establish notability. Would be a toughie to save. AgneCheese/Wine 00:30, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

"List of" articles
I have to admit that I'm baffled by the utter uselessness of articles like List of wineries in Missouri, List of Oregon wineries and vineyards, List of wineries in Illinois and several other articles in the Category:List-Class Wine articles (Not to mention the infamous List of vineyards and wineries mentioned above). As a project, I think we really need to look at WP:LIST maybe add something to WP:WINEGUIDE to address the issue. AgneCheese/Wine 22:36, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yikes! I also just noticed the nav box at the bottom of the List of wineries in Missouri titled Lists of wineries in the United States by political division. It is very bizarrely coded because all the View/Discuss/Edit links go to the Template:United States topic. I have no idea who created this winery template but it is exceedingly useless and only promotes wineguide spam lists and links. AgneCheese/Wine 04:17, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Update Several of the articles in that nav box clearly did not pass WP:LIST so I nominated them for deletion at Articles for deletion/List of wineries and vineyards in Maine. A couple of the articles do seem to conform on the surface to WP:LIST so I didn't nominate them for deletion but rather put them forward for discussion. Hopefully we can get some input from the community on the overall appropriateness of these articles. AgneCheese/Wine 04:52, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Wineries in Australia
I am a wine aficionado from Australia who is interested on working towards improving the quality of articles pertaining to wineries in Australia. If there are any suggestions on how I can improve existing articles, please do not hesitate to let me know. I also hope to contribute by adding some new articles pertaining to Australian wineries in the near future. Rrwhine (talk) 03:55, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Well in all honesty, the best help you could contribute to Australian wine articles is helping to fill in the extensive gaps in coverage on the history and many wine regions. So many Aussie wine articles need love and attention like West Australian wine, which is just a stub, History of Australian wine, Barossa Valley wine, Clare Valley wine, Coonawarra wine, Hunter Valley wine, etc. But if you have your heart set on working on wineries article, there are several guidelines and policy pages your should be aware of....
 * First and foremost is WP:CORP, which gives an outline of the notability standards for businesses including wineries. As an extension of corp, the project has written an essay Notability (wine topics) that gives more clearer guidance.
 * An important part of establishing notability is the including WP:CITEd Reliable Sources from independent, third parties. (i.e. not the winery's own press packet on their web site or online wine retailers but rather news articles or books, etc)
 * It is extremely important to write your article in a WP:NPOV tone and avoid any impression of being an WP:ADVERT for the winery. We are trying to write an educational encyclopedia article on the winery, not a sales piece to get people interested in looking for their wine.
 * Similar to the above, we need to remember that Wikipedia is not a wine guide. Again, use the benchmark of educational vs persuasion. Ask yourself, is it really educational to know "so and so" critic is a big fan of this winery or would that be something you are more likely to bring up if your just trying to sell the wine?
 * Writing winery articles can be tricky at first, but hopefully this will help you become familiar with all the pertinent guidelines. Again. we greatly welcome any efforts to improve the wine related content on Wikipedia and do hope that you consider devoting your time and efforts to some of the pressing needs in our Australian wine coverage. AgneCheese/Wine 22:51, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Agne, thank you for your comments and suggestions on the Seppeltsfield article. I will continue to look into ways to help improve that particular article and future articles I write. Rrwhine (talk) 10:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Winery Lists?

 * Articles for deletion/List of wineries and vineyards in Maine recently closed as no consensus. Other similar lists were also included in that listing. Much discussion was had about whether state/regional based lists of wineries are appropriate for wikipedia.  the current lack of consensus leaves things in a no man's land (on wikipedia? can you believe it!?!!? haha), but i think it would be better if we could develop some consensus one way or the other to apply in the future.  I hate to see people creating lists that take a lot of work if they aren't going to stay or will be under intermittent attack.  I encourage anyone interested to read that debate and add their comments about whether such lists should be on wikipedia.
 * Here is an except of relevant discussion between myself and Agne27:
 * Keep Winery Lists: I was one of the 1st to comment on this AfD, but I assumed there was some precedent/guideline/essay that would apply more directly here.  After reading the discussion to date, I see there's not.  Neither WP:LIST nor WP:NOTDIRECTORY help me that much either.  I find ThaddeusB's thoughts most aligned with my own.  Its clear that Wikipedia encourages lists of certain types, e.g., high school lists such as List of high schools in Florida, List of high schools in New York; breweries, e.g., List of breweries in Scotland, List of breweries in Australia, List of Quebec microbreweries, List of Illinois breweries; lighthouses,, e.g., List of lighthouses in the United States, List of lighthouses in Manitoba; or try List of restaurant chains or List of nuclear reactors or List of radio stations in Ohio  or List of caves in Slovakia or List of golf courses in Portugal, etc. (Now, before you start typing GOLLY GEE, WP:OTHERSTUFF!! in opposition, note that that guideline states:  "In consideration of precedent and consistency, though, identifying articles of the same nature that have been established and continue to exist on Wikipedia may provide extremely important insight into general notability of concepts, levels of notability (what's notable: international, national, regional, state, provincial?), and whether or not a level and type of article should be on Wikipedia." That's why I'm citing other stuff here.)
 * So, the question to me is whether wineries are a type of item where we think its appropriate to maintain lists (typically by region I would expect), or the type of list we think isn't appropriate, like List of pizza places in New York City or List of petrol stations in Wales. To me, the cultural significance of wine and as a hobby or passion of many suggests winery lists are notable and appropriate for wikipedia.  It would be nice if an essay developed out of this AfD to provide guidance on winery lists. (E.g., don't include redlinks for every winery, do include link to individually notable wineries that have individual pages, try to make list manageable in length -- all wineries in U.S. or France would not be usuable in one list).  Alternatively if consensus is that such lists shouldn't exist, that guidance should go into WP:WINEGUIDE, an essay which currently suggests these lists should probably not exist, but the talk page suggests may not be a consensus view, hence where we are today.  It would nice to have some consensus and some direction so we aren't constantly revisiting this issue.--Milowent (talk) 05:34, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As an avid wine lover, I certainly understand the romanticism of wine. But, at its core, the realist in me understands that wineries are not that different from pizza shops or petrol stations. They are a business just like any other business under WP:CORP making a product. It is pretty freaking awesome product but still just a product like mustard. We don't have List of mustard producers articles either. AgneCheese/Wine 05:43, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, Agne, that is exactly the dilemma I see. Is a winery more like a lighthouse (or List of independent bookstores in the United States), or a mustard manufacturer.  The project has made value judgments like this over time, presumably often without any grand plan but just what stuck and what didn't.--Milowent (talk) 05:59, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I think a fundamental questions to this dilemma is if the community is willing to give winery articles a "free pass" so to speak on establishing their notability according to WP:CORP? If the community is willing to ascribe wineries to a kind of special place and significances over other businesses (kinda like how we give WP:SCHOOLs and WP:ATHLETEs special significance over other buildings and people), then I can see a more valid reason for having a WP:DIRECTORY of non-notable wineries. AgneCheese/Wine 15:39, 6 November 2009 (UTC)


 * So, some of the options seem to be:
 * (1) State/regional based lists of wineries that are comprehensive -- all wineries may be listed on the theory that the list itself is notable; only some will have their own pages if individually notable.
 * (2) Allow state/regional based lists of only "notable" wineries.
 * (3) The issue should be covered by category usage. This will allow automatic access to the list of notable wineries for a region, i.e., those with their own articles.
 * (4) No lists at all

Thoughts? --Milowent (talk) 16:03, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * To me, it's partly a question of how a winemaker would qualify to be in such a list; partly of notability.
 * The problem with wine-and-reference-sources, in many countries (not all), is that wine is too systematized. How would we build a list of vineyards of Saumur? Wouldn't we just be following some official listing of winemakers of Saumur, and probably borrowing the list from the local association's website? Would we omit, as that list probably would, anything each winemaker produces that doesn't fit in the appellation categories? But it might be the only notable thing they produce! Since that list omits winemakers of historic interest who have now ceasing producing, would we omit them too? If so, our list would be no better than theirs, and only winemakers currently on good terms with their local associations would be in it. Is that useful? [Added: fr:Saumur (AOC) specifies that there are 312 growers, 187 vintners in this single appellation]
 * The work of the majority of winemakers, in most regions, is doubtfully notable. Italy recently (I'm quoting from Burton Anderson, The wine atlas of Italy, 1990) had 1,200,000 registered vineyards, 340,000 cellars, 700,000 growers. A "free pass" for all of those?
 * Sorry, that's a very negative response. I would do it via categories, I think. And rew D alby  19:13, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This whole AFD discussion was completely confused and I have problems beliving that some participants had read the relevant policies. How is it possible to read WP:LIST to mean that lists of a small selection of the world's non-notable wineries would be encouraged or even tolerated? The list of all non-notable wineries in the world would run into several hundred thousands! I can't encourage anyone to waste their time by adding non-encyclopedic material, such as "phone directories" of all wineries in some state/region/country or other, to Wikipedia, because such material is guaranteed to be deleted sooner or later. I hold List of vineyards and wineries to be one of the most pointless articles in all of Wikipedia, just because of the numbers illustrated by Andew D above, and the complete lack of inclusion criteria other than editors' random whims. Tomas e (talk) 23:26, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
 * One missing from the options Milowent posted above: structured lists would work better than standard alphabetical ones (listed by country, structured by region) and could be built from existing categories. It might appear to be a WP:FORK but it actually removes an obstacle from categories – they're not in main namespace – and (strategically speaking) disarms any misguided drive to list all n million wineries on earth.Otherwise I'm very sympathetic to all viewpoints here and agree that notability = article (even a stub + RS) = list qualification. No exceptions. mikaultalk 01:52, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Ahem. We have a proposed guideline in the Wikipedia wine project: Notability (wine topics). The section on lists isn't comprehensive, but generally the consensus so far in WikiProject Wine has not been in favor of indiscriminate lists of wineries. ~Amatulić (talk) 02:49, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I saw that a while back, figured we would get to that once this was thrashed out here. If you think it should getting debated there I guess we could move it. While we're on the subject, what we do have in the way of notable French chateaux is already "listed" at Category:Wineries of France. That's basically what a country-based list would look like and I don't see any real value in it beyond moving it into article mainspace. If it was structured by region, OTOH, it would actually serve a purpose beyond basic listing and even be worth having . mikaultalk 03:04, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree Mick. That structure would give it some encyclopedic value. Not a lot, but some. AgneCheese/Wine 05:48, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I see that I didn't appreciate the problem of huge useless lists being created, which could occur if lists including individually non-notable wineries are created for entire countries or large regions. (The whole world list?  Idiotic!)  On the other hand, Maine doesn't apparently have many wineries, nor do offbeat U.S. areas like the Linganore AVA or Yadkin Valley AVA.  It was the latter type of list that I was thinking of as potentially being useful to have, though there must be off-wiki compilations of this information as well that could simply be linked to in almost all cases.  From a control perspective, allowing some of these lists is going to encourage useless huge ones as well, though.--Milowent (talk) 18:25, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't bring up the proposed guideline to suggest that this discussion be moved there. I brought it up to reinforce the idea that a list of wineries should be discouraged.
 * Categories are fine. Category listings aren't articles. Any winery notable enough to warrant an article here would appear in a category listing, and that's well and good, in line with all inclusion criteria. I personally dislike lists as articles, and feel that any list should be relegated to a category whenever possible. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:40, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Categories serve a specific purpose, it's true, and as I stated above, like you I don't see any point in a mainspace equivalent in the form of an alphabetical list. However, as we've seen recently, there are a significant number of editors who see the need for list-like navigational aids. The proposal below will provide this list functionality in the form of a summarised overview of notable wineries by country. Structured lists are (arguably) neither lists nor articles; they're basically a kind of illustrated contents page, which in the case of wineries would be organised by region. For this particular topic, with diverse (and frequently obscure) content, I see the outline format providing coherent organisation of an area we currently only cover in a very haphazard and disorganised way. There's also a good chance that this will stall and even reverse the growing proliferation of minor lists of non-notable wineries by establishing a format and criteria that all wineries must conform to. We clearly can't beat 'em so we should pick up the ball and run with it, I think. mikaultalk 11:22, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

A compromise idea
I think Mick is onto something with the use of outlines and emphasizing structure. I know a big sticking point in the AfD discussion is the inclusion of non-notable wineries in the list which clearly steers the article away from being informational/developmental/navigational into a WP:DIRECTORY. But judging by the behaviors exhibited at List of wineries in the Barossa Valley, some editors do not wish for the articles to be fixed up by removing the red-links (and don't get me started on the WP:POV WP:ADVERT eye sores of "iconic" wines that is still there). My idea would attempt to reach a compromise between the two sides that still maintains the encyclopedic integrity of the mainspace but also can serve the benefit of a development tool for what wineries articles still need to be created. Anyone can claim that a redlink winery is notable but the proof is in the WP:RS available to create an article that passes WP:CORP. I fret that too many people are misguided into thinking that a winery's mere appearance in a wine guide (such as the Halliday guide used in List of wineries in the Eden Valley) establishes its notability, and therefore want to list every entry. From my perspective, the only fair and unbias route is to list only the wineries whose notability has been established by the creation of an article. Judging from the comments above as well as previous discussions on this page, it seems like this is fairly solid consensus within the Wine Project. Now as for the development potential for articles on notable wineries that should be created, I suggest doing something similar to what we did with some of the American AVA articles like Talk:Oakville AVA. We created a redlink list on the talk page and then moved the wineries over as they became notable and had an article that passed WP:CORP created. Rather than just list them on the talk page, we should make it a sub-page something like Talk:Outline of notable Australian vineyards/Possibly notable wineries with a note on the talk page (and a hidden note in the mainspace article) explaining that any winery which an editor feels is notable but doesn't yet have an article should be included on this page. This would be a single consolidated area for red links that can serve as a valuable development tool for what winery articles still need to be created and then moved to the outline list. Now, of course, not every winery listed on that sub-page will be notable enough for an article but its inclusion on that sub-page is far less of a WP:NOTDIRECTORY violation than it would if it was in the mainspace. Thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 06:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It has to be the best way to go. There's no reason not to positively encourage articles on notable wineries and if we insist on proper RS refs it will only do our coverage some good. I can see this really helping us create potentially featurable lists, for example, which means main page coverage we never had. The Oakville AVA article is a decent example of how the redlink tabling might work, in that the talkpage there now lists a few blue ones that could be listed*, one of which redirects to Constellation Brands (how do we deal with redirects?) and one is a typical stub. This stub thing might be an issue. Someone on the Barossa Valley list talkpage suggested a kind of stub-generator on which I've based this:

The x is a winery in the Barossa Valley. The winery is owned by y. Its specialities are z.