Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Wines task force/Archive 11

POV created Category:Wineries of Syria
It looks like Category:Wineries of Syria has been created just to make a POV-oriented WP:POINT on Golan Heights Winery. I have no personal opinion on the Israeli/Syrian conflict, but this is a non-issue in the wine world. All the wines of Golan Heights Winery are classified as Israeli wines-without exception. I can't even find the existence of a "Syrian winery" and there is some suggestion that Syrian law may even prohibit winemaking as a Muslim country. My inclination is to put this up for CFD but I wanted to hear other thoughts. AgneCheese/Wine 23:11, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The disputed (occupied) status of the Golan Heights are explained extensively in the Golan Heights article and is mentioned briefly in the Israeli wine article. I believe this is the NPOV treatment of this subject, and thus don't belong in an article on an individual winery. In the case of Golan Heights Winery, I also don't see how it could be classified as a Syrian winery, since it apparently was set up after the Israeli occupation of the area. Tomas e (talk) 13:08, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
 * For those who are interested in the next chapter of this story, we now have Category:Wineries of Israeli occupied territories. Tomas e (talk) 18:14, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Is it time to take this stuff to ANI?
For the last several weeks Golan Heights Winery and Israeli wine has been hit hard by POV pushers interested in dragging the Israeli/Syria conflict over the Golan Heights into wine articles. From spurious POV category creations to political edits to the articles themselves, I think such conduct is wholly inappropriate with wine articles being the absolutely wrong forum for this POV war to be raged on. But what can we do? Is this something we can take to ANI? I'm not sure what we can even accomplish there outside of a full page protection for maybe a couple days. Perhaps we can get admin backing for a strongly worded template on the talk page reminding people that these are WINE articles and all edits/categorization should be kept within the context of the wine world and follow wine-related reliable sources. Discussions about the political climate and conflict of the Golan Heights should be kept to that article. AgneCheese/Wine 22:09, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think that a specifically tailored template for "keep your politics/POV/wars out of wine" would be suitable, or reach consensus. Actually, all type of politics can't and shouldn't be kept out of all wine articles (alcohol distribution regulations, wine taxation and so on), but it's another story when you see a small number of editors trying to front-load the lead section of an individual winery article with international politics and condense one view of it into pupose-made categories that it becomes disruptive. Tomas e (talk) 23:46, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Need more opinions at Talk:Israeli wine
It's the Golan Heights issue again. Though this time I think some productive discourse is taking place. There are about 5 editors (including myself) trying to hammer out wording and improvements to the Israeli wine article. Having more objective and unbias, wine oriented view points would be helpful. AgneCheese/Wine 19:03, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Notability of individual Vin de Pays
I noticed that a lot of the VdP articles have been merged into or redirected to regional wine articles. Was this a collective and overarching decision, or just a case by case deal? I think that even small vin de pays can establish notability by the usual means of appearing in wine reference books or trade magazine articles about how the region is notable. I'd like some consensus before I spend a lot of time finding references on my favorite VDPs. --Mroconnell (talk) 09:31, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It was mostly a case by case deal. There are certainly VdPs that are notable and would merit more than a stub's worth of text, and by all means you are welcomed to create those articles with your references. Some VdPs (as are some AOCs and DOCs in other regional articles) are currently redirects as just a "holding place" until references are found to create articles. The only VdPs that are on "questionable ground" when it comes to their own articles are those that would only merit but a paragraph stubs worth of text. Rather than have separate articles, I can see those VdP's most likely being brought together into an article like Vin de Pays of the Loire Valley, etc where having a broader scale of context would serve the reader better than having lots of little stub articles. AgneCheese/Wine 17:45, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

French and German speakers need to check notability
There are some google hits for Marie-Thérèse Chappaz but (the reliable looking ones at least) mostly appear to be in French and German with google translate not giving much help. If someone who is more familiar with either language can check out a few of these links to see if there is any fodder for a notable article, that would be great. AgneCheese/Wine 18:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * She's probably stub-worthy but that's about it. Mildly famous as a Swiss winemaker (are there others more famous, I wonder?) but not notable enough for an article in fr:wp or de:wp; apparently mentioned in the German edition of  Johnson's Wine Companion but not AFAICS in the English one; the only RS info of any import appears in an issue of the Swiss version of Le Matin, here. Translating that means getting rid of a load of hype and tasting notes to pick up some raw facts and basic history, not difficult and I guess better than nothing..? mikaultalk 03:01, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Several Wine cat renamed proposed at WP:CfD
See Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_23 and the discussion below for proposed renames of Category:Italian DOC and Category:French wine AOCs. AgneCheese/Wine 05:54, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I can only second that strong recommendation! These nominations aren't even specified to where the user wants to move them - ONMG, I can't believe what I'm reading! If someone would be interested in really improving the categorization of wine-related articles, you would expect that involving this project or checking out reliable sources would be a step in the process. Tomas e (talk) 13:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * It doesn't look good if there is a rule stating acronyms in category names should be avoided at all costs, but I haven't seen one so far in WP:NCCAT (and as far as otherstuffexists, Category:NATO, Category:BBC, Category:NAC Breda, Category:HIV/AIDS etc. may be just tip of an iceberg). Since being under CfD scrutiny freezes our own efforts to houseclean, I hope there is a quick and painless way to resolve all this. M URGH   disc.  14:50, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There is one thing I can agree on, and that is that any acronyms used in a category name should be explained on the category page. I noticed that this was not always the case, so I added or improved explanations to some of the Italian and French categories. This should reduce concerns for non-wine-savvy editors regarding the use of acronyms, I hope. I'm sure there's more that could be done in the area of adding explanations, if we would be able to concentrate on optimizing the category structure. Tomas e (talk) 15:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Help from native english wine-writers
Have you specific (better?) names for the containers in the commons:Category:Back basket? (in german i have now 29 differnet names which would be discribed in a future article. :-) ) And are they only common in USA in California? (i found only pictures from there.) --Franz (Fg68at) de:Talk 19:00, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, we just call them baskets. :) They are not very common in the US, though some wineries that do hand harvesting use some sort of basket container. But again, I'm not aware of any other label for them except perhaps colloquial names like "harvest basket". AgneCheese/Wine 23:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)


 * A very common name used in the trade is a lug or a picking lug. It is referred in spanglish as an arrastrar and other terms depending on where the migrant worker is from, but the English form is "lug".  It is not commonly used as an over the shoulder or back pack form.  Most lugs are now made of plastic and can be interlocked so that they can be stacked without crushing the fruit.  Most basket material is avoided in the US because of sanitation concerns.  Hope this helps.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.119.90.162 (talk) 21:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Categorization of wine articles, and the "Category:WineS" hierarchy
Fellow wiki-vinos, I've lately been going through articles that have been categorized in Category:Wines (not to be confused with Category:Wine) and its subcategories, and like to explain to you what I've done because at the end there has been a case of objection from another editor (not part of the project as far as I can see), so bear with me despite this being quite long. "Wines" were primarily "by country" categories that have been a parallel set of categories to Category:Wine by country. In principle these categories have been intended for article on individual wines rather than other wine-related subjects. Now, per WP:WINEGUIDE as well as Notability (wine topics) and the overall Wikipedia policies they are built on, there are rather few instances where it's motivated to write an article on what is really an individual wine (such as the bottle of Domain Maillard Père & Fils Corton-Renardes Grand Cru 2000 I finished off a few days ago - good stuff!) rather than instead writing about the winery, the wine region (this was a Burgundy wine, from the Côte de Beaune subregion), in applicable cases the appellation or other protected designation of origin (Corton (wine) in this case, with the climat Renardes indicated), the grape variety (in this case of course the noble Pinot Noir), and also are not about wine styles (red wine) or other designations (Grand Cru in this case). The remaining cases are mainly those which belong into Category:Wine brands, which I created a few days ago as part of my operation cleanup. By the way, although we have a large influx of articles on wineries, where not all are notable, articles such as Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles Domaine Leflaive (an old version), really on an individual wine, are hardly created any more.

I've had my eyes on this hierarchy for a long time, because it seems that a majority of editors who have put articles there didn't understand the distinction between wine and wines; some national and regional wine article were categorized under "wines" and not "wine", which meant that they weren't visible where they should have been! To the best of my knowledge, there are also no instances of this parallel categorization having ever existed in any of the other major language versions, despite German and French Wikipeda having specific wine projects. We also got questions from frwiki some time ago, because they couldn't really understand our categories when they tried to correct the interwiki links between their and our categories. Thus, "wines" has caused problems, but I haven't seen it being really useful in the way other wine-related categories are.

One of the problems in dealing with the contents of the categories was that it wouldn't be a case of a simple merge of "Category:X wines" into "Category:X wine". No, the categories contained to a large extent of wineries and appellations, but also some wine countries(!), wine regions, wine styles, wine brands and so on. To me, an additional indication that these categories had been misapplied and/or mostly misunderstood. Also, the regular "wine" hierarchy has evolved in the last years with many more regional categories, rather than just national categories, which was the main structure of "wines". This why I've put the cleanup off for quite some time because I couldn't really see how much help a bot could be in dealing with this. Finally I got started with a manual recategorization, which also gave an opportunity to do some assessment and reassessment for this project. In many cases it was a matter of removing WP:Overcategorization rather than performing recategorization to a more suitable category. The largest group of related articles affected were a large number of Bordeaux châteaux (mostly Murgh's work) which were previously found in Category:French wines but now make up the bulk of Category:Bordeaux wine producers.

A while after this work was underway, I could see that the whole wines category could go, rather than just being pruned down, as I initally thought. When the country categories became empty, I tagged them for deletion as empty (this is called CSD and involves a four day waiting process), while checking at least once per day if any articles returned to them. Not a single article was returned to the wines categories, and I didn't get a single feedback on my talk page or article talk pages.

Now, just at the end I got some negative feedback from. I thought his objections were procedural, since his very first communication to me branded my edits as "abuse", and talked about using WP:CFD instead. Which of course will be done now with Category:Wines since there's a "holdon" to my delete tag. This editor must also have come to the conclusion that I've entered a phase of WP:Vandalism fairly late in Wikipedia career since this editor has asked for administrator intervention in mass-reverting my edits or something similar.

But quite possibly the editor also has objection on substance, i.e., the actual categorization on wine-related articles since he started off re-adding a category to Category:Medieval wines, followed up by saying that "wines" was a perfectly sensible scheme (and specifically pointing me to an edit as of July 2006 saying the same), and then explained that Denominazione di origine controllata not are wine regions, but simply wines, which was an assertion which frankly surprised me.

So what's the conclusion of all this? Well, there's Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_18 which will need input. Then there is also the principle I've tried to explain, not to use the IMHO very unhelpful and uniformative category "wines" also for articles on wine countries, wine regions and subregions, appellations, grape varieties, wine styles, wine brands and a couple of other things which are really the wine subjects that are notable. If my methods (which to me was much more WP:AwfullyBoringWork than WP:BOLD or WP:BRRR) are in question, then really it should mainly be other people who give their views over at e.g. CFD. Quite obviously some knowledge of the subject matter is needed, since the principles of wine classification and labelling, and the fact that these principles vary between countries (with knock-on effects on article structure and notability criteria), isn't everyone's knowledge. Thanks for reading all the way to the end, Tomas e (talk) 23:11, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Section break
To keep Tomas' epistle in tact :) Holy cow there is some misguided thinking going on the CfD. I am really struggling not to sound snobbish or condescending trying to explain to Occuli how his comments on wine categorization are not credible and simply do not make sense to anyone with a solid understanding of wine. Of course we don't expect other wiki-editors to be Masters of Wine but his comments on the CfD and other areas shows that he lacks fundamental understandings of what an "individual specific wine" is, much less how it should be categorized. He keeps saying that we need to have a separate category for articles on individual wines (such as the 1998 Ornellaia, Chateau Petrus (wine), and 2005 Quilceda Creek Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon) to distinguish them from the category for the articles on the wineries of Ornellaia, Chateau Petrus and Quilceda Creek Vintners. His entire contention is faulty and yet he steadfast in wanting to apply the standards of categorization for other Wikipedia topics (such as Opera) and jam that square peg in for categorization of wine articles. AgneCheese/Wine 15:45, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I have been frustrated many times about the categorisation of wine,wines,wineyards and wineries, tried to sort it out a few times but never figured out what we wanted, since nothing was clearly described and the contents in the categories where inconsistant, I gave up when I realised how much work it would be. What is needed is to describe in detail what goes where (Tomas is doing a good job of starting that above) and then I will help to fix it, if the delete/merge does not happen it does not really matter, since there probably is VERY few instances pages that will go to the contested category. Please write a clear description on the categories what is supposed to be in them, write both incusion criteria and exclusion criteria with examples, put that text in the category (or discuss here first), and then we just change when people use the wrong catergory. What I also would like to have is a category tree, that describes what we have and should have for categories, when I find new articles I often struggle to find the correct categories to put them in. --Stefan talk 02:25, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea Stefan! Why don't we start WikiProject Wine/Category tree and hammer out some details on the talk page? If we can come up with something clear and consistent at a project level, it will probably be easier for people without an understanding of wine to see how logically wine articles should be categorized. From the comments on the CfD, it looks like some people are having a hard time distinguishing the difference between individual wines, producers, regions and quality designations. If no one has started the page in a couple hours, I'll take a hack at it. AgneCheese/Wine 02:41, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * UPDATE: I've started WikiProject Wine/Category tree but ran out of time to continue further. Please take a look at what I've done and tweak away. If we could hammer something consistent and logical out over the next day or two, we could present it to the CfD as a clear presentation of how wine articles should be categorized. I think that would go a long way towards showing the category folks that the Wine Project has a plan and focus for cleaning up our categories. It is not about "circumventing CfD" or whatever, but rather doing something to improve the encyclopedia and make it easier for our readers to find relevant wine articles. AgneCheese/Wine 19:50, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
 * One of the things this category tree would need is one "people" category directly under Category:Wine. Hopefully this could lead to a more consistent use of the "people" categories. (Category:Vintners vs Category:Winemakers, for example) What should it be called, though? Category:People related to wine? Category:People connected to wine? Category:People connected to wine? Although we have Category:People in food and agriculture occupations, I'm not sure I would prefer Category:People in wine occupations because we would probably want to include some people who own wineries and perhaps a few major collectors/connoisseurs, and I wouldn't really say those categories are in a "wine occupation". Thoughts from the native speakers? Tomas e (talk) 21:52, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree, I actually suggested that here, Tomas can you and a few others please go over to WP:WINECATS, read and comment. At least comment on the talk page and state that you are OK with the suggested changes or that you are not, as it is now it is only agne commenting. I'm suggesting quite a few renames of categories that might not be that popular, if we do not have consensus in the project I am afraid that we will never get the changes through CfD. When the current CfD closes I want to start suggesting a few of the less contentious suggestions at CfD. --Stefan talk 00:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * OK now I see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Wine/Category tree. Tomas e (talk) 09:35, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Acids in Wine Page Cleanup
Hi all, I've never posted to the Wiki before so please bear with me. I'm a scientist at a winery and there are a number of critical scientific problems with the "Acids in Wine" page. I was thinking about fixing them but I don't have much to put in their place. One of the sections states that the pH determines the color of the anthocyanins and this is flatly wrong. We regularly adjust the pH of a wine with ammonium hydroxide (strong base) and bind it to a solid-phase extraction column for HPLC analysis (to split the wine into individual acids). The pH of the wine doesn't change the color until it gets close to pH 7. Should I feel free to try and edit this with more relevant information? If I don't have published information is it technically irrelevant on the wiki?

Thanks for your time all! —Preceding unsigned comment added by IsotopeC14 (talk • contribs) 22:15, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The use of published reliable sources is very relevant to Wikipedia. Everything should be cited to a reliable source. Of course you are welcomed to help us improve any wine articles but we do ask that you back you edits by citing them to reliable sources that can be verified. The policy pages of WP:RS, WP:CITE and WP:V have more information. In the meantime, I will take a look at the sources cited in the Acids in wine article to see if the text is accurately conveying the source. AgneCheese/Wine 19:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The article "acidity" in Oxford Companion to Wine (OCW) (p. 3 in the 2006 edition) does in principle say what the article acids in wine say, lower pH = redder wine, higher pH = more blue wine. However, it seems the OCW text doesn't differentiate too clearly between immediate effects and medium- and long-term effect, from the acidity's effect regarding stability of the wine against oxidation and so on. If the effect is somehow related to changes in, or binding to, tannins it could possibly take a while for the effect to show. One solution would perhaps be to refocus these phrases more to the effect of acidity on colour stability. Ultimately, our favourite one-stop source OCW is written by a lot of people who have deep technical knowledge, but it's a wine trade/wine appreciation/wine history encyclopedia, not a reference volume for academic oenology or wine chemistry, so when we're into pure wine science it's not the ultimate reliable source. Regards, Tomas e (talk) 23:28, 18 November 2009 (UTC)


 * As you state above it "is not a reference for wine chemistry" but the fact is that people looking for pages relating to wine "science" may stumble upon this page, much like I did, since the page title is "Acids in Wine". Acidity is a scientific concept and much of the page implies that the information on the page is quite accurate, yet the source material, "The oxford companion to wine" is clearly in error. Normal pages dealing with science would never site just one source. That in of itself is highly questionable. In our facility in which I run the lab we have produced plenty of pH 4.0 light red wines and of course also make wines that are pH 3.3 that are black-purple in color. If the purpose of the wikipedia is to inform, is it not the responsibility of all involved to ensure that the content of the source material isn't flawed? Thanks all! Isotope —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.90.96.21 (talk) 18:46, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks like Oxford is guilty of oversimplifying rather than being in outright error. Again, you are welcomed to help improve the text but be sure to cite your work with a reliable source (such as an enology or chemistry text book). The only thing that wouldn't be acceptable if you just put in personal experience or what we would call original research. While your original research maybe 100% correct, it is not verifiable to our readers as if they could walk into you lab and look at your results. We ask for citations to reliable sources because then any reader can get that book or go to that webpage and look at the information for themselves. AgneCheese/Wine 17:38, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * If the findings of Isotope's lab have been published in any  shape or form, on  any  support, either electronic or print, outside his company in a third party paper, report, or magazine, that is publicly  available, I think it is the urgent duty  of the Wikipedia to  clarify any  possible misunderstanding conveyed by the OCW however highly respected it may. It  would't be the first  time that members of the WikiProjectWine have exposed irregularities in  so-called 'reliable sources'. If  a Wikipedian can approach  the editors of the OCW, they  may  even be prepared to  enter a discussion that  leads towards improvement  of their own content.--Kudpung (talk) 03:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl apparently doesn't think very highly of us
In a recent interview with the wine writer of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the author of the recently released book Drink This: Wine Made Simple, had this to say about researching wine on the internet. On researching the book: “One of the things that I came across was how useless the Internet is. It’s a hard place to learn anything about anything, let’s say you wanted to learn about Champagne and you went to Wikipedia, you would know even less.” Considering the litany of lengthy and illustrated Champagne related articles (some of which are listed Champagne), I don't think she did very thorough research. While Wikipedia is certainly not perfect, I think our efforts and articles are worth a little more than that passive dismissal. I wrote the Star Tribune writer about this and will see if he responds. AgneCheese/Wine 23:19, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * In the Star Trib Q&A, Moskowitz Grumdahl doesn't quite convey the brightest of impressions at any rate. James Beard nominee, eh? So, does she think our references aren't up to snuff? M URGH   disc.  23:53, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm really not sure. My suspicion is that she really didn't do any research here. She may have glanced at some of our Wikipedia pages 3 or 4 years ago (before this project was really active) and is still operating under the same impression of our coverage from back then. That said, reading some of the other reviews available on her book it looks like it covers very entry level wine knowledge on varietals and wine tasting in general. While I haven't read the book, I wouldn't be surprised if the coverage here is greater or equal than what a reader would be getting after paying $18 or so for her book. AgneCheese/Wine 00:02, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I want to be held responsible for everything that's on the Internet and the uselessness of it. :-) I wonder if she by "Internet" refers to "free Internet content"? For those who are willing to pay, surely Jancis Robinson's Purple Pages with the full text of the latest edition of Oxford Companion to Wine and the maps from the latest edition of World Atlas of Wine is far from useless? And the same should be reasonably said about non-free on-line tasting notes and articles from e.g. eRobertParker, Wine Spectator and Jancis? And when it comes to free material without talking about Wikipedia, surely the regional overviews from Wine Doctor, various articles from Jamie Goode/Wine Anorak, wine news and vintage overviews from Decanter Magazine, wine entertainment(?) from Gary Vaynerchuk, and a lot of material published by regional and national wine industry organizations are useful? I can see the problem in navigating through all the available material, and to steer free from low-quality wine blogs, but that's not the same as "useless" to me. Tomas e (talk) 14:34, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Because we're not a wineguide, we're bound to get dissed by those ignorant of the fact, such that they think it's poignant & clever to dismiss us for our lack of tasting notes. Maybe I missed something but it looks like that's the context here. WP coverage provides a convenient fall guy for people lost for a recognisable benchmark. We're clearly a big target & should be flattered, not offended :-) mikaultalk 03:16, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if we can get enough WP:RS for a Wine Weenies article?
Here is the follow up to Ms. Moskowitz Grumdahl's glowing sentiment about us. I got a chuckle out it. :) What battle is she talking about? AgneCheese/Wine 19:51, 5 December 2009 (UTC) Look Wine Weenies, you and I are not going to be friends. You want to be right, and I want to help the people you went to high school with have less stress in their lives when they bring wine to your house. The battle is on!

As a side note, I find it a tad humorous that according to WikiProject_Wine/Popular_pages, our Champagne (wine) article had nearly 67,000 views just last month. What are the odds that she is going to sell even half that many books all next year? If this is a battle, then she is essentially throwing stones at armored missiles. This past week, I saw her book at a local bookstore and flipped through it. It is very basic, elementary stuff wrapped around a WHOLE lot of personal commentary and her own philosophy about wine. Compared to things like Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World, Katherine MacNeil's Wine Bible and heck, even the For Dummies wine series, it lacks considerable usefulness or content to be a worthwhile reliable source in future wine articles. AgneCheese/Wine 20:05, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Reading her comment, looks like she was hoping for simple:Champagne (wine) rather than the full monty for the good people with the dishwashers. And by the way, is Blanc de noirs Champagne more flowery than Blanc de blancs, as opposed to fruitier, more full-bodied, less crisp/acidic...? In my experience "white flowers" is a typical taste descriptor of (young) Blanc de blancs, not de noirs! And surely all Champagnes can be more or less toasty irrespective of grape composition? But that's just to my nerdy palate, but I know I like Blanc de noirs... :-) And no, NV Champagne is not produced only from off years; the purpose of blending is rather to mix good and off years to even out the quality... By the way, I thought that Weenie was just the fourth word in the title of Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini but now I know better... Tomas e (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2009 (UTC)


 * That's quite weird of her to write when the salvos of ruthless Wine Weenie™ attacks is nowhere to be seen. Is this some Foxnewsesque tactic of staging controversy by herself? There's a lot of humour in this. M URGH   disc.  07:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No kidding. If we truly wanted to attack her, there is a lot of ammo in her book. My favorite is her advice to novice wine drinkers to add ice to their glass if it is served too warm. Oh where to begin there.... AgneCheese/Wine 19:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "Waiter, this Montrachet is a tad to warm for my taste, could you bring me some ice cubes?" :-) Tomas e (talk) 23:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

On the lighter side, we could be hamsters :)
Not everyone in the wine world looks upon our efforts here as being worthless. The Oregon Wine Blog (which has a fairly sizable readership and is pretty well done) regularly references our grape variety articles and seems to enjoy the hard work of us "Wikpedia hamsters" :P AgneCheese/Wine 00:26, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think of you wine weenies as gerbils. ;) --Jeremy (blah blah • I did it!) 00:46, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Except gerbils are nervous and skittish creatures that don't make as heavy use of their exercise wheels as hamsters. Hamsters are a better description. They simply expend energy running in their wheels and never making any progress toward a goal. And yet, they can be happy about it.
 * Hamsters rule! ~Amatulić (talk) 01:12, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

A WP:WINEGUIDE issue to keep an eye on
I suspect we will see more issues like Recanati winery in the future involving clear WP:ADVERT, tasting notes and wineguide material that is "sourced". On the talk page, I have a detail listing of the objectionable tasting notes and advert language that, though undoubtedly WP:CITEd, is still not appropriate for an encyclopedia entry. While having puffery and advert language in winery articles is nothing new, I strongly suspect we will start seeing more cases where such adverts are given sourced citation under the presumption that it makes everything all right. I don't think this particular article will become a persistent problem, but we should all be more aware at the potential of seeing more of this kind of "sourced" wineguide material creeping into winery articles. AgneCheese/Wine 22:34, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I also think that descriptions on individual wine from semi-notable wineries by semi-notable wine critics goes against the WP:NOT idea that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information which is reflected in WP:TRIVIA. To me, including the wording of these reviews or tasting notes is a bit like creating a trivia section. So WP:ADVERT is not the only argument against them.  Quite possibly, in some instances such information is added by people who do not have any WP:COI because there isn't much else to say about the winery, it's the only information easily available and it's the way wine blogs are written. But as you all know, we try to be an encyclopedia. Tomas e (talk) 11:19, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Very interesting point and you are right. Would you be willing to add something to that effect to WP:WINEGUIDE? AgneCheese/Wine 19:05, 13 December 2009 (UTC)


 * An addition may be appropriate for WP:WINETOPICS as well. Speaking of which, it would be nice to re-start a discussion on the appropriateness of WP:WINETOPICS as a new official Wikipedia guideline.

Sneaky spam or truly notable?
What are your thoughts on 'Best Of' Wine Tourism Awards and Great Wine Capitals Global Network? At the very least, I think the awards article should be merged into the business article since they seem to be intimately linked. AgneCheese/Wine 18:14, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Great Wine Capitals is clearly promotional. I have prodded it, although a previous version of the article was speedily deleted as a blatant copyright violation, as this one is. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:52, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Update: One article deleted. Upon examining the 'Best Of' Wine Tourism Awards, I prodded it as well. The competition covers only the 9 cities that are part of the "network" that makes up the Great Wine Capitals Global Network. And of the references cited, two were promotional / press releases, and one was the primary source. ~Amatulić (talk) 05:22, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

All I want for Christmas....
...is a WP:NPOV, WP:CITEd and as factually correct as possible section of Wine that the wine project can rally around. Obviously this section attracts a lot of pro-nationalist editing from various proponents of Georgia (country), Iran and Armenia wanting to lift their country's claim up while downplaying the others. As far as sources go, all 3 have some legitimate claim (and maybe even China) so balancing those will be a tricky road. (I can envision a future Theories on the origins of winemaking article) But at some point we really need to hunker down and come up with some project level consensus of what will reflect a neutral and most accurate portrayal of the current knowledge on wine's origins. The status quo section has issues (I mean Armenia is completely missing) and we always will have editors adding their pro-nationalistic bent (often with WP:RS) to try and "correct" it. Maybe this is not urgent "right now" priority, but it certainly something that we should think about making a priority for 2010. AgneCheese/Wine 02:08, 18 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a nice plan. So what are the books (to want for xmas)? Besides Hugh Johnson's Story of Wine, which RS go there? M URGH   disc.  06:13, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Rod Philips A Short History of Wine has some updated archaeological info (such as the findings in Iran) to go with Johnson's Vintage but the RS that REALLY should be in there some how in Patrick McGovern's Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture and Origins and Ancient History of Wines. McGovern has essentially dedicated his career to studying the origins of viticulture and seems to be the most respected authority on the subject. I have Johnson & Philips but I've been personally holding off tackling the origin issues until I get my grubby little hands on McGovern's books. But if anyone else wants to the initial, by all means knock yourself out. AgneCheese/Wine 06:36, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I have McGovern's book, but I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. I'm not sure if I can promise anything for Christmas, but I'll move it to the top of my stack of unread books. Tomas e (talk) 10:06, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Porn and wine
I have to chuckle at my latest adventure over at DYK. After expanding the Cesanese article, I found the only notable feature of the grape was its connection to an American porn star. So I featured that little tidbit over at DYK. As I noted over there, the grape article got 5,600 pages views while the porn star mentioned in the hook got over 44,000!! I found it funny that sex does sell but only with a 13% return. :P AgneCheese/Wine 07:51, 18 December 2009 (UTC)
 * There is a bot which goes around and adds DYK statistics to the talk pages for all previous DYK articles. One of them is Vini Lunardelli, which got 1,330 views (see Talk:Vini Lunardelli) when it was a DYK in December 2007. A corollary to the above statement is therefore that sex sells better than Hitler. :-) Tomas e (talk) 01:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Should Louis Pasteur and Prohibition in the United States be in the project's scope?
I was looking at WikiProject Wine/Popular pages when I came to the realization that of the top 10 most popular "wine" page-only 3 of them are actively edited and maintained by the Wine Project (maybe 4 if you want to stretch Cognac (drink)). The other articles like Ethanol, Yeast, Ester and Resveratrol are tangibly related because they are components in wine. (Though truth be told, I do plan to write future "wine focused" articles on Esters in wine, Alochols in wine and Yeast in winemaking which would make our tag on the main pages "obsolete") But the articles on Louis Pasteur and Prohibition in the United States seemed to be even less directly related to wine by only historical notes. Yes, Pasteur did discover several of the microorganisms at play in winemaking and was working specifically at one point to cure "wine sickness" but in the grand scheme of his accomplishments--wine was but a mere speck in his work. Yes, Prohibition had a dreadful effect on the wine industry in the United States but on a scale much smaller than what phylloxera did to the entire world. I agree that these articles have some tangible connection to our project, but the fact that these are very limited connections means that Wine Project members will probably never be very active in editing and maintaining those articles. I just don't know if our banner is appropriate to have on them. Thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 16:37, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I removed the project tag from Talk:Ester, because that subject really is stretching the project's scope. (We don't list alcohol or hydroxyl as part of the project.) A few of the other listed above could perhaps be borderline cases. Pasteur and prohibition less so, in my opinion. Pasteur was definitely (or started out as) an oenological researcher, although this is not very much mentioned in the current version of the article on him. In general, there is very little mentioning of wine-related aspects in article on people primarily known for other things, even when such things would be clearly justitifed. For example, there is not a single word on wine in the article on Charlemagne, despite the enormous impact of his edicts on Medieval winemaking in Europe and the significant amount of wine-related legends surrounding him. Tomas e (talk) 14:05, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

List of wineries in the Barossa Valley issue again....
Another potential WP:ADVERT, WP:NOTDIRECTORY and WP:COI issue with an editor (who maybe one of the winery's owner) insisting that the winery should get some link love and extra traffic from Wikipedia with their WP:EL included on the Barossa winery list article. As these lists are notorious spam magnets, if they are not already on your watchlists please consider adding them. AgneCheese/Wine 06:41, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

WP:WINETOPICS - is it ready?
In light of recent deletion discussions, I'd like to get Wiki Wine Project participation in reviewing and improving the proposed guideline Notability (wine topics) before formally proposing it as an official guideline.

Read it, edit it, make comments, ask questions, read prior discussion on the talk page, and see Wikipedia talk:Notability (wine topics) and indicate your assessment. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:27, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Australian wine related hooks needed for DYK
WP:DYK is doing a special event feature for January 26 to celebrate Australia Day and are seeking Australian related hook. There is a litany of Australian wine related articles that could be created or expanded for the event. If anyone is interested, be sure to add the hook to the special holding area on the DYK page. AgneCheese/Wine 19:42, 24 December 2009 (UTC) Some Aussie starts/stubs that can be expanded 5x and potential new article ideas (feel free to add any other ideas to this list):


 * Grampians wine region
 * West Australian wine
 * Wrattonbully
 * Clare Valley
 * Mount Benson
 * Southern Flinders Ranges
 * Alpine Valleys
 * Heathcote wine region
 * Jacob's Creek (wine)
 * James Halliday (wine)
 * John Barton Hack - 1st person to plant vines in So. Australia
 * James Busby
 * Gregory Blaxland - 1st to export Australian wines abroad
 * Cleanskin (wine)
 * Cienna
 * Tarrango
 * National Wine Centre of Australia
 * Australian Wine Research Institute
 * Australian Society of Viticulture and Oenology
 * Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal
 * Good Food & Wine Show
 * Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine
 * Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation


 * History of Australian wine
 * Great Southern (wine region)
 * Swan Valley (wine)
 * Manjimup (wine)
 * Blackwood Valley (wine)
 * Peel (wine)
 * Pemberton (wine)
 * Goulburn Valley (wine)
 * Henty (wine)
 * Mornington Peninsula (wine)
 * Pyrenees (wine)
 * Rutherglen (wine)
 * Yarra Valley (wine)
 * King Valley (wine)
 * Hunter Valley (wine) - Change from a redirect to main article
 * Mudgee (wine)
 * Riverina (wine)
 * New England (Australian wine region)
 * Southern Highlands (wine)


 * Adelaide Hills (wine)
 * Adelaide Plains (wine)
 * Barossa Valley (wine)
 * Coonawarra (wine)
 * Currency Creek (wine)
 * Eden Valley (wine)
 * Kangaroo Island (wine)
 * Langhorne Creek (wine)
 * McLaren Vale (wine)
 * Padthaway (wine)
 * Riverland (wine)
 * Fleurieu Peninsula (wine)

We could also use any Indian wine articles too
DYK is also doing a special event for Republic Day (India) on the 26th. This one is a bit trickier to find topics and reliable sources for. There are some fodder for related articles on the British influence on wine and History of Madeira wine. There are a few indigenous grape varieties that could have articles created like Anabeshahi, Arkavati and Arkashyam. But something to think about. AgneCheese/Wine 21:12, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Should Wine Spectator or other tasting notes be used as WP:RS???
See Valhalla Vineyards where 2 of the "sources" are Wine Spectator tasting notes. AgneCheese/Wine 05:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably best avoided unless the tasting note says something specific worth including (struggling to think of specific examples, but say commentary such as, "this is the first vintage X was winemaker"). I don't subscribe to Spectator, so I can't see what the notes say in regards to this article but there needs to be care that they aren't running into Original Research style problems where our article says the reviews are favourable but that is an interpretation of the tasting notes rather than what the reviews actually say. Overall I would consider the contents of Wine Spectator (including tasting notes) and such to be a Reliable Source of information along the policy lines, but just because something is published by a reliable source doesn't mean it is necessarily suitable for inclusion. Camw (talk) 07:50, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As I opined in this AFD, if a producer's wines gets regularly rated by Wine Spectator (or Wine Advocate or Decanter, but preferably all of them) over time, this should qualify as "significant coverage". A few scattered tasting notes in one of these magazines, on the other hand, should not qualify. Sometimes a few ratings or tasting notes gets into the pages from lineups of "good value" wines of marginal notability (say, a panel tasting of 200 wines to do a "100 best New World values under £10/some other amount" special feature), or a few new producers' wines are thrown into another tasting for comparison. I believe Wine Spectator rates more wines per year than Wine Advocate, so I guess the bar should be set slightly higher for notability if WS is the only source. Tomas e (talk) 14:04, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I absolutely agree, tasting notes do in no way qualify as substantial coverage, and depending on the credibility of the reviewing party, only serves as doccumentation that the product was reviewed, and what encyclopedic purpose is there in that? In the case of WS and such there is also an issue of WP:PAYWALL. M URGH   disc.  20:27, 28 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm deeply disturbed by the potential consequences of several other ("non-wine-project focused") editors' line of reasoning in the Valhalla Vineyards AfD discussion. Apparently "award winning" or "had two wines reviewed once in a major magazine" is more than enough to establish notability for some. I'm thinking about this would translate to e.g. France and Germany. Unless we're going to hold US wineries or wineries in the English-speaking world to a lower standard than small wineries of the old world (or ignore publications and awards in non-English-speaking countries), we're most likely talking about thousands of German wineries and possibly over ten thousand French wineries that would fulfill these criteria! Let me explain how this analogy would apply. My idea of definitely notable German wineries would be those that come up to four or five stars in at least one the three major German-language wine guides (currently in Gault Millau, for example: 11 5-star and 38 4-star), other historically important wineries, and the major bulk producers and bottles (which are notable on "commerical" criteria like sales volume or recognition of brands), which would mean something like 100 definitely notable wineries. Allowing all members of theoretically high quality-oriented winery associations like VDP and Bernkasteler Ring (some of which in fact only score one or two stars out of five in the guides), and including some of the best or largest winemaking cooperatives, would push the number to around 300. However, the number of wineries that have managed to get at least two wines into one of these guides is much larger. And from my travels I know that in each German wine village you have several small wineries not included in any of the major guides that have at least one wine to sell that has been awarded at least a silver medal at the official state-sponsored Landesprämieriung, events where high-end wineries usually don't participate. (The occasional successful Riesling Auslese or above from a good vintage often fetches silver or more even from indifferent or inconsistent wineries.) These thousands of small wineries are indeed award-winning and even officially recognised as sometimes making good wine. While I don't want to exaggerate the importance of the outcome of one AfD nomination, establishing standards like "award-winning and therefore notable", "mentioned some years ago by a major wine magazine in the winery's country and therefore notable" and "a winery which receives local and regional press is a tourist attraction and therefore notable" would mean that a staggering number of the world's wineries would be considered notable. I estimate that at least 10% of the world's wineries (including the very smallest) would make the cut with such criteria, and possibly (but this is admittedly a difficult estimate) 20-30% or more of those that actually bottle and sell their own wine (rather than sell it in bulk)! Input to the AfD would be appreciated, whether you agree with me or not. Tomas e (talk) 13:55, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Sigh if you look at the history of the "keep" voters, you will see that unfortunately we have fallen into the crosshair of the "inclusionist vs deletionist" war which inclusionists are apparently "winning". What is ironic is that I don't think any of the Wine Project members are "deletionist" but rather we have a sound understanding of what is encyclopedic and truly notable in the wine world. If someone puts up a clearly notable wine topic for AfD, we become as "inclusionist" as anyone else because we are looking at the matter from the perspective of what is best for the encyclopedic. But alas, those distinctions mean little in these partisan times. Much like the US "Democrat vs Republican" battle, the inclusionists just fall in their party line by grasping at whatever stray hairs they find. They clearly have little to no knowledge about wine or the wine industry but their inclusionist partisanship keeps them from listening to the logic and reasoning of people who do. I think we need to focus on getting WP:NOTWINE up to guideline level as it is a powerful tool for enlightening people who are not knowledgeable about wine about what is truly notable in the wine world. As you can see by the comments of the editor at Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(wine_topics) and the AfD, it truly IS valuable. AgneCheese/Wine 20:41, 29 December 2009 (UTC)


 * In an AfD, the deciding admin is supposed to evaluate the merits of the arguments presented on each side, and not merely serve as a vote-counter. I have seen deletion decisions overturned in a deletion review on that basis. In the case of a 'keep' (which is always the result if no consensus is reached), the best course of action would be to re-nominate the article with a summary of arguments presented.


 * The 'keep' arguments so far focus on the supposed notability of the winery, and by Wikipedia's official guidelines, the article would pass because people assume any wine event is notable. I think this whole incident underscores the need to get the WP:WINETOPICS out of 'proposed' mode and submitted for consideration as an official guideline. That would avoid such deletion arguments in the future. To do that, we need discussion on the talk page to decide whether the proposed version is ready to go live. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The funny thing is that I tend to be a bit on the inclusionist side myself, at least when it comes to editing on the Swedish language version, where I edit wider, and compared to the some other AfD voters there. But when it comes to wine topics it's one thing to imagine one article for each of the 400+ French AOCs, one article for each named grape variety actually in commercial cultivation somewhere, and another thing to allow a free ticket for sales-pitch-oriented articles on tens of thousands of wineries... Tomas e (talk) 12:17, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Valhalla again and ARS
I couldn't quite understand the amount of energy spent by (apparent) non-authors and non-locals on Valhalla Vineyards compared to other non-notable wineries put up for AfD with sound arguments. I may be a bit slow, but I just figured something out, perhaps later than everyone else of you. Did you know there is a project called Article Rescue Squadron? Their agenda is quite sympathetic (at least to a semi-inclusionist like me), saying "All too often, an article about a perfectly notable topic lies wounded, badly written, unsourced – but should its life be taken at Articles for Deletion? No! Only articles about non-encyclopedic topics should be deleted, not articles that need improvement." All perfectly clear, an agenda clearly in line with improving Wikipedia and one that is fully in line with agreed policies. Since a couple of months they keep a list called Article Rescue Squadron/Current articles. That list currently contains 21 out of 722 AfD-listed nominations, and - you probably guessed it - Articles for deletion/Valhalla Vineyards is one of them. Inclusions on this list does not come with any "This debate has been included in the blablabla-related deletion discussion" note or anything similar, but apparently the presence of Template:Rescue makes an article/its AfD be listed here. Now, I've seen this template on a few articles before, but I thought it had a function like Template:Hangon for speedy-deletes, perhaps to signal "don't do anything to this article until we're finished with the AfD". I didn't realise it was a "distress beacon" that put the article on this list kept by a metaproject with a specific purpose. In the case of Valhalla Vineyards, the rescue template was placed by in this edit, where he simultaneously removed the "notability" template during the ongoing AfD vote, which was based exactly on notability concerns! And unlike templates like Template:Prod or Template:Db, the rescue template doesn't seem to come with a supporting argument. When I put this together, the whole thing brings more of a frown to my face. If this is how this template and this list are typically used, it seems to possibly have another flavour and purpose than the typical announcements to "subject matter projects" about "hey, there's a contentious AfD falling within the project's area of interest". And by the way, I put a message on the good Colonel's talk page about his template deletion. In my opinion, notability templates definitely stay for the duration of an AfD! Tomas e (talk) 15:58, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeap. As I noted above, this article has unfortunately become an unwitting pawn in the mythological battle between inclusionists and deletionists for the "soul of Wikipedia". Because we want to hold an article to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, we are cast as deletionists with everything we say being vigorously opposed just so the inclusionists can score some symbolic point. The actual merits of the article means little in this AfD, as evidence by our futile efforts of consistently pointing out to the inclusionists how the article fails to establish notability on repeated account. It is bizarre and sad. AgneCheese/Wine 19:19, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ...and takes away much needed time from improving articles on subjects that are actually notable. Sigh. Tomas e (talk) 21:49, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Well. I must say I'm impressed with the thorough job of the closing admin. An equitable process and a conclusion not distracted by quite a few loud claims. A bit relieved Valhalla wasn't to become notable for lowering the notability threshold.. I also like the idea of ARS, but not at the cost of rational and civil argumentation. M URGH  disc.  09:35, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. It was clear that the Admin was doing exactly as GD indicates the AfD closure process go--consensus evaluated based on it reflects Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. As I noted on the closing admin's talk page--if any local pizzeria, bed and breakfast or garage band had the same type of meager, trivial coverage this would have been a "no-brainer" delete as guidelines like WP:SIGCOV, WP:CORP and WP:MUSIC make it abundantly clear the insignificance of that meager coverage is not sufficient to establish notability. While I suspect that this might be headed to WP:DRV, it is heartening to see that it is possible for objective editors to evaluate winery articles solely based on their merits and not the romanticism of wine. AgneCheese/Wine 12:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI - It is at DRV now. Though the main issues seem to be GFDL and attribution conflicts from the closing admin merging some of the material into the North Fork of Roanoke AVA. As I commented on the DRV, this information is not really appropriate or worthwhile for inclusion in the AVA article. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we have much precedence for redirecting a winery's name to a wine region article. Do we? AgneCheese/Wine 06:52, 6 January 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I don't think we do, but precedent doesn't mean much on Wikipedia; precedent is created every day in some fashion or other, depending on your POV. The 'keep' proponents, for example, may argue that Wikipedia set a new precedent in deleting the article by setting the criteria for inclusion too high compared to the past (when the existing criteria were simply applied).
 * By copying content to another article, the closing admin apparently created a small problem, but I recognize he was trying to find a good compromise. I agree that this winery isn't so notable that it needs to be singled out in a wine region article. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay...for some bizarre reason the Colonel wants to reintroduce this inappropriate and GFDL violating material in the article. This is gross WP:POINT violation and I would appreciate if other editors could help keep an eye on the North Fork of Roanoke AVA article. AgneCheese/Wine 04:33, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

New article Wine bar, needs expansion and photographs
I was working on Category:Drinking establishments (a cat of types of places, not individual joints), and notice that the concept of wine bar wasn't covered, but redirects to Bar. I excerpted out said section and made it its own article, put it into the "drinking establishments" and "wine" categories. Would appreciate any help in expanding it (and the current focus is very US-centric, though maybe the concept of a "wine bar" being anomalous compared to a "beer bar" is a US thing). It could also use some photographs, if you happen to recall when you visit your local haunt. MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I put some useful news articles from major papers on the talk page. Steven Walling  07:22, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for starting this! You're right in that it is very US centric. Hopefully some of our European winos can expand on its global use. AgneCheese/Wine 20:02, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A Google books search brings up a whole bunch of travel guides by Rick Steves mentioning European wine bars. Not ideal sources, but better than nothing. Steven Walling  02:41, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

A copied sales brochure with OTRS' okay?
Well this was an interesting find Seneca Lake wine trail. Apparently someone sent permission to OTRS to essentially republish the sales brochure of the Seneca Lake Winery Association to create this WP:ADVERT article. This is REALLY old (2005) before there was much thought about WP:COI. There is so much clean up that needs to be done, who knows where to begin. What are your thoughts? AgneCheese/Wine 22:38, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Some thoughts on December's most popular wine pages
Re: WikiProject Wine/Popular pages As noted with November's listing, several of the top 10 (or 15 really) have more "relative" relation with wine or their articles currently does a very poor job of highlighting the winemaking influence/importance of the topic. Somewhere along the lines we either need to dramatically improve the wine related content of these articles or remove them from the project in lieu of a more distinctly "wine" article. Other thoughts: It is always interesting when any of the "Top 50" wine articles for the month currently have an indication of "low level importance" for the Wine Project-especially if an article is repeatedly in this "Top 50". This may be something that the project wants to keep a closer eye on since obviously these articles are being searched for and read by readers interested in wine related subject.In a similar vein, I think we should also look more closely at the articles which are rated as "start/stub" class and make improvement of this "popular" articles a priority. Of the "Top 50" low/start classed article (besides Resveratrol mentioned above): On the positive, a 107 different wine articles received 10,000+ page views. Over 28 different articles average at 1000 page views a day. Also, you don't encounter our first stub articles till Potassium bitartrate at #59 (which really isn't a stub), Digestif at #61 (Maybe merge with Aperitif?), Lillet at #98 (which also isn't really a stub) and Moscato d'Asti at #100. The fact that our "Top 100" popular wine articles for the month has only really 1 true stub is a tremendous testament to our content building and stub killing efforts. AgneCheese/Wine 23:44, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Ethanol - Currently finishing my research for a potential Alcohol in wine article
 * Yeast - Currently researching for a potential Yeasts in winemaking article
 * Prohibition in the United States - maybe an Prohibition influence on American wine?
 * Ester (Note: The project tag has been removed from this article) - Currently researching for a potential Ester in wine article
 * Resveratrol - Most of the wine related content has already been created the Phenolic compounds in wine and Wine and health article
 * Distilled beverage - Not sure what to do with this one
 * Louis Pasteur - I think there may be fodder for a potential Louis Pasteur's influence on winemaking article. Haven't researched it too thoroughly yet
 * Vermouth - start, low (was recently reclassified as a "c" but still could use a lot of improvement)
 * Hennessy - start, low (probably could be reclassified as a "c")
 * Short-term effects of alcohol - low (With the Wine and Health article the project tag could probably be removed)
 * Cristal (wine) - start (probably could be reclassified as a "c")
 * Sangria - start (needs LOTS of wikifying and referencing)
 * LVMH - start, low (maybe it could be reclassified as a "c". Possible December "blip")
 * Low-end fortified wine - start, low (maybe it be reclassified as a "c"
 * Grappa - start, low (needs like of referencing and wikifying work.)
 * Saccharomyces cerevisiae - start (probably will be replaced when Yeast in wine article is done_
 * Apéritif - start (Needs ref and a lot more wine related content)
 * Dom Pérignon (wine) - start (Beginning to wonder if this is best to merge into Moët et Chandon? Very sparse on content and referencing)

White Owl Winery - another Valhalla?
Here's another one, White Owl Winery, having the same problems as Valhalla Vineyards, which currently has an extremely contentious and vigorous AfD debate going on. Like Valhalla, the winery has only regional coverage and has won numerous regional awards; although there have been two articles dedicated to the winery in major (but local) news publications. I think it deserves a prod, but if the Valhalla AfD outcome is the beginning of a precedent, maybe not? ~Amatulić (talk) 05:32, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes the Decatur Herald & Review and Terre Haute Tribune-Star coverage is certainly insufficient, but if the Valhalla process sets a new all-time low notability threshold precedent, there seems little to be done about any winery ever mentioned in some shape of print. M URGH   disc.  10:54, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * To those of you who haven't already done so, do put User:AlexNewArtBot/WineSearchResult on your watchlist! After Stefan's calibrations some months ago I get the impression this list picks up most new articles and reasonably little "garbage". PRODding clearly non-notable winery articles directly when they are created, plus notability template and reference to relevant pages, can be a time-saving type of housekeeping. Tomas e (talk) 14:57, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Hey, that's neat. I didn't know about that. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:12, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't worry about Valhalla becoming a precedent. At most it is going to come out as "no consensus" which doesn't really establish any precedent. Plus this AfD is an aberration due to its unfortunately being taken up as a cause célèbre for various inclusionists against the mythological "deletionist agenda". This AfD just had the poor luck of being noticed by people who would rather disregard Wikipedia policies and guidelines just so they can score a "symbolic point". Not a single "keep" voter is arguing their case on the merits of the articles and sources, so there really isn't any precedent to extract from this AfD. Just poor luck. AgneCheese/Wine 21:16, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I prodded White Owl Winery, and the tag was promptly removed by one of the "keep" proponents of Valhalla. Oh well. Will go to AfD when I get around to it. ~Amatulić (talk) 00:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I can see a few of the "keep" proponents and ARS folks keeping an eye out for wine article deletions for the next week or so. May be best to just let things settle and get WP:WINERY promoted before putting a wine article up for AfD. AgneCheese/Wine 01:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Those darn inclusionist keep proponents are so pesky! Seriously though, I wasn't particularly looking for winery prods, I do patrol prods from time to time looking for articles that have hope (though most dont).  You guys are smoking the wacky weed though by suggesting that the all the keep !votes for valhalla were disregarding policy or trying to score some elusive point.  The Valhalla article had sourcing, it just wasn't the sourcing that others seemed to find sufficient, apparently. Cheers.--Milowent (talk) 03:58, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Since the Valhalla Vineyards AfD has now gone to Deletion review, I think it might be good to wait a couple of days with additional AfDs/PRODs of winery articles that has existed for a while. PRODding newly created articles is another thing. From what I've seen (not just with winery articles) it's not always very easy to know if a PROD will be contested or not. In principle, I suppose you always have to be prepared that a PROD can become an AfD, especially when it is not a newly created article. Tomas e (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
 * When I wrote my thought above, I suppose one could say that I have to eat my own brioche when the very same Milowent dePRODded Prairie State Winery with the argument "prod cites proposed guidelines and essay. article has sourcing". When the same user writes "I am trying to think of any non-BLP article I've seen deleted with this much sourcing" about dear old Valhalla Vineyards, I'm getting the impression that some editors are confusing notability and the number of sources and need to read WP:N. Well, since this is about patrolling newly created winery articles, and removing those which are clearly non-notable (and not about re-evaluating a backlog of existing winery articles) I'm of course going to AfD it. Tomas e (talk) 15:59, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am getting the impression that some editors don't know when they are out of sync with our pokemon-plentiful project. Or perhaps I am just insane.--Milowent (talk) 16:53, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Your good mood is appreciated, if your views on inclusion isn't. If you would like demonstrated a WP article on a notable VA wine producer, see the sourcing possibilities of surrounding Barboursville Vineyards. Considering all those media opportunities to include Viriginia wine's finest and Valhalla so grossly missing out, can you see the angle for leaving them outside our plentiful project for the moment? M URGH   disc.  20:17, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I shall look at Barboursville Vineyards. I did try to do something constructive and created an article on the Chaddsford Winery, though I fear it won't be found notable in these parts.--Milowent (talk) 21:03, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Chaddsford has good sources, largest of the state, "the dean of Pennsylvania winemaking".. looks like it's here to stay. M URGH   disc.  22:16, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I moved on to Delaware today, which only has one notable vineyard, Nassau Valley Vineyards.--Milowent (talk) 16:20, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Milowent, thanks for your contributions. If you haven't put your name on the Wine Project roster, please consider doing so. I don't think anyone in the Wine Project has had problems with notability in the articles you've mentioned.

Also, as the brouhaha over Valhalla has amply demonstrated, we need a document that brings together the official policies and guidelines such as WP:N, WP:CORP, WP:SIGCOV, etc. to explain what those policies mean in the specific context of wine. That's the purpose of WP:WINETOPICS &mdash; not to describe exceptions to the rules (as was argued in the Valhalla deletion) but to explain the existing rules in specific context of wine. It is intended eventually to become an official Wikipedia guideline, much like other official guidelines that already exist for special topics such as criminal acts and books. Any contributions or suggestions you would make there would be much appreciated. Thanks. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:46, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, I agree that both of those articles have sufficient claims of notability and coverage. While Chaddsford is the weaker of the two (pretty much only claim is being the largest in the state), Nassau Valley Vineyards is definitely notable and was a pioneer in Delaware wine which you did an excellent job of establishing. If more winery stub articles was written like Nassau, there would certainly be a lot less headaches in the wine project. Thank you for time and efforts here. AgneCheese/Wine 17:58, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the nice notes, Amatulić and Agne! I will retain hope for Valhalla, if little ol' Nassau Valley Vineyards in little ol' Delaware has passed muster.--Milowent (talk) 18:09, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Nationalist POV in wine articles is back!
With all the winery notability quarrel and high-voiced inclusionist/deletionist battle over wineries going on, you've probably wondered where all other wine-related controversies have gone. I'm "happy" to announce that nationalist (or in this case, perhaps better termed regionalist) POV seems still to be alive and well, and is back in the form of two just registered users who both edit with a pro-Catalan view. This means taking out the term "Spanish" and putting in "Catalan" (e.g. in Montsant), and even putting in Catalan terms in French wine articles (Banyuls AOC). For the record, my opinion is that all wine region articles should mention the country in the lead, as well as the actual term of its classification (if any). And by the way, for classifications that are part of the wine law, there is (at least inside the EU) little doubt that the classification formally "belongs" to the country (at the national legislative level), although some countries have left it to regional authorities to apply the regulations in individual cases. Tomas e (talk) 13:48, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh good lordy. If it ain't one, it is the other. I'll keep an eye on them in my watchlist. Thanks for the heads up. AgneCheese/Wine 20:01, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the conclusion is that this is for the most part disruption. I know they made a brief attempt to engage with people, but they seemed to be on a mission to Catalan-ise every name they can, regardless of what things are actually called in English and regardless of what anyone said to them. They've gone quiet now though. Another editor took on most of the place-name changes, I've now had a quick go at some of the wine-related ones (I didn't want to lose too much of my Saturday morning) - it might be worth checking any changes/reversions I've made and also going over his other works. In particular I left the Penedès (DO) article alone, as they created it from the main Penedès page, and I'm not sure whether it's better to tweak it, or to just delete the duplicated content and redirect it. Arguably it might be worth having a dedicated DO page, but that would of course require quite a bit of work, to cut out any duplication. I sometimes think this sort of thing is worse than outright vandalism, given that it is often much more subtle as it makes a wide-ranging mess of so much content, which others of course have to then go and clean up.--Nickhh (talk) 12:15, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi,everyone, I'm back!!! Those pages were on my watchlist, they seem to be OK now. They've actually done us a favour by creating the Penedès (DO) article. All other DO's with the same name a a town/region/province/etc have their own article but Penedès was the only one left!!!! We could check out the content though.--BodegasAmbite (talk) 16:39, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I've seen that there has been some good and helpful edits as well, but things like this, adding a Catalan flag to the "country" part of the infobox for a French AOC, or this addition of "Catalan wine" (a subcategory of Spanish wine) to another French AOC (one or several) aren't exactly the best signs of NPOV dedication I've seen. Sigh. Tomas e (talk) 19:35, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Sigh...another winery article of questionable notability
I try to avoid looking at because it is always ravaged with spammish, COI and/or non-notable entries that make my head spin. But in regular editing, you always seem to stumble over them. Another one for your viewing pleasure is Mahogany Mountain Vineyard and Winery. Right now the only current source in the article is essentially the winery's own website (the second source just relates to when the AVA was founded). A very brief google and google news search doesn't look promising but again these were just very brief. I'm not in enough of a fighting mood to go through another winery AfD at the moment but I figure I would still post this out here for any of the other wine project members to take a gander at. AgneCheese/Wine 22:30, 9 January 2010 (UTC)
 * This is a good example of something that has received far less coverage than Valhalla - 3 google news hits vs. 113, for example, and only one of those three seems significant (but its from the local alternative news rag vs. the San Diego Union Tribune, the leading paper in the region). And zero hits on google books v. 46 for Valhalla.  (I know its not really about hit numbers, of course, but it serves as a good proxy in this case.) As a fairly fervent (though not delusional) inclusionist, I am pretty sure this would get deleted if nominated.--Milowent (talk) 22:05, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of wine awards...
What should we do with the monstrosity that is International Value Wine Awards? AgneCheese/Wine 07:21, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Ugh. The event probably has no difficulty finding some media coverage on national level ("it's a vital competition", after all) for sourcing, but something has to be done. I think there is no defense for the "results" section, and the categories list seem quite useless. Then one is left with something so brief it could be merged into an umbrella article such as "International wine awards" maybe, which would be more manageable. Maybe there is something to be inserted into the wine notability proposal about competitions, since there exist some interesting facts about their dubious nature.  M URGH   disc.  10:49, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree - as a first step to improvement, those completely unnotable tables in Results section should be deleted. Be bold someone! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 22:44, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed the results, but still lots of cleanup to be done if the article is kept. Camw (talk) 11:19, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
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Valhalla Vineyards yet again, another time!
Anyone know how come the article on Valhalla Vineyards has been restored, after such a lengthy discussion, the result of which was Delete? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 10:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Decision overturned at DRV as no consensus to either keep or delete. Camw (talk) 11:14, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, so I readded the notability template, because the "no consensus" result of this long process means that there is neither consensus to delete it, nor consensus that it fulfills notability requirements. To quote from Deletion review/Log/2010 January 6: "...No Consensus exists as to whether the sources shown are sufficient for notability or not... As such the deletion is overturned and the article restored. This is, of course, without prejudice towards any future AfD, except for a personal request not to hold one in the near future because it is likely to generate another voluminous and hard to interpret discussion and not because any consensus that this is an appropriate subject for an article has been shown, just that lack of consensus that it is inappropriate." I think that the recommendation to avoid a new AfD in the near future, say, the next couple of months, is a sensible one, but I also think that the notability template should stay during that period. If and when Notability (wine topics) gets adopted and has been tried out for a while, I guess we could be in a position to see if we either take the article to a new AfD, or remove the notability template. But the again, these are just my thoughts. Tomas e (talk) 14:23, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. As noted before, this article was unfortunately thrusted in the extra-meta "inclusionists vs deletionists" struggle where evaluating the true merits of the article was tossed out the window long ago. It didn't matter that this article had abysmally poor notability-the "soul of Wikipedia" was at stake and all that mattered was that groups like WP:ARS score their inclusionist point, Wikipedia policies be damned. I second the request to let the dust settle for a couple months and then re-evaluate the landscape. The Wine Project has the misfortune of wishing to maintain this "bizarre concept" of an encyclopedic focus on wine articles instead of letting them become a free for all with spam, adverts and directories of non-notable wineries. Apparently focusing on producing an encyclopedia is not very much in vogue right now but hopefully some of this political "BS" will settle and we can get back to evaluating things on their encyclopedic merit. AgneCheese/Wine 14:37, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I have to confess that I've not been able to dedicate too much time to wine project lately, and have only just been managing to keep my toe in the water (or is it finger in the pie? - you know what I mean!). I was totally perplexed by the amount of time and energy invested in the Valhalla Vineyards deletion debate, but I understand a bit now (from Agne's post above). I think the same applies to Markham Vineyards, and probably loads more that could turn up if we trawled through the Stubs. Are you serious about the 'extra-meta "inclusionists vs deletionists" struggle'? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 14:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * (Typed before BodegasAmbite's comment) IMHO, if you spent less time trying to delete marginal articles like Valhalla, it would benefit the project more. While the Valhalla drama was going, I did a little a research and created a stub for Nassau Valley Vineyards, a little vineyard lucky enough to be the first in the tiny U.S. state of Delaware.  Agne improved it greatly, and it ended up on Did You Know? on the main page.  Something like Mahogany Mountain Vineyard and Winery, which Agne noted above, has next to no sourcing or articles written about it; I doubt an AfD for it would create much of a fuss, if we are looking for creating useful precedents.  The bigger deletion debates naturally take place on articles which are closer to the line, and thus typically end as a "no consensus" keep.  "Factions" like WP:ARS act in good faith in applying wikipedia policies, but they may tend to interpret those policies in a pro-inclusionist way.
 * I removed the notability template that Tomas e readded to avoid a quick new AFD, and on the theory that although some people dispute the notability of the subject, there is no consensus that it is not notable. But I am not huge a fan of articles filled with boxes at the top (except a lack of references notification, i guess, to warn people about verifiability).--Milowent (talk) 14:58, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * ETA: Regarding Markham Vineyards and its prior AfD, Agne voted a "weak keep" on that, and even Amatulić was neutral.--Milowent (talk) 15:01, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletionism and my personal threshold

 * "Even" Amatulic? You have written mild personal attacks like this elsewhere, carrying an underlying false assumption about my motivation. I am far from the deletionist you seem to view me as. Perhaps some clarification is in order. I've written this before, so I'll say it again.


 * My own family's winery has been profiled in both local and national publications (and even won a medal as far away as Australia) -- yet I would never attempt to write an article about it, and I would propose it for deletion if someone else wrote it. Strict adherance to Wikipedia policies and guidelines, which are described in wine-context in WP:WINETOPICS, dictates that it not be included. You might consider our winery on the boderline of notability and vote to keep it, but I disagree strongly that borderline notability equates to sufficient notability.


 * Our winery is my personal threshold, the gauge I use to evaluate winery articles here. If I see a winery article that basically describes something less than or equal to my family's winery, it's a candidate for deletion, plain and simple. So I propose them for deletion. Some of those proposals, happily, have resulted in the article being improved to the point where they should be kept, and I am truly glad to see those articles stay (in fact I have retracted AfDs for this reason in the past). Such improvement failed to occur for Valhalla. I would have retracted my 'delete' recommendation if it had.


 * So don't mischaracterize me as deletionist. I'm not. I just have a firm threshold, backed by policy, that is different from yours. ~Amatulić (talk) 19:51, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, I didn't mean to be over the top (well, sometimes I obviously do, but its not personal). Thank you for clarifying your philosophy for me.  I probably would find your family's winery to be notable based on that description (especially being profiled in national publications), and I would probably think wikipedia would be more useful to the world with it than without it.--Milowent (talk) 15:58, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, that's the point we've been making here all along: Our small family winery doesn't get any more coverage than any other small family winery. If all such wineries get some basic level of coverage (the "restaurant test" in WP:WINETOPICS is an excellent analogy), then that coverage can't possibly be a distinguishing feature that equates to notability. Giving recognition to such wineries in Wikipedia is like a university giving cum laude recognition to every student graduating with a "C" grade. It just isn't done.


 * Now, run-of-the-mill recognition doesn't correlate with wine quality. Wineries can, and do, produce excellent wine but still get little or no recognition that would meet Wikipedia's notability threshold. I enjoy discovering obscure wineries who make exquisite wine that the rest of the world doesn't know about (see my wine snobbish moment I wrote about). ~Amatulić (talk) 01:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

New Start
Agne, Amatulic, Tomas e, Murgh and all other serious Wine Project editors: I say let's all get on with what we know and love, ie improving the wiki wine project! Enough time-wasting!!! Let's all concentrate on doing what we can (given our free time) and maybe even work together on something interesting to all of us :) What you all say? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 14:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well. It's a good thought, but which subject to come together on? We all have our own things that draw particular interest, in my case less demanding, narrow article subjects with easily accessible sources that allow a swift output to a start status, project importance normally medium/low.. But what tops the 'most urgently needed' list of WP:WINE? M URGH   disc.  18:08, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Murgh, I did say "maybe" :). Like you, I have a pretty narrow range of interest (ie articles related to Spain and wine up to Start level!). But you never know - maybe someone could suggest something that piques our interest! It would be fun to work on something together I think. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 20:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Well my interests are all over the board, depending on A.) What areas I'm studying as part of my WSET prep B.) What areas I've been invited to teach a wine class on C.) Whatever the heck I feel like working on today :P Thankfully there is never a shortage of things to do. AgneCheese/Wine 20:45, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes let's not forget the spirit of the moment. It is never a 'problem' to stay busy. I have an impression the most pressing WP:WINE needs might be the wine notability guideline proposal and the thorough category sweep that brings all global appellations into one sweet system. Maybe not quite tasks one rushes at in euphoria. So, if it ought to be a relatively broad and appealing subject on which there are sources most have access to, ..those subjects are becoming fewer. There aren't any neglected major grape varieties anymore? There is the wine-by-nation coverage –and now that we have Swedish wine in the can ;) – I have a feeling we skipped some others like Uruguay wine and maybe Brazil wine, a few others (someone just started Armenian wine) but how big are these articles likely to become?  It could for instance be rewarding to make something more useful out of Wine regions of South Africa. Of projects I have nearly started but withdrawn from in fear are Vine training systems, Literature of wine (including or branching off into something like Wine media?) and having a go at making Robert M. Parker, Jr. neutral and BLP reputable.. And then I recall recently Agne's appealing Theories on the origins of winemaking suggestion (though unfortunately I still only have Hugh's Story). What are some other ideas?  M URGH   disc.  00:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably no neglected major grape varieties, but there are many "odd" local/regional grape varieties that have articles in German or French Wikipedia but not here. And I'm sure that there are many fairly large winemaking countries where we don't have articles on all the major wine regions (i.e., the biggest chunks you can divide a country into). By the way, are there any subjects where we know are articles are out of date? I'm almost finished with the "Portuguese mess" where something like three quarters of all entries in the List of Portuguese wine regions have either changed status, changed name, been merged into other regions or otherwise been obliterated over the last years. Looks like only four of 29 previously listed IPRs remain unchanged, for example. If we have other areas where the information is similarly out of date, we could consider to target them. Tomas e (talk) 00:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Viticulture by country?
We have a collection of articles on wine for various countries but none for viticulture. This is a bit of a gap in the collection of WP articles. Can I suggest at least a series of stub articles on viticulture by country? Cheers... -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 05:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Very few viticultural techniques are unique on a country level-most of the time particular viticultural details will be in the wine region article like Chablis wine, Washington wine, Mosel wine, Rioja wine, etc. Even if there is any country-specific viticulture details they should probably be kept within the main context of the individual country's main wine article rather than have an isolated stub. AgneCheese/Wine 05:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * If you look across the language versions of Wikipedia, the main "by country" articles on wine-related subjects are either called "wine" or "viticulture". Thus fr:Viticulture en France corresponds to our French wine. Looking across some more language versions, the German and Dutch versions have made same choice as the French versions, with de:Weinbau in Frankreich and nl:Wijnbouw in Frankrijk, while the Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Norwegian versions have made same choices as English with es:Vino de Francia, pt:Vinhos da França, sv:Franska viner and no:Fransk vin. Thus, in some language version description of the wines is subordinate to the description of viticulture, while in other language versions (such as this one), the description of viticulture is subordinate to the description of wine. I would advocate against creating separate articles on viticulture per country as a part of the project's general article structure, as this would create an uncertainty about what is the "top" subject. (Wouldn't you also need at least oenology by country and wine classification by country? Perhaps also wine geography by country etcetera...) However, I would be quite happy to see a "Viticulture" section created in each "wine by country" article, describing viticultural techniques and practices for that country, but still keeping viticulture as a subject subordinate to the overall wine subject for that country. The term "Viticulture in X" could then be redirected to that section. However, this requires we have contributors who are reasonable familiar with this subject on a fairly specialised level. From a wine appreciation/wine consumer perspective, this can be a highly technical subject which the average wine geek doesn't really know that much about, which is probably why we still don't have articles like vine training systems. Tomas e (talk) 11:17, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Alright! Alright! I know we keep bemoaning our lack of vine training systems article so I'll start tackling that beast this weekend. :P :) Truth be told, I've had enough research material and familiarity with the subject since taking some viticulture classes last spring but kept putting the article off because I knew there was little chance of getting good, free use illustrations. The most difficult aspect of the article will be in trying to explain the different techniques for the reader without a visual image next to it. I've been stock loading vineyard pics on Commons that show some detail of the trellising but even those are not as clear as what an actual drawing would be. As for the suggestion of having Viticulture in France, Viticulture in the United States, Viticulture in Austria, etc redirects, I think it is a really good idea and surprised that we haven't insured that these redirects were created before. We should also probably make sure that we have all the Winemaking in Germany, Winemaking in Chile, Winemaking in Spain, etc redirects created as well not only for the country articles but also for major wine regions. Who wants to tackle that fun wiki-gnometry this weekend? :) AgneCheese/Wine 14:26, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Taxobox/doc
I don't know about others but my watchlist got spammed with massive amount of articles on mostly obscure grape varieties being plastered with. Examples: Ramisco, Alexandrouli, Heroldrebe, Frappato, etc. After looking at the document it seems that the only articles that really need this particular taxobox is the main Vitis, Vitis Vinifera, Vitis labrusca, Vitis aestivalis, etc articles. While I'm not a huge fan of infoboxes in general, I think our wine-specific is much more appropriate then this taxobox. The spamming of this taxobox tag looks to be particular project activity. Do we any agreement among Wine Project members that these tags should be removed? AgneCheese/Wine 02:07, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Tried to find anything written about this but I cannot. It should really be stated in Taxobox or on its talk page. I did quickly check of chicken breeds and dogs and I cannot find a single breed that has a standard taxobox and few have a similar special infobox like our Infobox wine grape variety. I agree that we should not have taxoboxed on varietals. I have posted a question on the taxobox talk page to see what thay say. --Stefan talk 04:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that taxoboxes should not be needed for grape varieties, especially not if a grape variety infobox is in place. I can see how the addition of these template have come about, however, if they were applied by someone who knows some botany but not much about viticulture. Variety (botany) is indeed a taxonomical rank, but we use "grape variety" as the WP:COMMONNAME for grape (or more correctly vine) cultivars, which most likely fall outside the applicability of plant taxoboxes. In the examples Agne has given, I notice that there are no grape infoboxes and no species information, so the situation was perhaps unclear to someone not familiar with grape varieties actually being cultivars. To reduce the risk of more such understandings, I would suggest that the wikilinked term variety (or grape variety, which goes to a list) is used in all these articles, and that species information is given. Placing a grape variety infobox, even with just the variety's name and the species, is probably a good idea. The point in having a wikilink to the species is that there you will find a taxobox with complete taxonomical information for the species, for those who are searching for that kind of thing. In case of uncertainty regarding the species, a quick look in Vitis International Variety Catalogue will give the answer, but it's very often Vitis vinifera. Currently, Catscan finds 31 grape variety articles which have the "missing taxobox" template. I'll probably start taking care of them in this way later today. Tomas e (talk) 11:54, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * And, yes, the issue of infoboxes is also a bit of a worry because of some duplication (and winery infoboxes having fields with inappropriate information and current wine region infoboxes don't really fit all "old world" regions or appellations). I'm of the opinion that Infobox wine grape variety not should be used, among other things since it does not have any species field and I never understood why a second grape infobox should be added in February 2009 without discussion here first. In my opinion, Infobox grape variety is the one that should be used, and it has a field for species. Tomas e (talk) 12:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Think I revert all that Thomes had not done. --Stefan talk 14:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It seems that WPPlant's probably most active editor agrees with us, and points to Infobox cultivar to be used in general for cultivars. I hadn't seen it before, but in similarity to the grape variety infobox it contains information on species and the cultivar's origin rather than all taxonomic levels. Tomas e (talk) 17:33, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

A link spammer to keep an eye on
An single purpose anon IP has been repeatedly spamming French wine related articles with a link to "Pat's wine file". So far they have been warned repeatedly by both Tomas and I. They've been giving their final warning so the next time they should be reported to the admins. AgneCheese/Wine 02:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, just for the record, there are very few private, "non-professional" wine sites or blogs that fulfill the standards of WP:EL, since most of them simply fall into either of three categories: promotional, substandard, or promotional and substandard. Sorry to all you guys out there who want to improve your wine blog's number of hits, Alexia rating or whatever. :-) Then of course we have the precious few who fall into that fourth category actually worth linking to, and which I use as reliable sources without thinking twice. The Wine Doctor (which must by far be the broadest of the "professional amateur wine sites"), Per Warfvinge's (another doctor, but this one a Ph.D. in chemical engineering) Alsace wine site, and the Madeira Wine Guide (written by - you guessed it - yet another doctor, this one German) come to mind, but I'm sure there are some more with a regional focus. Tomas e (talk) 21:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
 * FYI, Special:linksearch is a nice tool to find any link anywhere in wikipedia to a specific site. Happy hunting. --Stefan talk 00:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Talking about spamlinks, another IP number just added a link to a list of French AOCs at FrenchSoil.com. It turned out to be an exact copy of our article (recognisable because of the comments on the AOC's history, written by me), with links to Wikipedia articles in place, but with "© 2010 French Soil. All Rights Reserved." instead of any attribution notice. Tomas e (talk) 12:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Agne and Tomas: You don'thave to go through the 4 tiers of warning escalation for cases that are clear. If it's obviously the same person each time, and still doesn't "get it" after two warnings, it's fine to issue a final warning right then.
 * Stefan: I couldn't get Special:Linksearch to work for me unless I manually entered the search term in the URL of my browser window. Odd. I just used it experimentally to see how many places blogspot.com is used as a reference on Wikipedia, and deleted some. ~Amatulić (talk) 21:20, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Strange, it works for me using both IE and Chrome, and I have used it before and it worked fine. --Stefan talk 01:19, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It's the List of wine-producing regions again
There's a first for everything, and when I just placed the Talkheader on Talk:List of wine-producing regions I think this was the first time I had to resort to that for a wine-related article. A very small and insignificant first, but it seems this article is really one where POV or at least "POVish" edits (not related to improving the contents of the list within its context) really has a tendency to come back again and again. We've had several instances of worse edit wars or heated conflict over policy, but this one really has a tendency to need renewed attention at least every few months, be it related to Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Syria or some other state with disputed borders or location or which makes feelings run hot for some other reason. Statements like "Clearly it is not our job to adjudicate between the rightful ownership of disputed territories in the Middle East or elsewhere" in response to information on what the wine labels actually say is a bit fascinating, at least. Bottom line: this is a page to keep on your watchlist, and remember it's supposed to be a list of wine regions because, who knows, I may have had enough of this *#&% very soon. Tomas e (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * ‘a bit fascinating’? Not, I would suggest, as interesting as the decision to treat my edit to the talk page:
 * Clearly it is not our job to adjudicate between the rightful ownership of disputed territories in the Middle East or elsewhere. Therefore it would seem both appropriate and simple to list this both under Syria and under Israel together with a footnote stating that there is a territorial dispute. Ian Spackman (talk) 14:25, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * here as a personal attack. My comment was intended as a brief but emollient compromise between Tomas’s view and that of User:Supreme Deliciousness to which he was responding—both of which seemed to me to have merit. Still Tomas and I can certainly agree on one thing: we may both ‘have had enough of this *#&% very soon’. Ian Spackman (talk) 05:34, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Expansion of new Vinogel?
I'd seen this mentioned in books, and fr.wiki had a stub. Basically it's a gel made of reduced wine which French troops could dump into a canteen and shake up to get wine in a war zone, and was used in the French wars in Vietnam. Apparently actually issued rations. Though not particularly high-class, I thought it an interesting addition to WP coverage of wine, and any help would be appreciated. MatthewVanitas (talk) 19:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Yeast
I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Yeast/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:04, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Wine label images up for deletion at Commons
God dealing with images and copyright is so frustrating. Several dozen labels have been listed for deletion over on Commons. After looking at the various policies, I can't make heads or tails over whether or not they are acceptable. AgneCheese/Wine 00:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes very annoying since initially there was encouragement to place the images there, rather than here where through a different licensing approach they should easily be covered under Fair Use (can't be any different than CD covers,books, comics etc?). They initially speedied images which was particularly inelegant. Are there any other areas/projects affected by this that have come up with a smart response action? M URGH   disc.  00:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I almost hesitate to point out that the carpet-bombing approach the ARS folks took on Valhalla resulted in a "no consensus" keep. Not that we should stoop to that level....
 * Personally I object to images of wine labels, but admit that in most cases their use in articles is more or less appropriate, so I think they should be kept. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I saw your keep statement in the discussion, but you may not be aware that fair use images are not allowed on Commons, whereas they are on en.wikipedia ... We probably need to look into moving the images across to the en.Wikipedia space, which isn't ideal since the images are used by other language projects, but they'll need to deal with that as each project has its own rules on fair use. Camw (talk) 01:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Well it looks like there is some back story to this sudden interest in wine labels on a Commons. Apparently an editor there had one of his images deleted and decided to "retaliate" in a rather WP:POINTy fashion by requesting speedy deletions on wine labels and several other categories of product labels. *sigh* Looks like we stumbled into another minefield. AgneCheese/Wine 02:59, 17 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes there is some back story, but looking at their rules it is probably correct that they should be deleted if fair use files are not permitted over there. Camw (talk) 03:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * But I'm not 100% certain that fair use is the only way to go. It's been a while since I've had my wine business courses but there is some implicit permission "Freedom of Publicity" type copyright clause that deals with this type of thing. When wine retailers across the web and beyond post countless images of wines for sales, they're not doing it under fair use. It's a similar deal to restaurants including pictures of the wine bottle in illustrations of food pairings. Typically retailers (and wine blogs) are free to use these images without claims of copyright infringement because the winery wants these images out in the public. AgneCheese/Wine 03:18, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like we need to try to find more details about that permission. It may still prove incompatible with some of the conditions that files on Commons are required to obey but it certainly sounds worth a look. As a plan B I still think we need to look into copying them to the en.wiki space before they are deleted. Camw (talk) 03:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should probably consider plan B. I've emailed a few friends in the wine business and some legal folks to see if I can get more information. AgneCheese/Wine 05:16, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect the labels can only be used as fair use as a technical matter, so they'll need to be moved. Of course, the chances of any winery complaining about free dissemination of pictures of their labels is almost nil (as I see Agne already noted on the deletion discussion).--Milowent (talk) 05:27, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

More ridiculousness See  which has the added silliness of affecting the Chapoutier DYK nom that had a good chance of getting a lead picture slot with the image. This is copyright paranoia at its worse, especially since it only focuses on a small segment of the braile writing on the label and not the entire label itself like the images in question on Commons. AgneCheese/Wine 05:14, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Since the label is on the Chapoutier page, it seems OK to me. Otherwise, it might be a problem (theoretically, as the winery will never complain) because a significant amount of the label is displayed despite the intention to focus on the braile.--Milowent (talk) 05:17, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there a crop that we could make of the image that would still be interesting but not contain any copyrighted elements? Say directly below the 2001 part? Or see if one of us that has a Chapoutier bottle that could be photgraphed at a creative angle to avoid the parts that make the image non-free? Camw (talk) 07:11, 18 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Not so ridiculous, just following policy. Any image with a fair-use tag needs a rationale. That's just the way it is. The simple solution is to provide one, as I have just done, rather than complain. ~Amatulić (talk) 07:22, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The point is that non-free images are not allowed as part of DYK entries. Camw (talk) 07:25, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * That and it is ridiculous in that this is not a full label pic like the images being discussed at Commons. Significant portions of the label are missing with the braile writing being the focus. No one could take this image and "infringe" upon the label design of this bottle with just this small section of the image. AgneCheese/Wine 14:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter what the picture shows. If it's tagged with a fair use tag, it requires a rationale, which was not provided. Perhaps some other tag could have been used. But if you slap "fair use" on it, you gotta complete the process else the image is subject to deletion. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:21, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I never slapped fair use on it because I don't think it falls under the fair use category. AgneCheese/Wine 05:48, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see; somebody else came along and tagged it that way after you uploaded it, and didn't provide the proper rationale. That fair use tag is what's causing the problem. I think I provided reasonable rationales for using it in both articles where it appears, but another editor disagrees. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I've never come to understand Wikipedia/Commons rules/guidelines. I've completely stopped trying to get images approved on WP, I only try to upload images I have taken myself. BTW - would it help if I took a picture of a Chapoutier bottle? I have a Terlato-Chapoutier Shiraz in my cellar that has Braille on it IIRC. I'm going to Alba and the Rhone for a wine-tour this summer. Are there any pictures I should try to take, now that there is that oppertunity (pictures of grape varities/producers/geographical locations etc.)?--Nwinther (talk) 16:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * If your photo shows the label sufficiently, it is likely to run into the same wikilawyering that File:Braile label.jpg has encountered.
 * In the only picture of a wine bottle I have taken (see File:InvertOpenWine.jpg), I made sure the label wasn't readable. (BTW I really like that photo, it has an "aw crap, what do I do now?" quality to it, but I haven't found a good article to put it in -- a wine faux pas article would work, but probably hard to source). ~Amatulić (talk) 20:01, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I know this may not be the place to discuss it, but I can't see how me taking a picture of a wine-label and publishing it is any different from, say taking a picture of a BMW with the badge showing. And how can that be copyright infringement etc? Take a look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Daytona_International_Speedway.jpg and then look at the licensing: "I, the copyright holder...". But you can clearly see the Daytona logo! Also, a number of other logos etc. are clearly visible, such as Nextel and Dodge. And this one made it to EWPs front-page! If he can do it, I can do it, right?--Nwinther (talk) 14:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

White Owl Winery: Avoiding Valhalla
Some time ago, during the Valhalla brouhaha, I prodded White Owl Winery. The prod was removed, but since none of the issues were ever addressed, I restored the prod. I'm in no mood to become embroiled in another ridiculous battle with the ARS folks (whose article tagging practice, I have become convinced, is simply a disguised means of canvassing for AfD discussions). Happily an editor came along and solved the problem by moving the content to a geography article. I thanked the editor, who replied, "It sometimes works with local companies, especially pubs and breweries and restaurants, etc, to merge them with their location. A merge is not always possible or appropriate (especially with people), however it is something worth considering; though is unfortunately not a well used option."

If it seems appropriate, I wouldn't mind doing such merges instead of deleting. However, it still wouldn't have worked with Valhalla. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:21, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, moving and redirecting doesn't eliminate content, its just an organizational decision, and one less likely to cause worthless battles. (I saw what had happened before you commented because White Owl is on my watchlist)--Milowent (talk) 23:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)